Page 7

NEW ORLEANS TO NEW YORK. vii

the British army was defeated by General Jackson, during the
late war, the banks of the river assumed the appearance of the
neighbourhood of a populous city. We now passed numerous
good houses, each with a large verandah and garden; and a
nunnery, in which several of the ladies in their habitats were
distinctly visible. A few minutes brought us in sight of the
city of New Orleans, where the river was crowded with com-
mercial vessels from all nations, the majority of which, how-
ever were from England. We immediately landed, and found
ourselves in the midst of a well built street, nearly choked up
with bales of cotton. Here were handsome shops, filled with
well dressed people, in the European costumes, the ladies in
the fashipns of London and Paris. The English Language
being generally spoken, produced that unexpected delight,
which could only be felt by Britons, who, like ourselves, had
been long absent from our native land, and residents of such
a country as Mexico. We has an introduction to a respectable
boarding-house, kept by an English lady, whose politeness and
attention shortly made us feel ourselves at home. We re-
mained a week in this commercial city, and saw whatever was
deemed worth seeing ; but, as the city has been so well de-
scribed by the Rev. Timothy Flint, in his "Recollections of
the Last Ten Years spent in the Valley of the Mississippi,'
lately published, I shall gratify the English reader by giving
that gentleman's account in his own words.

"One hundred miles from the mout of the Mississippi,
and something more than a thousand from the mouth of the
Ohio, just below a sharp point of the river, is situated on its
east bank, the city of New Orleans, the great commercial
capital of the Mississippi valley. The position for a com-
mercial city is unrivalled, I believe, by any one in the world.
At a proper distance from the Gulf of Mexico–on the banks
of a stream which may be said almost to water a world–but
a little distance from Lake Ponchartrain, and connected with
it by a navigable canal–the immense alluvion contiguous to
it–penetrated in all directions either by bayous formed by
nature, or canals which cost little more trouble in the making
than ditches–steam-boats visiting it from fifty different
shores–possessing the immediate agriculture of its own
state, the richest in America, and as rich as any in the world,
with continually increasing agriculture of the upper
country, its position far surpasses that of New York itself.