So rapid is vegetation in this climate, so prompt is Nature to repair any waste in this favoured domain of hers, that even where places have been completely bared by the axe or by the whirlwind, a very few years of repose clothes them once more, a luxuriant growth of forest, vigorous and healthful, spreads rapidly over the waste, asserting its ancient claim, and eagerly repossessing itself of its heritage.
We reached Portersville at four o'clock, having been just six hours coming thirty-two miles: here we found the Government steamer, the Watchman, and five passengers, who had left Mobile on the 31st ultimo. They had been detained here two days, living in a log-house; their only amusement watching the ducks and snipe whirling in search of fresh feeding-ground over the dreary waters of Lac Pontchartrain.
Over a long fragile pier, carried far into the lake on piles, and breached in fifty places, we gained the deck of the Watchman, and in five minutes after were heading towards the setting sun, whose rays, brilliant though they were, failed to invest with cheerfulness this desolate, half-drowned land.
I walked to and fro upon the ample deck of the vessel until my limbs were fatigued and my eyes sick of the eternal sameness of the scene; and then sought my berth, a very comfortable one, where I lay till roused next morning with the intelligence that we were before the railroad.
_Jan. 3rd._--On landing, we found the six o'clock train had just departed; we were afforded therefore half an hour to look about us. Here is a very large hotel, during the summer much frequented by the citizens of New Orleans, the offices connected with the railroad depôt, three or four little stores, together with a small range of dirty huts, including two or three cut-throat-looking sheds, bearing inscribed over the entrance, in large, ill-assorted characters, the word _Tire_; which immediately under is translated, for the benefit of country gentlemen, into "_Shutting Galery_." These little indications serve to remind the stranger that he is now in the land of the "_duello_," where each "captain of compliments" is reputed for "the very butcher of a silk button," and "fights as you sing prick-song,--rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom."