swore and exclaimed in three different languages-English, Spanish and French-and spoke all equally well. The women ran into the alcoves when the quarrel began. The music ceased, and the gentlemen crowded around, jumping upon the chairs and benches, and then after some five minutes of excitement the fiddlers struck up, the women came back to their places in the cotillon, and everything went on as before, the quarrelers having by this time been pushed and elbowed either into the apartment at the extremity of the ballroom or into the antechamber. Below the ballroom was the supper room, where every delicacy could be procured at ten francs for the ladies and gentlemen who were inclined to get indigestion and headaches. "Towards the close of the ball the room became very warm, and the smell of the heated quadroons and mulattoes was disagreeable to me who was not accustomed to it. I could not stand it and I went away. "New Orleans would have far less of the picturesque, if it had more morals to recommend it. This much, however, I can safely say of it, that I never was in a more quiet or better ordered City at those periods when riot is rife ordinarily and when the night is made the periods of noise and disturbance. I would quite as soon trust myself in any part of New Orleans at that time as I would in any Northern city. So far as my personal comfort is concerned, I have been most kindly treated, and shall not soon forget the attentions that I have received. TRIP TO NATCHEZ BY MISSISSIPPI, AND RETURN WITH MRS. LATROBE TO WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, 1835. "I had not been long enough from my office to affect my business, which I continued to work at steadily until June 1835, when, in company with Mrs. Latrobe's relative, Mr. C. L. Claiborne, a midshipman in the United States Navy, who had just passed his examination, I left Baltimore for Natchez, to bring back my wife and children, for Osmun had been born there after I left "Soldier's Retreat." We went to Frederick by rail, from there by stage coach across the mountains to Pittsburgh, descending the Ohio and Mississippi to Natchez. Returning with Charlotte and the children, we landed at "Guyandotte," and crossed the mountains to the White Sulphur. The boat in which we set out on our return was a Tennessee River one, which landed us at Smithland, where we had to remain until another boat came along on which we could embark. At Smithland we nearly lost Osmun with an attack of croup, which I mention only to give a recipe for making a child vomit. When everything else had failed, a Dr. Brown, who had been called in, took an unlighted pipe and placed the stem in a tea cup of water, and the bowl in his mouth, blew until the water was imbued with the narcotic. Giving this to the infant in teaspoonfuls, vomiting was produced, and the child's life was saved. "We travelled by stage from Guyandotte to the White Sulphur, and passed the falls of the Kenawha. Here we found a very comfortable hotel. While dinner was preparing, I went to look at the falls, which gave their name to the village. I could not learn the perpendicular height, but should not suppose it to exceed twenty feet. The water was low, and large surfaces of flat sandstone were left bare along which I walked to the main channel, where the stream tumbled into a deep bowl in the shape of a horse shoe. The sketch I have made is a general one from the window of the Tavern. The spot is wild and very picturesque. "Claiborne had left us at Smithland and went up the |