178 
AGRICULTURAL TOUR SOUTH AND WEST.—NO. 6- 
Everything about this place, not only indicates 
wealth, but judgment, skill, and taste. The negro 
cabins are all good, substantial, neat, brisk houses, 
some thirty in number, all of the same size, color¬ 
ed yellow, to correspond with the mansion, stand¬ 
ing in an enclosed lot, with the overseer’s house, 
tool houses, corn cribs, &c. The negroes I found 
all neatly dressed, and fine, healthy, happy laborers. 
The “ cane cutters,” thirty-six in number, all in 
blue woollen shirts, with their formidable-looking 
weapons, the cane knives, were quite a “ uniform 
company,” that might do the state some service in 
times of peril. 
I did intend to describe the Christmas dinner, but 
I am taking up quite too much room. I must, 
however, mention the turkey fatted upon pecan 
nuts, as the finest I ever ate. The turkey is shut 
in a small, dark coop, and fed upon cracked nuts 
ten or twelve days, and nothing else. We also 
had a quarter of a young bear, from a friend over 
the river, and green peas, beans, tomatoes, beets, 
carrots, lettuce, and radishes, all fresh from the 
garden. 
The Messrs. McCatchon have a great variety 
of young fruit trees, and formerly oranges grew 
here abundantly. In 1822, a hard freeze killed the 
trees, and again in 1834. At the latter time the 
family took “ a sleigh ride.” Everything was en¬ 
cased in ice. Flowers and oranges, in their crystal 
coating, glistened in the sun like enchanted scenes 
in the gardens of fairy land. All was bright and 
beautiful, but it was the beauty of death. Apples 
have been tried and always failed. In the back 
yard of the house are two live oaks, that Mr. 
McCatchon planted about 40 years ago, that are 
now two of the finest shade trees I ever saw. 
About eight or ten feet from the ground, the limbs 
begin to spread out and extend 40 or 50 feet from 
the body, forming a very thick, handsome, round 
top. 
At this place, I first learned the value of bagasse 
as fuel. Here is a very well-arranged plan of sav¬ 
ing and burning it, a full and minute description of 
which I will give in my articles upon sugar culture. 
This year, 350 hhds. were made with this, alone, 
for fuel under the kettles. 
This land, which has been so long in cultivation, 
and still brings good crops, offers strong evidence 
of the lasting fertility of the Mississippi soil, when 
treated only in a decent manner. Of course, it is 
impossible to manure a sugar plantation in the 
way that some small tracts of grass and grain land 
at the north are ; and it is not required, if the same 
system was universal that prevails here, of deep 
plowing and turning under trash and pea vines, 
and the use of the subsoil plow and thorough 
ditching, with judicious changes from corn to cane, 
and good use of all the manure that can be made. 
Sugar may be continued to be made from the same 
land, “ even unto the third and fourth generation.” 
I intended to call upon Judge Rost, whose place 
is next below Messrs. McCatchons’, but he was 
absent. He is one of the few planters who study 
science to apply it to practical operations of plant¬ 
ing sugar cane. He has a draining machine upon 
his place, driven by steam. I was also unlucky in 
not meeting either of the Messrs. Kenner, very 
enterprising and large planters, between Ormond 
and Carrolton, the latter of which is connected with 
this city by a railroad six miles long. 
The first acquaintance I made in New Orleans, 
was Mr. Stephen Franklin, now conducting the 
agricultural warehouse, established in that city by 
R. L. Allen, and where every kind of implement 
used in the cultivation of the soil can be obtained. 
Mr. F. is an eastern man, but has been so long a 
resident here, that he is like one “ to the manor 
born.” He was formerly a cotton merchant, and is 
extensively acquainted in the city and country. I 
commend my friends to him, as a very pleasant and 
useful acquaintance. 
Mr. R. L. Allen,in his “ Letters from the South,” 
has given statistical tables, to show the amount of 
agricultural produce annually shipped to and 
through New Orleans. But one might just as well 
undertake to show the magnitude of the ocean, and 
the fearful raging of the storm at sea, by filling a 
junk bottle with salt water, and shaking it before 
the eyes of his pupil, as to try to give an idea of 
the business upon the levee here, by a string of 
words and figures. It must be seen, to be believed; 
and even then, it will require an active mind to 
comprehend acres* of cotton bales standing upon 
the levee, while miles of drays are constantly taking 
it off to the cotton presses, where the power of steam 
and screws are constantly being applied to com¬ 
press the bales into a lesser bulk, at an almost in¬ 
conceivable rate per day,while all around are piled up 
in miniature mountains, which other miles of drays 
are taking on shipboard, and yet seem unable to 
reduce in size or quantity, either here or.upon the 
levee; for boats are constantly arriving, so piled 
up with cotton, that the lower tier of bales on 
deck are in the water; and as the boat is approach¬ 
ing, it looks like a huge raft of cotton bales, with 
the chimneys and steam pipe of an engine sticking 
up out of the centre. And this is but one item of 
one branch of the produce business of New Or¬ 
leans. 
The whole fields of sugar hogsheads, molasses, 
pork, beef, flour, lard, oil, rice, meal, apples, and 
whiskey barrels, and bags of corn, oats, rye, barley, 
wheat, beans, peas, bran, potatoes, and cotton seed, 
bundles of hay, together with every other conceiv¬ 
able thing that ever grew out of the earth, are in 
such wonderful quantities, that the stranger is over¬ 
whelmed in wonder to know from whence cometh 
all this mighty mass of the products of the earth. 
It is utterly impossible to remove the daily accumu¬ 
lations as fast as they arrive; and at night, and 
every night, acres of such things as the weather 
might damage, are covered over with tarpaulin 
cloths, and guarded by watchmen. The time is 
rapidly coming, such is the vast increase of pro¬ 
duction in the fertile soil of the Mississippi Valley, 
when the whole river front will be insufficient to 
accommodate the shipping trade of the city, and 
slips will have to be cut into the land ) and great 
basins, or docks, like those of Liverpool and Lon¬ 
don, will have to be made, to give room for the 
giant of commerce to expand his young limbs. 
Or, perhaps, a great ship canal, from the river to 
the lake, will not be thought to be a visionary no¬ 
tion, at some future time; or a canal that shall 
leave the river at Carrolton, and encircle the pre¬ 
sent city, and enter the river again below, which 
