ARRIVAL AT BAYOU SARA. P7 



walked past their house several times, unable to make up my 

 mind how to ask the favour. I got the loan cheerfully, and 

 took a deck-passage to Louisville. I was allowed to take my 

 meals in the cabin, and at night slept among some shavings I 

 managed to scrape together. The spirit of contentment which 

 I now feel is strange — it borders on the sublime ; and enthusiast 

 or lunatic — as some of my relatives will have me — I am glad to 

 possess such a spirit. 



"Louisville, November 20. Took lodgings at the house of a 

 person to whom I had given lessons, and hastened to shipping 

 port to see my son Victor. Received a letter from General 

 Jackson, with an introduction to the Governor of Florida. I 

 discover that my friends think only of my apparel, and those 

 upon whom I have conferred acts of kindness prefer to remind 

 me of my errors. I decide to go down the Mississippi to my 

 old home of Bayou Sara, and there open a school, with the 

 profits of which to complete my ornithological studies. Engage 

 a passage for eight dollars. 



"I arrived at Bayou Sara with rent and wasted clothes and 

 uncut hair, and altogether looking like the Wandering Jew. 



" The steamer which brought me was on her way to New 

 Orleans, and I was put ashore in a small Jaoat about midnight, 

 and left to grope my way on a dark, rainy, and sultry night to 

 the village, about one mile distant. That awful scourge the 

 yellow fever prevailed, and was taking off the citizens with 

 greater rapidity than had ever before been known. When I 

 arrived^, the desolation was so great that one large hotel was 

 deserted, and I walked in, finding the doors all open, and the 

 furniture in the house, but not a living person. The inmates 

 had all gone to the pine woods. I walked to the Post Office, 

 roused the postmaster, and learned to my joy that my wife 

 and son were well at Mrs. Perry's. He had no accommodation 

 for me, but recommended me to a tavern where 1 might find a 

 bed. The atmosphere was calm, heavy, and suffocating, and it 

 seemed to me as if I were breathing death while hunting for 

 this "tavern ; finding it, the landlord told me he had not a spare 

 bed, but mentioned a German at the end of the village who 

 might take me in ; off there I walked, and was kindly received. 

 The German was a man of cultivation and taste, and a lover of 



H 



