Peculiarities of American Cities

Universal quiet on the streets, and an inexhaustible supply of brown bread and beans at the breakfast table, was an unmistakable evidence that we had reached a New England Sunday. After breakfast, the weather being fine, I was invited to accompany some young gentlemen in a sail down the harbor. Being uncertain as to the propriety of such a proceeding on the seventh day, I was promptly assured that the Blue Laws of Connecticut would not be outraged in case I had taken a generous ration of brown bread and beans before starting.

A ride of half an hour, with but little wind in our sails, carried us down through the oyster beds, to a point nearly opposite the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor. A novel sight, in my judgment, is a multitude of oyster plantations staked out in such a manner as to show the proprietor of each particular section his exact limit or boundary.

To those of my readers who are familiar with hop-growing regions, I would say that an oyster farm is not unlike a hop field which seems to have been suddenly inundated by water, leaving only the tops of the poles above the surface. Oyster raising is one of the leading features of New Haven enterprise, and the Fair Haven oysters, in particular, are regarded among the best that are cultivated on the Atlantic coast. On our return trip up the harbor the tide was going out, and as the water was extremely shallow in many places, and also very clear, we could see oysters and their less palatable neighbors, clams, in great abundance. I was strongly tempted to make substantial preparation for an oyster dinner, but on being informed that such a course would be equivalent to staking out claims in a strange water-melon patch, I concluded to desist, and contented myself with seeing more oysters in half an hour than I had seen in all my life before.

EAST ROCK

One of the famous places of resort in the neighborhood of New Haven is East Rock, an abrupt pile of red-brown trap rock, lifting itself up from the plain to a height of four hundred feet. The summit of this monumental pile spreads out in a wide plateau of twenty-five or thirty acres, sloping gradually back towards the meadow lands which border the winding Quinnipiac River. It is owned and occupied by a somewhat eccentric individual, rejoicing in the name of Milton Stuart, who related to me the story of his life in this strange locality since taking up his abode here, some twenty years ago. On being told that I would commit to paper some account of my wanderings about New Haven, he seemed to take an especial pleasure in showing me his grounds and telling me everything of interest concerning them.

With ready courtesy he pointed out a heap of stones on the western slope of the bluff, which he said was all that remained of a hut formerly occupied by one John Turner, who made a hermit of himself on this rock, years ago, all because the lady of his love refused to become Mrs. Turner. He met her while teaching in the South – so the story ran – and all his energies seemed to be paralyzed by her refusal to listen to his suit. He came to East Rock and built this wretched hovel of stone, where he lived in solitude, and where one morning in that long ago, he was found dead on the floor of his hovel. How many romances like this lie about us unseen, under the every-day occurrences of life!

WEST ROCK

is a continuation of the precipitous bluff of which East Rock is one extremity, and is about a mile further up the valley. It is not so high nor so imposing as East Rock, and the view from its wooded top fades into tameness beside the remote ocean distance and the flash of city spires to be seen from East Rock. But it makes up in historical interest what it may lack in other attractions; for here, about a quarter of a mile from its southernmost point, is located the "Judge's Cave," famous as the hiding-place of the regicides who tried and sentenced King Charles the First, in the seventeenth century.

On the restoration of Charles II to the throne of his father, three of the high court which had condemned the first Charles wisely left England for the shores of the New World. Their names were Goffe, Whalley and Dixwell. Whalley was a lieutenant-general, Dixwell was a colonel, and Goffe a major-general. These noted army officers arrived at Boston, from England, July twenty-seventh, 1660, and first made their home in Cambridge. Finding that place unsafe, they afterwards went to New Haven.

The next year news came from England that thirty-nine of the regicide judges were condemned, and ten already executed, as traitors. An order from the king was sent to the Colonial governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut, for the arrest of the judges. They were thus compelled to fly for their lives, and sought refuge in the cave on West Rock, which afterwards bore their name. Here they lived concealed for some time, being supplied with food by Richard Sperry, who lived about a mile west of the cave. The food was tied up in a cloth and laid on a stump near by, from which the judges could take it unobserved.

