Bayou

“ Within its bosom are hidden romances and stories, such as were sung by minstrels of old. From the source to the mouth is not far distant, visibly speaking, but in the life of the bayou a hundred heart-miles could scarce measure it. Just where it winds about the northwest of the city are some of its most beautiful bits, orange groves on one side, and quaint old Spanish gardens on the other. Who cares that the bridges are modern, and that here and there pert boat-houses rear their prim heads? ”

“ A bayou runs irregularly across this low land, the bottom of which, however, is above the surface of the Big Black at ordinary stages. When the river is full water runs through it, converting the point of land into an island. The bayou was grown up with timber, which the enemy had felled into the ditch. At this time there was a foot or two of water in it. The rebels had constructed a parapet along the inner bank of this bayou by using cotton bales from the plantation close by and throwing dirt over them. The whole was thoroughly commanded from the height west of the river. ”

“ It was an Indian canoe, the first outpost of the savage force, and its occupant, promptly firing a rifle, raised a long, warning shout. In an instant the woods on either side began to crackle with rifle-fire. Skirmishers had met skirmishers, and the battle of the bayou had begun.
"Press on! Press on! We must cut through somehow!" cried Adam Colfax, and the American fleet moved steadily and unfalteringly on toward its goal. They came now to the narrowest part of the bayou, and stretched across it they saw a dark line of canoes, all crowded with Indians and the desperadoes of Alvarez. ”

“ Along the banks of the bayou were a few live oaks; on either flank the swamp was densely wooded, mainly with cypress, cottonwood, and willow, with an outlying and almost impenetrable canebrake, while between the attacking columns and the Confederate position, on either bank of the bayou, stretched a field where the young shoots of the sugar-cane stood knee-high. This was crossed at right angles with the bayou, by many of those wide and deep ditches by which the planters of Louisiana are accustomed to drain their tilled lowlands. ”

“ Bayou Bœuf is a sluggish, winding stream—one of those stagnant bodies of water common in that region, setting back from Red River. It stretches from a point not far from Alexandria, in a south-easterly direction, and following its tortuous course, is more than fifty miles in length. Large cotton and sugar plantations line each shore, extending back to the borders of interminable swamps. It is alive with alligators, rendering it unsafe for swine, or unthinking slave children to stroll along its banks. ”

“ Then a corn field, overflowed from a cut in the levee, where a channel was cut by the swift water, and floated them onward nearly a quarter of a mile to the woods. Here was great labor—two straight and long miles to the nearest point in the bayou. It took eight days to get through this distance. Then came Wilson’s Bayou, East Bayou, and St. John’s Bayou, which empties into the Mississippi at New Madrid. It sometimes took twenty men a whole day to get out a half sunken tree across the bayou; and as none of the rafts or flats could get by, this always detained the whole fleet. ”

“ Martinsville, ten miles farther up the bayou, is a village mainly of small frame houses, with a smart court-house, a lively business street, a few pretty houses, and some oldtime mansions on the bank of the bayou, half smothered in old rose gardens, the ground in the rear sloping to the water under the shade of gigantic oaks. ”

“ We are past the worst.’
Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers: sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs. ”

“ Presently, looking up the bayou, I saw Tibeats and two others on horse-back, coming at a fast gait, followed by a troop of dogs. There were as many as eight or ten. Distant as I was, I knew them. They belonged on the adjoining plantation. The dogs used on Bayou Bœuf for hunting slaves are a kind of blood-hound, but a far more savage breed than is found in the Northern States. They will attack a negro, at their master's bidding, and cling to him as the common bull-dog will cling to a four footed animal. ”

“ But they keep on washing the clothes in the bayou just the same.
"We have plenty to eat and peaches and muscadines and pecans, 'cause there right smart woods and swamp there. We play in the woods and most time in the bayou on boats with planks what would float. We had the good time and had a little pet coon. You know, the coon like sweet things and he steal our syrup and when we chase him with the switch he hide under the bed.
"My old missus was good Catholic and she have us christened and make the first communion. ”

“ We proceeded down the south shore of the bayou, crossing it at Carey's plantation; from thence to Huff Power, passing which, we came upon the Bayou Rouge road, which runs towards Red River. After passing through Bayou Rouge Swamp, and just at sunset, turning from the highway, we struck off into the "Big Cane Brake." We followed an unbeaten track, scarcely wide enough to admit the wagon. The cane, such as are used for fishing-rods, were as thick as they could stand. A person could not be seen through them the distance of a rod. ”

“ I played during the day and most of the night, spending the next day, Sunday, in my cabin. Monday I crossed the bayou to Douglas Marshall's, all Epps' slaves accompanying me, and on Tuesday went to the old Norwood place, which is the third plantation above Marshall's, on the same side of the water.
This estate is now owned by Miss Mary McCoy, a lovely girl, some twenty years of age. She is the beauty and the glory of Bayou Bœuf. She owns about a hundred working hands, besides a great many house servants, yard boys, and young children. ”

“ The numerous streams by which they are watered abound in the valuable fur-bearing beaver, whilst every species of game common to the West is found here in great abundance. The Bayou Salade especially, owing to the salitrose nature of the soil and springs, is the favorite resort of all the larger animals common to the mountains; and in the sheltered prairies of the Bayou, the buffalo, forsaking the barren and inclement regions of the exposed plains, frequent these upland valleys in the winter months ”

“ Never a chance to cut her off, the swamp forever on the right, the bayou on the left; she is getting away, getting away! the crowd is miles behind!
The lake is reached. The road ends. What next? The coach dashes up to the bayou's edge and stops. Why just here? Ah! because just here so near the bayou's mouth a schooner lies against the bank. Is Dr. Lalaurie's hand in this? The coachman parleys a moment with the schooner-master and hands him down a purse of gold. The coach-door is opened, the lady alights, and is presently on the vessel's deck. ”

