April 3. —We are in camp this morning, about three miles south of Thibodeaux, at Terre Bonne, which we reached yesterday afternoon. The railroad from New Orleans to Brashear City is a few rods north of us, — a road which our forces hold, and along which, this forenoon some time, when the engines can get to it, the second brigade expects to take its first car-ride in Louisiana.
We shall carry home a much more favorable impression as to the resources and civilization of this State than we should have had if we had not passed through this country of the La Fourche. From Donaldsonville to Terre Bonne, a distance of nearly forty miles, the aspect of the country varies but little. It is thickly peopled; the plantations succeeding one another as do the farms in any populous agricultural region of the North.
Seldom does an army march under circumstances so delightful. The miles were not weary ones; for the same really remarkable conditions made our progress comparatively easy from first to last, — a bright sky and sun, but a cool northern breeze, and a road, for the most part, in perfect condition to receive the soldier’s foot-fall. On one side rose the slope of the Levee; ten or twelve feet high from the road, two or three from the water on the other side. When the column halted, we could run up the slope, then stoop to the cool bayou to drink, or to wash face, hands, and feet. On our right, as we marched, we passed, now houses of moderate size, bare of elegance — sometimes even squalid in appearance; now, again, mansions of comfortable look; and, not unfrequently, beautiful seats, set up high to preserve them from danger in case-of a crevasse, with colonnades ornamented tastefully with orange-groves and the glorious live-oak, with trees full of roses instead of bushes.
Plantation after plantation! Along the road were white palings, or often the pleasanter enclosure of a rose-tree hedge, with white roses all out, and the green of a richer depth than we know it. Sometimes the planter and his family looked out at us from behind a “protection ” posted before them on the gate, seated upon the broad portico under the wide roof, beneath wide-spreading awnings, with open doors and windows behind. Then, between house and hedge, these marvellous gardens! Tall trees overhung them; with vines, sometimes nearly as thick as the trunks, twining, supple as serpents, from root to topmost bough, — twining, hanging in loops, knotted into coils. Then, underneath, flowers white and delicate, adorned with dewy jewels, scented with odors incomparable; flowers uncouth and spiny; the cactus, not here exotic, but “to the manor born,” its gnarled and prickly stem thickly set with purple buds. The air would be pungent with sweetness as the column marched past.
Such tropic luxury of air and vegetation! These scents and zephyrs; the bird-songs we heard; the summer-blue of the heavens; the broad palm-leaves at the planter’s portico; these blossoms of crimson and saffron and white; this slow-moving air, so burdened, and laboring under its freights of perfume, — all these are such as Paul and Virginia knew; all these, and I suppose, too, the foil to all these, — the miasma of the swamp close at hand, and the poisonous serpent lurking there.
When the garden was passed, generally we came to a huge gate, upon and about which would be clustered the negro force of the whole estate, old and young. From this a road ran, down which, at the distance of a quarter of a mile perhaps, we could see the white chimneys of the sugar-mill; the village of negro cabins; then acres on acres of cane-field, stretching clear to the heavy forest on the verge of the horizon.
At noon of yesterday, we came to Thibodeaux. As we entered the village, the drums struck up. The footsore men forgot to hobble; the melting men forgot their heat. We were all straight and soldierly; for the march was nearly finished. The streets of the village were full of people, upon whom it became us to make an impression; and the sound of the drum and fife is a spur to the soul. We were dusty and sweaty; but I think we made a good appearance. The colonel was on his horse again; the day before, and to-day, he had walked more than half the route, giving his horse to tired privates: so the chaplain, who has carried a gun and knapsack, besides going on foot. We unfurled the two flags, and set them upright. The road, as we approached Thibodeaux, had been growing even more lovely; and now, in the village, the climax of beauty was reached.
To go from Baton Eouge to Thibodeaux is like changing from the outer petals to the heart of a fullblown rose. Baton Rouge, once fresh and pretty, is now curled up and withered by the heats of war; but the blossom grows fresher, and here in the centre is the reservoir of honey, — the place where the bee sucks. Each little cottage had its garden; every gable was embowered; every window and pilaster buried in vines; every garden gilt-edged with ripe oranges along the borders. Puffs of wind, like scented exquisites, sprang out over the blossoms, — the gayest sprites that ever were, — and, seizing for partners our two colors, — rather faded and dishevelled belles,—danced them up and down in a brisk measure. The streets of the village were full of its hybrid population. Very few jet-black ones there were, and not many thoroughly white, but throngs on throngs of mixed-blood, — from deep mulattoes, up through quadroon and octoroon, to fair boys and girls with complexion just made rich and vivid with a dash of the tiger-lily. Not a pleasant or creditable story is it, — this tale of corruptness which we can read in the faces of the population whenever we pass through a village, or scan a crowd of plantation-hands gathered on a fence or under a hedge to look at us as we pass.
