CHAP. XXIX.] FRENCH AND ANGLO-AMERICANS. 157 



and the rest looking on. When summoned to dis 

 embark at their respective landings, they were in no 

 haste to leave us, wishing rather to finish the rubber. 

 The contrast of the two races was truly diverting, 

 just what I had seen in Canada. Whenever we were 

 signalled by a negro, and told to halt &quot;till Master 

 was ready,&quot; I was sure to hear some anecdote from 

 an Anglo-Saxon passenger in disparagement of the 

 Creoles. &quot; North of New Orleans, 1 said one of my 

 companions, &quot; the American captains are beginning 

 to discipline the French proprietors into more punctual 

 habits. Last summer, a senator of Louisiana having 

 forgotten his great-coat, sent back his black servant 

 to bring it from his villa, expecting a first-rate 

 steamer, with several hundred people on board, to 

 wait ten or fifteen minutes for him. When, to his 

 surprise, the boat started, he took the captain to task 

 in great wrath, threatening never to enter his vessel 

 again.&quot; 



My attention was next called to the old-fashioned 

 make of the French ploughs. &quot; On this river, as on the 

 St. Lawrence,&quot; said an American, &quot; the French had 

 a fair start of us by more than a century. They ob 

 tained possession of all the richest lands, yet are now 

 fairly distanced in the race. When they get into 

 debt, and sell a farm on the highest land next the 

 levee, they do not migrate to a new region farther 

 west, but fall back somewhere into the low grounds 



o 



near the swamp. There they retain all their an 

 tiquated usages, seeming to hate innovation. To 

 this day they remain rooted in those parts of Louis 

 iana where the mother country first planted her 