One night they beheld the blazing eyes of a catamount or panther, peering in upon them at their cave, and were so frightened that they fled in haste to the house of Mr. Sperry, and could not again be induced to return. Several large boulders, from twenty to thirty feet in height, thrown together, doubtless, by some volcanic convulsions, unite to form the cave.

Dixwell afterwards lived in New Haven, under an assumed name, and the graves of all three may now be seen, at one side of Centre Church, on the City Green.

The following inscription is on a marble slab over the ashes of Dixwell, erected by his descendants in 1849: —

"Here rests the remains of John Dixwell, Esq., of the Priory of Folkestone, in the county of Kent, England. Of a family long prominent in Kent and Warwickshire, and himself possessing large estates and much influence in his county, he espoused the popular cause in the revolution of 1640. Between 1640 and 1660 he was Colonel in the Army, an active member of four parliaments, and thrice in the Council of State; and one of the High Court which tried and condemned King Charles the First. At the restoration of the monarchy he was compelled to leave his country, and after a brief residence in Germany, came to New Haven, and here lived in seclusion, but enjoying the esteem and friendship of its most worthy citizens, till his death in 1688-9."

The little brown headstone which first marked his resting place bore only his initials and the date of his death: —

"J. D. Esq.

Deceased March Ye 18th in Ye 82D Year of his age 1688/9."

That was all – his name being suppressed, at his request.

The headstones of Goffe and Whalley are marked in the same obscure way.

Yale College adds largely to the importance of New Haven, and the elegant new College buildings now in process of erection, built of brown freestone, cannot well be surpassed in style of architecture. "Old Yale" was originally a small school, established in Saybrook by Rev. Thomas Peters, who lived at that place, and who bequeathed his library to the school at his death. It soon acquired the title of the "Illustrious School," and about the year 1700 was given a charter of incorporation from the General Assembly, making it a college.

It was named Yale, after its greatest benefactor, who was at that time governor of one of the West India islands. The historian, Dr. Samuel Peters, who wrote nearly a hundred years ago, said that Greek, Latin, Geography, History and Logic were well taught in this seminary, but it suffered for want of tutors in the Hebrew, French and Spanish languages. He remarks, incidentally, that "oratory, music and politeness are equally neglected here and in the Colony." The students, numbering at that time one hundred and eighty, were allowed two hours' play with the foot ball every day, and were seated at four tables in the large dining room. This ancient historian says the college was built of wood, was one hundred and sixty feet long and three stories high, besides garrets. In 1754 another building, of brick, one hundred feet long, with double rooms and a double front, was added. About 1760 a chapel and library were erected, which was described as being "very elegant." The "elegant" structure of a hundred years ago will soon be discarded for the new one of brown freestone.

In the year 1717 the seminary was removed from Saybrook to New Haven, but it had a hard time in getting there. A vote was passed to remove the college from Saybrook, because, as the historian says, Saybrook was suspected of being too much in sympathy with the Church of England and not sufficiently alienated from the mother country. But there was a division in the vote, the Hartford ballot being in favor of removing the college to Weathersfield, while the New Haven party declared in behalf of their own city. A small battle grew out of this split between the Weathersfield and New Haven factions. Hartford, in order to carry its vote into execution, prepared teams, boats and a mob, and privately set off for Saybrook, seizing upon the college apparatus, library and students, which they carried to Weathersfield.

This redoubled the jealousy of the "saints" at New Haven, who thereupon determined to fulfill their vote, and accordingly, having collected a mob, they set out for Weathersfield, where they seized by surprise the students and library. On the road to New Haven they were overtaken by the Hartford faction, who, after an inglorious battle, were obliged to retire with only part of the library and part of the students. From this affair sprang the two colleges, Yale and Harvard.

The Massachusetts Bay people acted the part of peacemakers, and settled the difficulty between these two hostile factions, which resulted finally in placing the college at New Haven. So it seems our Puritan ancestors had their little disputations then, much as our Alabama and Arkansas brothers do now.

