CHAP. XXIX. ] FRENCH AND ANGLO AMERICANS. 123 



party of them was always playing whist in the cabin, and the rest 

 looking 1 on. When summoned to disembark 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 di 

 verting, just what I had seen in Canada. Whenever we were 

 signaled by a negro, and told to halt &quot;till Master was ready,&quot; 

 I was sure to hear some anecdote from an Anglo-Saxon passen 

 ger in disparagement of the Creoles. &quot;North of New Orleans,&quot; 

 said one of my companions, &quot; the American captains are begin 

 ning 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 obtained 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 near the swamp. There they retain all 

 their antiquated usages, seeming to hate innovation. To this day 

 they remain rooted in those parts of Louisiana where the mother 

 country first planted her two colonies two centuries ago, and they 

 have never swarmed off, or founded a single new settlement. 

 They never set up a steam-engine for their sugar-mills, have tak 

 en no part in the improvement of steam navigation, and when a 

 railway was proposed in Opelousas, they opposed it, because they 

 feared it would let the Yankees in upon them. When a rich 

 proprietor was asked why he did not send his boy to college, he 

 replied, &amp;lt; Because it would cost me 450 dollars a year, and I shall 

 be able to leave my son three more negroes when I die, by not 

 incurring that expense. Dr. Carpenter informed me, that the 

 Legislature of Louisiana granted in 1834, a charter for a medi- 



