The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-07-19
The COOL SOUTH AND THE sULrRY NORTH


and constitutional Union.
THE COOL SOUTH AND THE sULTRY NORTH
The tenacity with which conventional and
traditional ideas hold their ground, is illus
trated in notions still prevailing with respect
to climatic and human peculiarities supposed
to be in all cases the concomitant srespectivAy
of northern and of southern countries or
to speak more scientifically, of countries
which are more, and of countries which are
less, remote from the equator In wide
spread popular conception, all northern races
are blonde, and everywhere in the north sum-
mer has comfortable GOODNESS which is sim
ply genial mitigation of winter while all
southern races must have dark skins, and
everywhere in the south summer is a period
of sultry airs and consuming heats, which no
human organization but one resembling a
salamander's can endure. This theory is
contradicted by science and history in both
its dermal and thermal assumptions. The
indelible darkness of the Mongolians of Asiatic
Russia, of Northern China, of Finland and
Lapland, and of the Indians of Greenland and
of British America, puts it beyond question
that the native color of the human skin is in
dependent of latitude, and that its varieties
are governed by clinical, and not by climatic
causes. As to the question of heat, the fact
of latitude is never in itself the determining
cause of differences experienced in that re-
spect. Localities in the same latitude are
found to be relatively cold or hot according
to the vertical thickness of their atmospheres.
Anu hOS~lsts-~--l.isI. have the sa-AA latitn5a
and the same elevation above the water level,
are found to differ in temperature because of
being dissimilarly affected by ocean or at
mospheric currents, or because of diverse con.
ditions of humidity and dryness.
1t is necessary to take a standpoint amongst
such reflections as these, in order that we
may appreciate intelligibly, and without per-
plexlty, accounts that come from Northern
and Western cities of the oppressive and in
numerous instances overpowering and fatal
heat, to which those cities are subject. We
have hot weather, unquestionably, in this
city. We fret about it, complain of it. and
some of us swear at it-as if there were not
cent elements in the political atmosphere to
give us occasion for displaying all our talents
in the way of objurgation, without expending
any of this sort of eloquence against the
qualities Of the atmosphere which God has
made for us. But we are human beings.
though we may be Southern and white and
1t is human nature to grumble at natural and
inevitable evils, however slight as we'll as at
unnatural and wanton wrongs and oppres-
sions. Let us lay grumbling aside for mo-
ment and refresh ourselves in comparison
of our thermal condition with that of New
York, where twenty-five cases of death from
sunstroke are reported in one day with that
of Chicago, where the humid breezes of the
Lake are conquered by the dry, hot airs roll
ing from across vast and waterless prairies,
and men faint in the streets as though
struck by an African simoom or with
that of ST. Louis, where the popula-
ton pants and swelters, all day and
through most of the night, over a limestone
crust whose calid ferocity is as merciless as
were, of old, the orthodox flames of an auto
dd-fe. OF course, we should not take iov ]
from the suferings of others; but while COM |
their plight, we may properly en- !
Joy whatever comfort may be derivable from |
the reflection that our own plight is not so |
bad. If this, indeed, were not an allowable |
species Of consolation and happiness, how |
could men bear up with such fortitude under |
the misfortunes of their friends, as they are |
daily seen to do? How otherwise, for ex- |
ample, could our whole-souled friends at the |
North behold, without maddening agony, the |
outrages put upon the South; outrages which,
fortunately, they can depict and denounce /
without losing appetite, digestion, or prudent
The truth is that, chafe as we may at some
If the qualities of our climate, our situation
n that respect is, in comparative sense,
highly felicitous. And it is idle to talk in a
secular connection about any other than COM
'arative felicity. Neither absolute happiness
Tor absolute misery appertains to any con-
el72hle condition in this world. The great
liver that la7Teas our city opens a channel for
old airs that sweep down from the eastward
purs of the Rocky Mountains and from
hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. 1t is
$50 constant and inexhaustibl,, source of
unldlty for our atmosphere. In a. dition
e nave sea breezes from the east, the SOM.
nd the southwest. There il no climate
lore remarkable for refreshing variations in
ie season OF midsummer. To quote the
stlmony Of Northern writer, at that sea- :