What a flaming head-line that college battle doubtless furnished the bulletin boards and colonial press of 1717! Imagine a column beginning with this: —

Sharp Fight on the Weathersfield Road!Large Captures of Students!New Haven Victorious!

But out of revenge for the victory, the sons of Hartford were not sent to Yale College to be educated. No, rather than go to Yale they went much further away, at greater expense, and where fewer educational advantages could be obtained. What were such disadvantages, however, compared to the satisfaction of standing by their party and ignoring the New Haven vote?

But old Yale grew and flourished, despite the stormy days of its childhood, and has now a world-wide reputation. Many distinguished men of letters call her "Alma Mater," and in all their wanderings carry her memory green in their hearts.

CHAPTER XX.

NEW ORLEANS

Locality of New Orleans. – The Mississippi. – The Old and the New. – Ceded to Spain. – Creole Part in the American Revolution. – Retransferred to France. – Purchased by the United States. – Creole Discontent. – Battle of New Orleans. – Increase of Population. – The Levee. – Shipping. – Public Buildings, Churches, Hospitals, Hotels and Places of Amusement. – Streets. – Suburbs. – Public Squares and Parks. – Places of Historic Interest. – Cemeteries. – French Market. – Mardi-gras. – Climate and Productions. – New Orleans during the Rebellion. – Chief Cotton Mart of the World. – Exports. – Imports. – Future Prosperity of the City.

As the traveler proceeds down the Mississippi, from its source to its mouth, a unique phenomenon strikes his attention. The river seems to grow higher as he descends. The bluffs, which on one side or the other rise prominently along its banks in its upper waters, grow less bold, and finally disappear as he progresses southward. And if it should be the season of high water, he will find himself, as he nears New Orleans, gliding down a river which is higher than its bordering land, and which is restrained in its penchant for destruction, by massive dykes, or levees, as they are termed in this section.

New Orleans, the commercial metropolis of Louisiana, known as the "Crescent City," is situated on the eastern, or, more correctly speaking, the northern bank of the Mississippi River, which here, after running northward several miles, takes a turn to the eastward. Originally built in the form of a crescent, around this bend in the river, it has at the present time extended itself so far up stream that its shore line is now more in the shape of a letter S. It is one hundred and twelve miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, 1,200 miles south of St. Louis, and 1,438 miles southwest of Washington. The city limits embrace an area of nearly 150 square miles, but the city proper is a little more than twelve miles long and three miles wide. It is built on alluvial soil, the ground falling off toward Lake Pontchartrain, which is five miles distant to the northward, so that portions of the city are four feet lower than the high water level of the river. The city is protected from inundation by a levee, twenty-six miles in length, fifteen feet wide and fourteen feet high. The streets are drained into canals, from which the water is raised by means of steam pumps, with a daily capacity of 42,000,000 gallons, which elevates it sufficiently to carry it off to Lake Pontchartrain.

The geological history of this section of the country is extremely interesting. The whole region south of New Orleans is made land, having been brought down from the Rocky Mountains and the western plains, by that tireless builder, the Mississippi, which has heaped it up, grain by grain, probably changing the entire course of its lower waters in doing so, filling up old channels and wearing itself new ones, until it finally extends its delta, like an outstretched hand, far out into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The river has a history and a romance, all its own, beginning with the time when French and Spanish, alike, were searching for the "Hidden River" – that mysterious stream which, according to Indian tradition, "flowed to the land from which the sweet winds of the southwest brought them health and happiness, and where there was neither snow nor ice," and which was known by so many different names – and ending with the construction of the gigantic jetties, which have given depth and permanence to the channels of its delta.

The visitor finds the city very unlike northern towns with which he has been familiar. To the Creole quarter especially there is a foreign look, which is intensified by the frequent sound of foreign speech. It is as if one had stepped into some old-world town, and left America, with its newness and its harshness of speech, far behind. But it is not so far away, either. It is only around the corner, or, at best, a few squares off. New Orleans of the nineteenth century jostles New Orleans of the eighteenth on every hand. It has seized upon the old streets, with their quaint French and Spanish names, and carried them to an extent never dreamed of by those who originally planned them. It has reared modern structures beside those hoary with age, and set down the post common school building and the heretical Protestant church beside the venerable convent and the solemn cathedral.

