/IDs Mtnter Garben 



adapting themselves to soil and climate, 

 thus becoming, after a long lapse of time, 

 as indigenous as the Creoles themselves. 

 I have seen acacia in full flower scenting 

 an apparently primitive nook in a forest ; 

 but there I have also noted long, well- 

 defined cotton-ridges, with pine-trees 

 eighteen inches through the bole growing 

 thick upon them and between, indicating 

 a time when the slave plowmen worked 

 and sang there in vast open fields given to 

 the operations of that strange system of 

 agriculture generated by a civiHzation the 

 most picturesque ever wiped out by re- 

 lentless Progress. 



Sojourning in such a region, one has a 

 sense of vague records upon records 

 stamped in the soil, making it a sort of 

 palimpsest where the old-time roving 

 Spaniard, the daring Frenchman, the 

 bucaneer, the early colonist, and the 

 lordly mid-century planter have each 

 traced his aspirations, his deeds, and finally 

 his characteristic sign manual to attest his 

 good faith or his reckless defiance. The 

 women, too, have sketched many a touch- 

 i6 



