Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-03-03

set in scattering clusters and wisps, came in
green-leaved and Towering luxury, and on
the air was fresh and grateful fragrance,
1t was a place of birds. Overhead flew
clamorous water fowl; along the sandy
beaches and in the rippling shadows the
plovers and sandpipes were feeding and the
| tall herons here and there stood stately and
motionless in the marsh grass that fringed
the outreaching points of the low salt
meadow.
The schooner had come round from the
Rigolets through Lake Borgne, past the
chandeliers, having set out from landing
on the Ponchartrain near New Orleans. AL
the way the sailors had been charming to
the artist to whom all this wild region was
as new as it was sunny, luxuriant and stim-
ulating to his imagination. He had re-
| mained on deck all night, waking and
sleeping by turns, the sound of the slumber-
GUS waves in his ears and the shifting scenes
of shore and sea delighting his halfclosed
| eyes or passing into his dreams.
In those days trace of the buccaneer was
scarcely erased from the southern seas, the
deeds of Lafayette were still fresh in the
memory of living men, while the craft of
the sly smuggler was no uncommon appari-
ton cruising about through the intricate
channels and passes of the Gulf coast.
There were no railroads connecting the re-
gion with the great commercial centers of
America, wherefore no place on earth was
more isolated or more law unto itself than
was the Bay st. Louis country.
Most of the white people were Creoles Of
French or Spanish descent, but there were
a few Anglo-Americans of that restless. ad-
yenturous class whose mark had been left
in every quarter of the globe, and here and
there was planter from Georgia or the
Carolinas who had come with his
family and his slaves to find the lux
ury of loneliness in the woods. Naturally
a place so out of the world and in which
life was so free and so easy to 1--we attracted
a number of outcasts of one kind and an
other who sought here hiding place from
punishment or refuge from persecution.
Society had no clearly defined basis, of
gun, sword and pistol whenever regulating
seemed necessary; still there was good
measure of peace, and certainly necessities
and even the physical comforts of life were
within easy reach on every hand. The
forests abounded in game, the waters
swarmed with fish and oysters, tropical
fruits grew to perfection and the soil, though
light and poor, produced bountifully under
the stimulus of the warm, generous climate.
Wendell Orton, the artist and dreamer,
reached this secluded nook just at the open
ing of the fairest season of the year, and as
he looked forth from the deck of his little
schooner over the shining water to the rich,
dark masses of woods, to the Towering
thickets, to the mansion in its empowering
grove and to the scattering cabins of the
slaves, the sense of a new existence and q
new world took possession of him.
He was q tall, strong young man whose
naturally fair face was bronzed with expos
ure, and whose yellow hair hung in curls on
his shoulders, as was the fashion with artists
of the time. He was figure to remember
as be stood among the Creole sailors, almost
a head taller than the tallest of them, man
to fix himself in ones mind, if for nothing
more than the expression of superb, over
flowing vitality in his finely-cut face and
muscular frame.
(Which is the place you spoke OF, Vic
tor?" he inquired, turning to a small, dark
fellow. "You don't mean the brick house
yonder, do. you?"
i ''Mo' Dieu, no." said the Creole, with a
shrug and grimace; ''you cannot see from
here. 1t is back in the woods on the Bayou
Galere. just little way"
"And the brick house, whose mansion is
it?" continued Orton, pointing.
'That? Oh, that's the Rochon place,
M'sieu, where the beautiful Nam m'zelle
lives. When you see her." he winked and