The main streets describe a curve, running parallel to the river, and present an unbroken line from the upper to the lower limits of the city, a distance of about twelve miles. The cross streets run for the most part at right angles from the Mississippi River, with greater regularity than might be expected from the curved outline of the river banks. Many of the streets are well paved, and some of them are shelled; but many are unpaved, and, from the nature of the soil, exceedingly muddy in wet weather, and intolerably dusty in dry. The city is surrounded by cypress swamps, and its locality and environments render it very unhealthy, especially during the summer season. Yet, notwithstanding its insalubrity, it is constantly increasing in population and business importance. Certain sanitary precautions, adopted in later years, have somewhat improved its condition.

New Orleans has a history extending further back than that of most southern towns. While others were making their first feeble struggles for existence with their treacherous foes, the red-skins, New Orleans was stirred by discontent and insurrection. In 1690, d'Iberville, in the name of France, founded the province of Louisiana, and Old Biloxi, at the mouth of the Lost River, as the Mississippi was still termed, was made the capital. The choice of site proved a disastrous one, and the seat of government was moved to New Biloxi, further up the river. Meantime, Bienville, his younger brother, laid out a little parallelogram of streets and ditches on a crescent-shaped shore of the river, in the midst of cypress swamps and willow jungles. A colony of fifty persons, many of them galley slaves, formed this new settlement. Houses were built, a fort added, and the little town received its present name, in honor of the Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans. In the same year John Law sent eight hundred men from La Rochelle. They had no sooner landed than they scattered to the four winds, a number of Germans among them alone remaining in or near the promised city. Amid many discouragements the town prospered, and when, one after another, three cargoes of women were sent out from the old country, to furnish wives for the new settlers, their content was complete. Thus many of the proudest aristocrats of New Orleans trace their descent from these "Filles de Casette," as they were called, each one being endowed with a small chest of property.

Here the French Creoles were born, and lived a wild, unrestrained life, valorous but uneducated, and became such men and women as one would expect to find in a military outpost so far from the civilized world. For sixty-three years the little colony struggled for life, enduring floods and famines, and the terrors of Indian warfare, when, in 1762, the province of Louisiana was transferred by an unprincipled king to Spain. The news did not reach the remote American settlement until 1764. It was hardly to be expected that a colony so separated by time and distance from the mother country should be intensely loyal, but the people felt themselves to be French and French only, and they resented this unwitting transfer of their allegiance as an unendurable grievance.

The Spanish Governor, Ulloa, did not land in New Orleans until two years later; and though he showed himself to be a man of great discretion, and inclined to adopt a conciliatory policy, the people made the little town so hot for him, that in two more years he was glad to return to Spain. They sent a memorial after him, which, being a most unique document, is worth recording, in substance. Says a recent historian, Mr. George W. Cable: —

"It enumerated real wrongs, for which France and Spain, but not Ulloa, were to blame. Again, with these it mingled such charges against the banished Governor as – that he had a chapel in his own house; that he absented himself from the French churches; that he inclosed a fourth of the public common to pasture his private horses; that he sent to Havana for a wet nurse; that he ordered the abandonment of a brick-yard near the town, on account of its pools of putrid water; that he removed leprous children from the town to the inhospitable settlement at the mouth of the river; that he forbade the public whipping of slaves in the town; that masters had to go six miles to get a negro flogged; that he had landed in New Orleans during a thunder and rain storm, and under other ill omens; that he claimed to be king of the colony; that he offended the people with evidences of sordid avarice; and that he added to these crimes – as the text has it – 'many others, equally just and terrible!'"

In 1769 the colony was in open revolt, and was considering the project of forming a republic. But the arrival of a Spanish fleet of twenty-four sail checked their aspirations towards independence, and paralyzed their efforts, and they yielded without a struggle.

