CHITA : A Memory of Last Island

by Lafcadio Hearn



"But Nature whistled with all her winds,
Did as she pleased, and went her way."
---Emerson


To my friend
Dr. Rodolfo Matas of New Orleans




The Legend of L'Ile Derniere

I.

Travelling south from New Orleans to the Islands, you pass
through a strange land into a strange sea, by various winding
waterways. You can journey to the Gulf by lugger if you please;
but the trip may be made much more rapidly and agreeably on some
one of those light, narrow steamers, built especially for
bayou-travel, which usually receive passengers at a point not far
from the foot of old Saint-Louis Street, hard by the
sugar-landing, where there is ever a pushing and flocking of
steam craft--all striving for place to rest their white breasts