Passing from this plantation scene through the airy hall of the dwelling, which opened from piazza to piazza through the house, to the front gallery, whose light columns were wreathed with the delicately leaved Cape-jasmine, rambling woodbine and honeysuckle, a lovelier and more agreeable scene met my eye. I stood almost embowered in the foliage of exotics and native plants, which stood upon the gallery in handsome vases of marble and China-ware. The main avenue opened a vista to the river through a paradise of althea, orange, lemon, and olive trees, and groves and lawns extended on both sides of this lovely spot,
"Where Flora's brightest broidery shone,"
terminating at the villas of adjoining plantations. The Mississippi--always majestic and lake-like in its breadth--rolled past her turbid flood, dotted here and there by a market-lugger, with its black crew and clumsy sails. By the Levée, on the opposite shore, lay a brig, taking in a cargo of sugar from the plantation, whose noble colonnaded mansion rose like a palace above its low, grove-lined margin, and an English argosy of great size, with black spars and hull, was moving under full sail down the middle of the river. As I was under the necessity of returning to the city the same evening, I took leave of the youthful family of my polite host, who clustered around us as we walked along the avenue to the gateway, endeavouring to detain us till the next morning. The young rogue of a dragoon, who was now metamorphosed into a trumpeter--what a singular propensity little chubby boys have for the weapons and apparel of war!--a most mischievous little cupidon of but two or three summers' growth, was very desirous of accompanying us to town, on seeing us seated in the carriage; but finding that his eloquent appeals were unheeded, he took a fancy to a noble pointer, spotted like a leopard, which accompanied me, and clinging around the neck of the majestic and docile creature, as we drove from the gate, said in a half playful, half pettish tone, "Me ride dis pretty dog-horse, den." The sensible animal stood like a statue till the little fellow relaxed his embrace, when he darted after the carriage, then a quarter of a mile from the gate, bounding like a stag. The cries of "Pa, bring me this," and "Pa, bring me that," were soon lost in the distance, and rolling like the wind over the level road along the banks of the river, we arrived in the city and alighted at Bishop's a few minutes after seven.