In 1768 New Orleans was a town of 3,200 persons, a third of whom were black slaves. After the establishment of Spanish rule, although the population was thoroughly Creole, and opposed to the presence of English traders, the government at first winked at their appearance, and finally openly tolerated them, so that English boats supplied the planters with goods and slaves, and English warehouses moored upon the river opposite the town disposed of merchandise.

In 1776, at the breaking out of the American Revolution, the Creole and Anglo-American came into active relations with each other, a relation which has since qualified every public question in Louisiana. The British traders were suddenly cut off from communication, and French merchants commanded the trade of the Mississippi. Americans followed close after the French, and the tide of immigration became Anglo-Saxon. France was openly supporting the American colonies in their rebellion against England, and in 1779 Spain declared war against Great Britain, so that the sympathies of the Creoles were led, by every tie, to the rebels. Galvez, then Governor of Louisiana, and also son of the Viceroy of Mexico, a young man, brave, talented and sagacious, who had adopted a most liberal policy in his administration, discovered that the British were planning the surprise of New Orleans. Making hasty but efficient preparations, with a little army of 1,430 men, and with a miniature gun fleet of but ten guns, he marched, on the twenty-second of August, 1779, against the British forts on the Mississippi. On the seventh of September, Fort Bute, on Bayou Manchac, yielded to the first assault of the Creole Militia. The Fort of Baton Rouge was garrisoned by five hundred men with thirteen heavy guns. On the twenty-first of September, after an engagement of ten hours, Galvez reached the fort. Its capitulation included the surrender of Fort Panmure, a place which, by its position, would have been very difficult of assault. In the Mississippi and Manchac, four English schooners, a brig and two cutters were captured. On the fourteenth of the following March, Galvez, with an army of two thousand men, having set sail down the Mississippi, captured Fort Charlotte, on the Mobile River. On the eighth of May, 1781, Pensacola, with a garrison of eight hundred men, and the whole of West Florida, surrendered to Galvez. One of the rewards bestowed upon her Governor for his valorous achievements was the Captain-generalship of Louisiana and West Florida. He never returned to New Orleans, however, and four years later succeeded his father as Viceroy of Mexico. Thus, while Andrew Jackson was yet a child, New Orleans was defended from British conquest by this gallant Spanish soldier.

In 1803 Louisiana was transferred to France by Spain, and great was the rejoicing of the Creole colonists, who, during the forty years of their Spanish domination, had never forgotten their French origin. But their joy was quickly turned to bitterness by the news which speedily followed, that Louisiana had been sold, by Napoleon I, to the United States. The younger generation, and those who had a clear apprehension of all in the way of prosperity which this change might mean to them, were quickly reconciled, and set about the business of life with renewed interest. But to the French Creoles, as a class, who, during their long alienation had still at heart been thoroughly French, to become a part of a republic, and that republic English in its origin, was intensely distasteful. This was the deluge indeed, which Providence had not kindly stayed until after their time. They withdrew into a little community of their own, and refused companionship with such as sacrificed their caste by accepting the situation, and adapting themselves to it. But in spite of these disaffected persons, the prosperity of the city dated from that time. Its population increased, and its commerce made its first small beginnings.

New Orleans was incorporated as a city in 1804, having then a population of about 8,000 inhabitants. In 1812 the first steamboat was put upon the Mississippi, though it was not until several years later that, after a period of experiment and disaster, success was attained with them. Yet without steamboats the development of the great Mississippi Valley, and the creation of the extended cities upon its banks, would have been well-nigh impossible. Its winding course, its swift current, its shifting channel, and the snags which line its bottom, make navigation by other craft than steamboats well-nigh impossible. Canoes, batteaux and flat-boats might make the voyage down the river with tolerable speed and safety, but to return against the current was a difficult thing to do; and a trip from St. Louis or Louisville to New Orleans and return required months. Where, then, would have been the mighty commerce of the West, but for the timely invention of the steam engine, and its application to water craft?