The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-03-05
Copyright by the Author.)
CHAPTER /.
A PLACE FOR AN ARTISTS PICTURES.

u1OIlI1R SOOn d1OO1 Tx OCSLhAAhS VI
March, a small schooner sailed up the
Bay of St. Louis and cast anchor off what
was then locally known as Magnolia
Point. There had been a thin, gray fog
on the air, but the sun had flung this
aside, leaving the water and the sky blue
and dreamily brilliant to the far horizon
of the Gulf.
On the west shore of the bay, not far
from where the little vessel lay, stood a
\ mansion recently built by Gaspard Ro-
chon and now occupied by him and his
niece with a numerous household of ser
wants. One or two other plantation houses,
but less ~pretentious in every way, were
visible here and there, ever as far as to
the mouth of the Jordan River.
The scene was one to please the eye of
poet or artist, and there wa an artist on
board the schooner, a young man Of
leisure whose love of the picturesque and
the strange coupled with that passion for
adventure which was more prevalent then
than now, had led him to explore this
obscure nook of the South where, since
the days of Blenville, had fingered trace
of that wild life which made the gulf
coast for SO long a time a region OF ro-
nance and mystery.
Looking from the water to the land the
shores, which were mostly high white
bluffs, were fringed with a broken and
blllowy line of woods made up of all the
semi-tropical trees, notably pines live-oaks,
cedars and magnolias. A sombre duski-
ness, as of slumber and deep rest, per-
vaded the vistas running back under
moss-hung boughs into the aowery and
fragrant wilderness. Down to the verge
of the white and the steeply sloping bluff
lines the underground, set in scattering
clusters and wisps, came in green-leaved
and fowery luxury, and On the air was a
fresh and grateful fragrance.
1t was a place Of birds. Overhead flew
clamorous waterfowl; along the sandy
beaches and in the ripping 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 low
salt meadow.
The schooner had come round from the
Rigolets through lake Borgne, past the
chandeliers, having set out from a land
ing on the Ponchartrain near New Or
leans. All the way the sailors had been
charming to the artist to whom all this
"AAA 81 " 60 oo nov oC l. COAAAI
luxuriant and stimulating to his magma
ton. He had remained on deck all night,
waking and sleeping by turns, the sound
of the slumberous waves on his ears and
the shifting scenes of shore and sea de-
lighting his half-closed eyes or passing
into his dreams.
In those days a trace of the buccaneer
was scarcely erased from the Southern
o0a1 A. 1oo1- g TesA4z LII Al
in the memory of living men, while the
craft of the sly smuggler was no uncom-
mon apparition cruising about through the
intricate channels and passes of the gulf
coast. There were no railroads connect
ing the region with the great commercial
centres of America, wherefore no place
on earth was more isolated or more a
law unto itself han was the Bay st.
Louis country. q.
Most of the white people were Creoles
of French or Spanish descent, but there
were a few Anglo-Americans of that
restless, adventurous class whose mark
had been left in every quarter of the
globe, and here and there was a planter
from Georgia or the Carolinas who had
come with his family and his slaves to
find the luxury of loneliness in the woods.
Naturally a place so out of the world and
in which life was so free and so easy to
live attracted a number of outcasts of one
kind and another who sought here a hid
ing place from punishment or a refuge
from persecution. Society had no clearly
defined basis, of course, but regulated it.
self IN a degree with gnn, sword and pis-
toll, whenever regulating seemed neces-
sary still there was a 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 Orion, the artist and dreamer,
reached this secluded nook just at the
opening 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 it's
empowering grove and to the scattered
cabins Of the slaves, the sense of a new
existence and a new world took possess
sion of him.
LIZ "o IoLI oCIOAS young HAL WHOSE
naturally fair face was bronzed with ex-
posure and whose yellow hair hung in
curls on his shoulders, as was the fashion
with artists of the time. He was a figure
to remember as he stood among the Creole
sailors, almost a head taller than the tall
est OF them, a man to fix himself in ones
mind, if for nothing more than the ex-
preston Of superb, overlooking vitality in
MS hnely cut face and muscular frame.
Which is the place you spoke of, Vic
tor Z he enquired, turning to.a small dark
fellow. You don't mean the brick house
Yonder, do your"
mo D'eu, no. said the Creole, with a
shrug n grimace, "you cannot see from
here, 1T is back in the woods on the BAYOU
Galere just a little way"
"And the brick house, whose mansion