North Star,--sometimes feeling the way with poles in the white
season of fogs,--sometimes, again, steering by that Star of
Evening which in our sky glows like another moon, and drops over
the silent lakes as she passes a quivering trail of silver fire.

Shadows lengthen; and at last the woods dwindle away behind you
into thin bluish lines;--land and water alike take more luminous
color;--bayous open into broad passes;--lakes link themselves
with sea-bays;--and the ocean-wind bursts upon you,--keen, cool,
and full of light. For the first time the vessel begins to
swing,--rocking to the great living pulse of the tides. And
gazing from the deck around you, with no forest walls to break
the view, it will seem to you that the low land must have once
been rent asunder by the sea, and strewn about the Gulf in
fantastic tatters....

Sometimes above a waste of wind-blown prairie-cane you see an
oasis emerging,--a ridge or hillock heavily umbraged with the
rounded foliage of evergreen oaks:--a cheniere. And from the
shining flood also kindred green knolls arise,--pretty islets,
each with its beach-girdle of dazzling sand and shells,
yellow-white,--and all radiant with semi-tropical foliage, myrtle
and palmetto, orange and magnolia. Under their emerald shadows
curious little villages of palmetto huts are drowsing, where
dwell a swarthy population of Orientals,--Malay fishermen, who
speak the Spanish-Creole of the Philippines as well as their own
Tagal, and perpetuate in Louisiana the Catholic traditions of the
Indies. There are girls in those unfamiliar villages worthy to
inspire any statuary,--beautiful with the beauty of ruddy
bronze,--gracile as the palmettoes that sway above them....