Now should any philanthropic individual, anxious for the advancement of the noble science of physiognomy, wish to survey the motley countenances of these goodly personages, let him on some bright and sunny morning bend his steps toward the market-house; for there, in all their variety and shades of colouring they may be seen, and _heard_. If a painting could affect the sense of hearing as well as that of sight, this market multitude would afford the artist an inimitable original for the representation upon his canvass of the "confusion of tongues."
As we sallied from our hotel to commence our first tour of sight seeing, the vast city was just waking into life. Our sleepy servants were opening the shutters, and up and down the street a hundred of their drowsy brethren were at the same enlightening occupation. Black women, with huge baskets of rusks, rolls and other appurtenances of the breakfast table, were crying, in loud shrill French, their "stock in trade," followed by milk-criers, and butter-criers and criers of every thing but tears: for they all seemed as merry as the morning, saluting each other gayly as they met, "Bo' shoo Mumdsal"--"Moshoo! adieu," &c. &c., and shooting their rude shafts of African wit at each other with much vivacity and humor.
We turned down Canal-street--the broadest in New-Orleans, and destined to be the most magnificent. Its breadth I do not know, correctly, but it is certainly one half wider than Broadway opposite the Park.--Through its centre runs a double row of young trees, which, when they arrive at maturity, will form the finest mall in the United States, unless the _esplanade_--a beautiful mall at the south part of the city, should excel it.
From the head of Canal-street we entered Levée-street, leaving the custom house, a large, plain, yellow stuccoed building upon our right, near which is a huge, dark coloured, unshapely pile of brick, originally erected for a _Bethel church_ for seamen, but never finished, and seldom occupied, except by itinerant showmen, with their wonders. Levée-street had already begun to assume a bustling, commerce-like appearance. The horse-drays were trundling rapidly by, sometimes four abreast, racing to different parts of the Levée for their loads--and upon each was mounted a ragged negro, who, as Jehu-like he drove along, standing upright and unsupported, resembled "Phaeton in the suds"--rather than "Phaeton the god-like."