314 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
It was a hot and sultry day when our wanderers 
landed at Bayou Sara," a small settlement at the junc- 
tion of the sluggish stream which bears that name and 
the Mississippi, and proceeded to climb to St. Francis- 
ville, the village a mile away on the hill. Mrs. Pirrie, 
who seems to have preceded the travelers by carriage, 
sent some of her servants to relieve them of their lug- 
gage, which Audubon said they found light. ‘They 
rested in the village at the house of Mr. Benjamin 
Swift, where they were invited to stay to dinner, then 
at the point of being served, but feeling somewhat ill 
at ease, they thanked their host and again took to the 
road. Following their leisurely guides, they now 
traversed a country so new, so strange, and so enchant- 
ing, that the five miles to the Pirrie house seemed short 
indeed. “The rich magnolias, covered with fragrant 
blossoms, the holly, the beech, the tall yellow poplar, the 
hilly ground, and even the red clay,” to quote Audu- 
bon’s record made at the time, “all excited my admira- 
tion. Such an entire change in the face of nature, in 
so short a time, seems almost supernatural, and sur- 
rounded once more by numerous warblers and thrushes, 
I enjoyed the scene.” 
In passing up the Mississippi from New Orleans, 
the topography of the country suddenly changes at 
4 “Bayou,” in Louisiana, is a term commonly applied to any slow- 
running stream. According to the tradition gathered on the spot by Mr. 
Stanley C. Arthur, both stream and settlement were formerly called “New 
Valentia,” while the present name was derived from an old woman called 
“Sara,” who many years ago lived at the mouth of the Bayou, where she 
practiced some sort of spurious physic. St. Francisville, on the hill, re- 
ceived its name from the circumstance that the brothers of St. Francis, 
who had a mission at Pointe Coupée, on the opposite bank, were in the 
habit of ferrying their dead over the river, in order to bury them on 
the high ground; “Bayou Sara” and “St. Francisville” are used interchange- 
ably by the inhabitants. See S. C. Arthur (Bibl. No. 230), Times-Picayune, 
New Orleans, August 6, 1916. 
