A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend training in Washington, DC. A day of my classes was to be held at the Library of Congress. I searched their online catalog for any unique items they may have for Ouachita parish and I found this little booklet. So, when we broke for lunch, I snuck off to the Special Collections department to take a look at it. It was a tiny, thin volume of only 31 pages. I was allowed to photograph it with my phone and when I got home, I transcribed and indexed the pages. It is a wonderful little keyhole glimpse into life along the Ouachita river only thirty-one years after Louisiana became a state. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!
If you happen to be at the Library of Congress and want to see this work, the Rare Book/Special Collections Reading Room is in the Thomas Jefferson Building, second floor (Jefferson LJ239). The call number for the book is F374.F62
Over the next few days I will post the transcript pages for all to enjoy!
JOURNAL.
Alexandria, Louisiana, April 21, 1835.
Dear
Sir. – You remember the promise you exacted from me last summer, in Philadelphia,
to visit the Maison Rouge Grant, on the Ouachitta [sic[1]]. You see I adopt the good old French
orthography of that river. I know not
whether your motive was to give me pleasure, or to inflict a salutary discipline. If the latter, should you take the trouble to
read this, I shall have my revenge. In
any view, I cannot doubt that it originated in a benevolent wish in some way to
confer a benefit. I am now seated to
give you a sketch of my mode of performing that promise. I spin this long yarn with the more
confidence, being aware that you cannot but take an interest in reading
surveys, however inadequate, of a region so extensive, so fertile, so
identified with your name, as its possessor ; into the alluvial swamps of
which, in your bygone days, you too have plunged. The Ouachitta is a beautiful river, of
interesting character and capabilities; and, although unknown to song,
classical in forest narrative and tradition, as having been the
locale of the pastoral experiments of the Marquess Maison Rouge and the Barron de Bastrop, as well as many other adventurers, Spanish, French and American ; not to mention its relation to American history, as the point where Aaron Burr masked his ultimate plans of ambition and conquest. I wish to seize some of its present fresh and forest features, before it shall all be disenchanted by being transformed into a counting-room flower-garden or cotton plantation;. I will even hope that this sketch will awaken pleasant reminiscences of your own extensive journeys and stirring incidents in these remote central forests. You may, therefore, christen this prelude to my Ouachitta trip a preface or an apology, at your choice.
I was
the better prepared for a comparative survey of the country on the Ouachitta,
by having returned, immediately before my journey there, from an excursion to
the Avoyelles prairie, and the immense prairie-plains of Opelousas. On the twenty-fourth of March, accompanied by
my son and William Vorhees, Esq., I commenced my journey for a survey of your
grant. We started on horseback, crossed
Red River at Alexandria, and entered the wide belt of pine forest that
stretches the whole distance between the two great streams. The sky was deeply overcast, and there was a
brisk southwestern breeze. Of course we
had in the greatest perfection through the day the swell and lulling of the
wind among the tassels of the long-leaved pine, prolonged in the lofty umbrella
summits from distance to distance, until the sound faded away, like the distant
dash of the sea. This deep, rustling
forest noise, so powerful in its
influence upon every contemplative spirit, tends, it
seems to me, more than any other of the voices of nature, to raise the soul “to
solemn thought and heavenly musing.”
Generally at some distance in the rear of my young associates, I paused
often to listen to this breezy anthem swelling and dying away in the distance,
and the thoughts and events of other years often came over my memory. On the way to Big Creek, we cross the Flacon[2], a beautiful little stream
; and within three or four miles of that creek, Clear Creek, a still more
beautiful one. The general impression
is, that all the little streams of the south are turbid and discoloured. So far from it, this is one of the most
perfectly limpid brooks in the world. It
is perennial and unvarying, fed by spring fountains, which run down deep
hollows shaded by vines, flowering shrubs and beeches ; is as clear as light,
running over sands as white as snow, and with just enough of meander and murmur
to be one of Bryant’s complaining brooks, Noble beeches, impervious to the sun’s
rays, sustain the coolness of the water.
It is a sort of forest inn, a regular halting place for
refreshment. Remote as it seems from the
haunts of men, the beeches are all scored with the names of travelers, who have
here reposed in the shade, fanned their foreheads, and mixed the pure element
with their claret. There were the names
of the young, buoyant and fair, land speculators, sportsmen, gamblers and
invalids, going to Big Creek to repair their exhausted constitutions. It was a painful chronicle to spell out. More than half those I had known ten years
since, whose names were here recorded, had already preceded me to the eternal
land.
[1] Throughout the booklet, the author spells Ouachita with two t’s. An early Ouachita parish newspaper, the Ouachitta Standard, also spelled it this way.
[2] Flagon Bayou in Catahoula Parish.
