The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-03-02
THE CHARMS OF
The AMERICAN nile
SWAMP JEWELLERS OF TODAY
AND OF LONG AGO TWO ENDS
OF LENGTHY ROMANCE.

There is no less mystery about
tbe American Nile and its vast delta,
stretching from the shores of Mis-
siesinpi sound, on the east, nearly 300
rniles westward of the Sabine river
a. Texas, and northward from the
Crlf Of Mexico to the bluffs of Baton
Rouge. La, which marks the ancient
limits of that gulf, than there is
a the ancient Nile that flowed
hast Karnak and Alexandria from the
land of Ophir, save that in the New
World the mystery is of nature, and
in the Old it is of man and his works.
Ancient man could never have
found land at the mouth of the Mis-
sissinDi firm enough to sustain large
buildings. even had he had the in
genuitv and the civilization to build
them continues a writer in the
Christian Science Monitor. But he
no less indelibly marked the great
Louisiana marsh with mementos of
his presence in the form of shell
mounds, often twenty to thirty feet
high and 200 or 800 feet in circum-
ference, the remnants of his commu-
nitv eating places. In these mounds,
which form the basis for hundreds Of
oak grown chenieres, now built up
bv tide and wind delivered sand to
resnectable islands. The aborigine,
who ever he may have been, has left
his rude stone and bone arrowheads;
here and there whistle, wrought
from marrowless wing of bird; now
al
stone pipe, evidently the result OF
barter with some northern tribe. 1t
seems strange that neither jade nor
opal copper nor gold, all common
possessions of the trading Indians to
the further south, ever appear IN
these mounds. All the small pre-
historic commerce of these delta
dwellers seems to have been to the
north.
Modern Swamp Dwellers.
And over his shell mounds today
other men, scarcely less reticent, llv-
ing almost as hardly as lived the
Indians, have built their little houses
on poles, like the Swiss lake villages,
so that the storms which sweep the
delta of the Mississippi expend their
force beneath the flood, rather than
against it. Drowned by sun and
their Latin blood until, save for their
language it would be almost lmpossl-
BILE to know they are not Indian,
these descendants of the Arcadlans
of Evangeline's day live from gen
Grafton to generation in the same
two or three room house in the
with no opportunity for agrl,,
culture or even the small backyard
garden. necessarily they battle with
sea and storm for bare livelihood
"Cadians," these swamp dwellers
are called from prosaic Donaldson
vile to romatic Grande Terre. The
girls are very pretty, with their olive
skins and their flashing brown eyes:
Their sole amusement consist OF
the dance on Saturday night, on
some improvised platform to which
thev and their wives and daughters
come in sailing crafts that look like
the dahabeahs of the real Nile-ln
skiffs propelled by sturdy arms
through miles of marsh.
Isolated among these mixed Span
ish. French, Portuguese and Italian
bloods are the Chinese fishermen, who
have come together in colonies,
building their villages upon piles.
The other swamp jewellers, forming
the aristocracy-socially, at least
with these Orientals and the Chinese
seem to be we'll pleased that no social
demands are made on them. They