“ Above Franklin the Teche makes a great bend to the east and approaches Grand Lake at Hutchin's Point, where there was a shell bank, and a good road leading to the high ground along the bayou. The road to New Iberia leaves the Teche at Franklin to avoid this bend, and runs due north across the prairie. Just clear of the village it enters a small wood, through which flows a sluggish stream, the Bayou Yokely, crossed by a bridge. In the wood and near the stream the ground was low and boggy, impassable for wagons except on a causeway. ”

“ Avery, a carpenter of Bayou Rouge, commenced the erection of a house for Master Epps. It has previously been stated that there are no cellars on Bayou Bœuf; on the other hand, such is the low and swampy nature of the ground, the great houses are usually built upon spiles. Another peculiarity is, the rooms are not plastered, but the ceiling and sides are covered with matched cypress boards, painted such color as most pleases the owner's taste. Generally the plank and boards are sawed by slaves with whip-saws, there being no waterpower upon which mills might be built within many miles. ”

“ But a few hundred feet from the turning basin, was Bayou Bienvenu, which runs into Lake Borgne, part of Lake Pontchartrain, and one of the refuges of Lafitte in the brave days when smuggling was more a sport of the plain people than it is now with European travel restricted to the wealthy. So through Bayou Bienvenu a small excavator was sent to cut a passage into the turning basin, to allow the mighty 22-inch dredges to get in and work outwards towards the lake and the lock site. ”

“ I was up the bayou after a load of wood. You know that when the water comes up it makes an island of the hill on which our house stands, and we are obliged to bring all our firewood from the mainland in a canoe. I noticed the skiff when I came back, but I did not know who had brought it there until I saw General Mason up the bank with father, looking at the logs. ”

“ Tibeats to a considerable amount in consideration of his services in building the mills on Indian Creek, and also a weaving-house, corn-mill and other erections on the plantation at Bayou Bœuf, not yet completed. ”

“ The Bayou Catalan, at the head of Lac Borgne, being the contemplated point of debarkation [3] , the distance from the inner anchorage of the frigates and troop-ships to the Bayou full 60 miles, and our principal means of transport open boats, it became impossible that any movement of the troops could take place until this formidable flotilla was either captured or destroyed. ”

“ Before the war, the Teche for fifty miles, from Berwick's Bay to New Iberia, passed through one field of sugar canes, the fertile and well-cultivated estates succeeding each other. The mansions of the opulent planters, as well as the villages of their slaves, were situated on the west bank of the bayou overlooking the broad, verdant prairie, where countless herds roamed. ”

“ One price of the project’s material benefits was the loss of one of the area’s chief natural beauties, a beauty remarked by many travelers in the nineteenth century. “... this most enchanting little stream,” Clopper wrote in 1828. Edward King foresaw in 1873 what was to happen to the lovely bayou.
“The bayou which leads from Houston to Galveston ... is overhung by lofty and graceful magnolias; and in the season of their blossoming, one may sail for miles along the channel with the heavy, passionate fragrance of the queen flower drifting about him,” he wrote nearly a century ago. ”

“ In various localities it spreads out into shallow lakes, and over a wide expanse of country, and is susceptible of being made navigable, just as a ditch could be if it were dug deep and wide enough, and kept supplied with a sufficiency of water.' The obvious effect of this finding is that the qualified navigability existing in Bayou Pierre below the inflow into that stream of the water from Tone's bayou is wholly uninfluenced by water leaving Red river by way* of the upper mouth of Bayou Pierre. ”

“ The negro said about thirty miles. McGrath then inquired if there were many settlers on the bayou. The negro said there were plenty up and down the bayou on both sides. They left the ferry and went on a few miles, and turned to the west from the main road, up the bayou, along a new road that carriages had traveled, and went about ten miles—passed several large plantations. About twelve o’clock he came to the house of a small farmer; his horses were very tired, and he asked if he could get his horses fed and some dinner for himself and boy. ”

“ There are many who say that when left to himself the Negro slips back from civilization into a primitive state of laziness or savagery, and they instance life in Haiti and the supposed failure of Liberia. It is said that he does not keep up the white man’s standard, he is not so strenuous, he is not a good organizer, nor dependable. That is not entirely true, but there is some truth in it. Mound Bayou is situated in a highly malarial region, unfitted for white habitation, but being surrounded with the best cotton-growing land in America it ought to be [322] exceedingly prosperous. ”

“ Frequently their loud bay is heard in the swamps, and then there is speculation as to what point the runaway will be overhauled—the same as a New-York hunter stops to listen to the hounds coursing along the hillsides, and suggests to his companion that the fox will be taken at such a place. I never knew a slave escaping with his life from Bayou Bœuf. One reason is, they are not allowed to learn the art of swimming, and are incapable of crossing the most inconsiderable stream. ”

“ It was filled with immense trees—the sycamore, the gum, the cotton wood and cypress, and extends, I am informed, to the shore of the Calcasieu river. For thirty or forty miles it is without inhabitants, save wild beasts—the bear, the wild-cat, the tiger, and great slimy reptiles, that are crawling through it everywhere. Long before I reached the bayou, in fact, from the time I struck the water until I emerged from the swamp on my return, these reptiles surrounded me. ”

“ This bayou has branches almost innumerable, in which persons can lie concealed from the severest scrutiny. It communicates with three lakes which lie on the south-west side, and these, with the lake of the same name, and which lies contiguous to the sea, where there is an island formed by the two arms of this lake and the sea. The east and west points of this island were fortified, in the year 1811, by a band of pirates, under the command of one Monsieur La Fitte. A large majority of these outlaws are of that class of the population of the state of Louisiana who fled from the island of St. ”