"But Nature whistled with all her winds,
Did as she pleased, and went her way."
—Emerson
The Legend of L'Ile Derniere
Out of the Sea's Strength
The Shadow of the Tide
Travelling south from New Orleans to the Islands, you pass through astrange land into a strange sea, by various winding waterways. You canjourney to the Gulf by lugger if you please; but the trip may be mademuch more rapidly and agreeably on some one of those light, narrowsteamers, built especially for bayou-travel, which usually receivepassengers at a point not far from the foot of old Saint-Louis Street,hard by the sugar-landing, where there is ever a pushing and flockingof steam craft—all striving for place to rest their white breastsagainst the levee, side by side,—like great weary swans. But theminiature steamboat on which you engage passage to the Gulf neverlingers long in the Mississippi: she crosses the river, slips intosome canal-mouth, labors along the artificial channel awhile, and thenleaves it with a scream of joy, to puff her free way down many a leagueof heavily shadowed bayou. Perhaps thereafter she may bear you throughthe immense silence of drenched rice-fields, where the yellow-greenlevel is broken at long intervals by the black silhouette of someirrigating machine;—but, whichever of the five different routes bepursued, you will find yourself more than once floating through sombremazes of swamp-forest,—past assemblages of cypresses all hoary withthe parasitic tillandsia, and grotesque as gatherings of fetich-gods.Ever from river or from lakelet the steamer glides again into canal orbayou,—from bayou or canal once more into lake or bay; and sometimesthe swamp-forest visibly thins away from these shores into wastes ofreedy morass where, even of breathless nights, the quaggy soil tremblesto a sound like thunder of breakers on a coast: the storm-roar ofbillions of reptile voices chanting in cadence,—rhythmically surgingin stupendous crescendo and diminuendo,—a monstrous and appallingchorus of frogs! ....
Panting, screaming, scraping her bottom over the sand-bars,—all daythe little steamer strives to reach the grand blaze of blue open waterbelow the marsh-lands; and perhaps she may be fortunate enough to enterthe Gulf about the time of sunset. For the sake of passengers, shetravels by day only; but there are other vessels which make the journeyalso by night—threading the bayou-labyrinths winter and summer:sometimes steering by the North Star,—sometimes feeling the way withpoles in the white season of fogs,—sometimes, again, steering by thatStar of Evening which in our sky glows like another moon, and dropsover the silent lakes as she passes a quivering trail of silver fire.
Shadows lengthen; and at last the woods dwindle away behind you intothin bluish lines;—land and water alike take more luminouscolor;—