CHAP. V - New Orleans

Summary

I Landed at New Orleans on the 22d of March. The day had been one of heavy rain, and the appearance of the city was by no means prepossessing. The streets, being generally unpaved, were full of mud, and a dense canopy of mist shed a gloom on every thing.

We had some difficulty in finding accommodation. The principal hotel is that of Madame Herries, but the house was already full. We tried three others with no better success, and the streets of New Orleans are perhaps the last in the world in which a gentleman would choose to take up his night's lodging. At length the keeper of a boarding-house took compassion on our forlorn condition. There was an uninhabited house, she said, in an adjoining street, in which she thought she could prevail on the proprietor to furnish us with apartments, and at meals we might join the party in her establishment.

And so it was arranged. The rooms were bad, and wretchedly furnished, but they were quiet, and we had an old and ugly female slave to wait on us. This woman was in character something like the withered hags who are so finely introduced in the Bride of Lammermoor. During my stay, I tried every means to extract a smile from her, but without success. I gave her money, but that would not do; and wine, of which on one occasion she drank two tumblers, with no better effect. By way of recommending the lodgings, she told me three gentlemen had died in them during the last autumn of yellow fever.