may even recall with difficulty the blue outline of the Alleghany
mountains, but never, while I remember any thing, can I forget
the first and last hour of light on the Atlantic.

The ocean, however, and all its indescribable charm, no longer
surrounded us; we began to feel that our walk on the quarter-deck
was very like the exercise of an ass in a mill; that our books
had lost half their pages, and that the other half were known by
rote; that our beef was very salt, and our biscuits very hard; in
short, that having studied the good ship, Edward, from stem to
stern till we knew the name of every sail, and the use of every
pulley, we had had enough of her, and as we laid down, head to
head, in our tiny beds for the last time, I exclaimed with no
small pleasure,

"Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new."




CHAPTER 2

New Orleans--Society--
Creoles and Quadroons Voyage up the Mississippi



On first touching the soil of a new land, of a new continent, of
a new world, it is impossible not to feel considerable excitement
and deep interest in almost every object that meets us. New