I drove on Sunday morning early from New Iberia to church at St. Martinsville. It was a lovely April morning. The way lay over fertile prairies, past fine cane plantations, with some irrigation, and for a distance along the pretty Teche, shaded by great live-oaks, and here and there a fine magnolia-tree; a country with few houses, and those mostly shanties, but a sunny, smiling land, loved of the birds. We passed on our left the Spanish Lake, a shallow, irregular body of water. My driver was an ex-Confederate soldier, whose tramp with a musket through Virginia had not greatly enlightened him as to what it was all about. As to the Acadians, however, he had a decided opinion, and it was a poor one. They are no good. “You ask them a question, and they shrug their shoulders like a tarrapin—don’t know no more’n a dead alligator; only language they ever have is ‘no’ and ‘what?’.rdquo;
If St. Martinsville, once the scat of fashion, retains anything of its past elegance, its life has departed from it. It has stopped growing anything but old, and yet it has not much of interest that is antique; it is a village of small white frame houses, with three or four big gaunt brick structures, two stories and a half high, with galleries, and here and there a Creole cottage, the stairs running up inside the galleries, over which roses climb in profusion.
I went to breakfast at a French inn, kept by Madame Castillo, a large red-brick house on the banks of the Teche, where the live-oaks cast shadows upon the silvery stream. It had, of course, a double gallery. Below, the waiting-room, dining-room, and general assembly-room were paved with brick, and instead of a door, Turkey-red curtains hung in the entrance, and blowing aside, hospitably invited the stranger within. The breakfast was neatly served, the house was scrupulously clean, and the guest felt the influence of that personal hospitality which is always so pleasing. Madame offered me a seat in her pew in church, and meantime a chair on the upper gallery, which opened from large square sleeping chambers. In that fresh morning I thought I never had seen a more sweet and peaceful place than this gallery. Close to it grew graceful China-trees in full blossom and odor; up and down the Teche were charming views under the oaks; only the roofs of the town could be seen amid the foliage of China-trees; and there was an atmosphere of repose in all the scene.
It was Easter morning. I felt that I should like to linger there a week in absolute forgetfulness of the world. French is the ordinary language of the village, spoken more or less corruptly by all colors.
The Catholic church, a large and ugly structure, stands on the plaza, which is not at all like a Spanish plaza, but a veritable New England “green,” with stores and shops on all sides—New England, except that the shops are open on Sunday. In the church apse is a noted and not bad painting of St. Martin, and at the bottom of one aisle a vast bank of black stucco clouds, with the Virgin standing on them, and the legend, “Je suis l’immaculee conception.”
Country people were pouring into town for the Easter service and festivities—more blacks than whites—on horseback and in rickety carriages, and the horses were hitched on either side of the church. Before service the square was full of lively young colored lads cracking Easter-eggs. Two meet and strike together the eggs in their hands, and the one loses whose egg breaks. A tough shell is a valuable possession. The custom provokes a good deal of larking and merriment. While this is going on, the worshippers are making their way into the church through the throng, ladies in the neat glory of provincial dress, and high-stepping, saucy colored belles, yellow and black, the blackest in the most radiant apparel of violent pink and light blue, and now and then a society favorite in all the hues of the rainbow. The centre pews of the church are reserved for the whites, the seats of the side aisles for the negroes. When mass begins, the church is crowded. The boys, with occasional excursions into the vestibule to dip the finger in the holy-water, or perhaps say a prayer, are still winning and losing eggs on the preen.
On the gallery at the inn it is also Sunday. The air is full of odor. A strong south wind begins to blow. I think the south wind is the wind of memory and of longing. I wonder if the gay spirits of the last generation ever return to the scenes of their revelry? Will they come back to the theatre this Sunday night, and to the Grand Ball afterwards? The admission to both is only twenty-five cents, including gombo file.
From New Iberia southward towards Vermilion Bay stretches a vast prairie; if it is not absolutely fiat, if it resembles the ocean, it is the ocean when its long swells have settled nearly to a calm. This prairie would be monotonous were it not dotted with small round ponds, like hand-mirrors for the flitting birds and sailing clouds, were its expanse not spotted with herds of cattle, scattered or clustering like fishing-boats on a green sea, were it not for a cabin here and there, a field of cane or cotton, a garden plot, and were it not for the forests which break the horizon line, and send out dark capes into the verdant plains. On a gray day, or when storms and fogs roll in from the Gulf, it might be a gloomy region, but under the sunlight and in the spring it is full of life and color; it has an air of refinement and repose that is very welcome. Besides the uplift of the spirit that a wide horizon is apt to give, one is conscious here of the neighborhood of the sea, and of the possibilities of romantic adventure in a coast intersected by bayous, and the presence of novel forms of animal and vegetable life, and of a people with habits foreign and strange. There is also a grateful sense of freedom and expansion.
Soon, over the plain, is seen on the horizon, ten miles from New Iberia, the dark foliage on the island of Petite Anse, or Wery’s Island. This unexpected upheaval from the marsh, bounded by the narrow, circling Petite Anse Bayou, rises into the sky one hundred and eighty feet, and has the effect in this flat expanse of a veritable mountain, comparatively a surprise, like Pike’s Peak seen from the elevation of Denver. Perhaps nowhere else would a hill of one hundred and eighty feet make such an impression on the mind. Crossing the bayou, where alligators sun themselves and eye with affection the colored people angling at the bridge, and passing a long causeway over the marsh, the firm land of the island is reached. This island, which is a sort of geological puzzle, has a very uneven surface, and is some two and a half miles long by one mile broad. It is a little kingdom in itself, capable of producing in its soil and adjacent waters nearly everything one desires of the necessaries of life. A portion of the island is devoted to a cane plantation and sugar-works; a part of it is covered with forests; and on the lowlands and gentle slopes, besides thickets of palmetto, are gigantic live-oaks, moss-draped trees monstrous in girth, and towering into the sky with a vast spread of branches. Scarcely anywhere else will one see a nobler growth of these stately trees. In a depression is the famous saltmine, unique in quality and situation in the world. Here is grown and put up the Tobasco pepper; here, amid fields of clover and flowers, a large apiary flourishes. Stones of some value for ornament are found.
Indeed, I should not be surprised at anything turning up there, for I am told that good kaoline has been discovered; and about the residences of the hospitable proprietors roses bloom in abundance, the China-tree blossoms sweetly, and the mocking-bird sings.
But better than all these things I think I like the view from the broad cottage piazzas, and I like it best when the salt breeze is strong enough to sweep away the coast mosquitoes—a most undesirable variety. I do not know another view of its kind for extent and color comparable to that from this hill over the waters seaward. The expanse of luxuriant grass, brown, golden, reddish, in patches, is intersected by a network of bayous, which gleam like silver in the sun, or trail like dark fabulous serpents under a cloudy sky. The scene is limited only by the power of the eye to meet the sky line. Vast and level, it is constantly changing, almost in motion with life; the long grass and weeds run like waves when the wind blows, great shadows of clouds pass on its surface, alternating dark masses with vivid ones of sunlight; fishing-boats and the