Our party having safely landed on the Levée, nearly opposite Rue Marigny, we commenced our long, yet in anticipation, delightful walk to our hotel. We had disembarked about a quarter of a league below the cathedral, from the front of which, just after we landed, the loud report of the evening gun broke over the city, rattling and reverberating through the long massively built streets, like the echoing of distant thunder along mountain ravines. On a firm, smooth, gravelled walk elevated about four feet, by a gradual ascent from the street--one side open to the river, and the other lined with the "Pride of China," or India tree, we pursued our way to Chartres-street, the "Broadway" of New-Orleans. The moon shone with uncommon brilliancy, and thousands, even in this lower faubourg, were abroad, enjoying the beauty and richness of the scene. Now, a trio of lively young Frenchmen would pass us, laughing and conversing gayly upon some merry subject, followed by a slow moving and stately figure, whose haughty tread, and dark _roquelaure_ gathered with classic elegance around his form in graceful folds, yet so arranged as to conceal every feature beneath his slouched _sombrero_, except a burning, black, penetrating eye,--denoted the exiled Spaniard.
We passed on--and soon the lively sounds of the French language, uttered by soft voices, were heard nearer and nearer, and the next moment, two or three duenna-like old ladies, remarkable for their "embonpoint" dimensions, preceded a bevy of fair girls, without that most hideous of all excrescences, with which women see fit to disfigure their heads, denominated a "bonnet"--their brown, raven or auburn hair floating in ringlets behind them.
There was one--a dark-locked girl--a superb creature, over whose head and shoulders, secured above her forehead by a brilliant which in the clear moon burned like a star, waved the folds of a snow-white veil in the gentle breeze, created by her motion as she glided gracefully along. She was a Castilian; and the mellow tones of her native land gave richness to the light elegance of the French, as she breathed it like music from her lips.
As we passed on, the number of promenaders increased, but scarcely a lady was now to be seen. Every other gentleman we met was enveloped in a cloud, not of bacchanalian, but tobacconalian incense, which gave a peculiar atmosphere to the Levée.