[NEW ORLEANS] DAILY PICAYUNE, March 6, 1864, p. 3, c. 3
[Editorial Correspondence of the Daily Wisconsin.]
New Orleans, Jan. 31, 1864.
To-day we are enjoying the softness of a July day at the North. The air is summery. The sun is bright and warm, and the people cultivate the shady side of the streets. I was advised to go to the Sunday morning French Market, near the Cathedral. You should go early, and it is a curious sight to a Northern man to witness the merchandizing and bargaining that is going on on Sunday. To attempt to enforce the observance of the Sabbath in this city would create a rebellion which the United States army could not put down. The south half of New Orleans is a section of Paris in full bloom—for be it understood that not merely the market, but the stores are open—some of these are wholesale establishments. After they get through buying and selling they go into the temple near by to worship God. I have spent a good deal of time in the French portion of the city, and the more I see of it the more am I struck with the contrast with the Puritanical character of those who settled the Atlantic States. . . .
After leaving the Cathedral I sauntered into the market, and the buyers and sellers were as busy as ever. The dry goods booths were in full blast. Every conceivable article can be purchased in this Sunday market. There are boot and shoe stands, and tinware booths. At the neat refreshment tables in different portions of the market you can obtain better coffee for 5 cents a cup than you will get at the other splendid city cafes at 15 and 20 cents a cup. The excellence of its coffee is a noted feature of the French Market. The orange stands present a very handsome show, as the oranges are piled up like rows of small cannon balls. Good sweet oranges sell for 30 cents a dozen. They are much cheaper in November; then you can purchase for a penny a piece. The first of January freeze spoiled thousands of oranges. There is no question that Louisiana is an orange country hardly inferior to Cuba. You can get as good a sweet orange here as in Havana. Many suppose that Cuba raises the only super-excellent orange; but this is a mistake. Here the orange tree is as common as the apple tree at the North. Many of these are sour oranges, but the better quality is gradually being introduced in all the gardens and plantations.
But the most curious feature in the markets is the mixed races which there assemble. All the colors in a painter's box are visible on the faces. You will see ebon black, dirty white, chocolate brown, yellow, pure white, greenish yellow and every color but blue. But these mixed races get along very well, and are very good natured towards each other. They have mutual interests, and they work cordially together in the great enterprise of supplying New Orleans with its daily pabulum. One can see in a moment that there is not half so much prejudice against color as at the North. You will witness at the cafes in the market a handsome looking Frenchman serving out coffee and cakes to some burly son of Africa. He will wait on him with real courtesy—because he knows the African will pay his charge as surely as his white customer. Most of the well-dressed ladies who come to the market are in mourning—I see the war everywhere. . . .
Before I arrived at New Orleans, I was urged not to miss a visit to the cemeteries. Well, I have been spending the Sunday afternoon at the old French Cemetery, south of Canal street. At the North, the words "bury the dead" signify that the body is put under the ground. Here all the burials are above the ground. The marshy soil will not admit of a grave, and therefore the bodies are entombed above the ground. As you enter these cemeteries, along the outer wall seem arranged large brick ovens, four ranges high, in which is deposited a coffin—brick up the orifice and then they are buried. At first the sight of these graves made me shudder, as many of these burial ovens have become dilapidated, and you feel as if you were among the bones of the dead. These ovens, for so I must call them, are for the medium classes—those whose purse is light. The wealthy have square brick, granite, or marble tombs, on a very small lot of their own. Some of these are in very good taste—massive and handsome. The inscriptions are frequently in letters of gold, and confined to the year of the birth, and the day of the death—all in the French language. In the cemetery I was in I saw no tombs later than 1860, but you can see the wealth of New Orleans in many of the tombs from 1830 to 1860. These cemeteries never cover but one square, about two acres—they are then separated by a street. They are scattered all over the city. It is not considered healthy at the North to have cemeteries in the cities. Yet there are probably at this moment more people in the cemeteries of New Orleans than there are living who walk the streets. The practice of burial within the city is too firmly rooted here to be broken up by Yankee innovations.
The most noticeable feature of the French cemeteries is the ornamentation of the tombs in the oddest form imaginable. In the season of flowers, these are very much used; but when they are not to be had, you will notice black and white or silver paper cut into wreaths hanging on the tombs. When they are appended to the oven tombs, and become dilapidated by the rains, they look so quaint that it was far from impressive. In the costly tombs there are elegant porcelain vases imbedded in the granite or marble, for the purpose of holding flowers. We think that this would not be inappropriate in our Northern cemeteries. There we cultivate and adorn a lot—here a lot, on account of the value of the land, is the tomb itself—for the cemeteries here afford only narrow walks, and not a tree is to be found. Oh, how I miss the grand old woods of our Northern cemeteries!
I have had the usual ride to Lake Pontchartrain, six miles from New Orleans. You traverse the famous Shell Road, which is nothing more than a good gravel road. It was made by the excavation of a canal to the lake. Upon the mud thus taken out and heaped up in a turnpike form were thrown shells taken from the lake. These shell are nearly as large as a soft shelled clam, and when broken up make an excellent roadway. The Shell Road is about the only drive that the New Orleans fast men have, and is, therefore, one of their notable resorts. The lake is shallow, but the water is clear. The banks are muddy and stumpy, and as compared with our beautiful Northern lakes is very unsightly, but down here where decent water is scarce, Lake Pontchartrain is one of the watery pearls of the South. The bathing is good, as the bottom is sandy and pleasant to the feet; but, as a lady informed me, now and then an alligator makes his appearance and bites off somebody's leg, and there are shoals of small fish generally known as bullheads, which unpleasantly insinuate themselves between the feet. They do not bite, but they as it were run against you, and are particularly unpleasant to nervous people. All this we assert upon the authority of a Southern woman. Before I leave this country I intend to try a bath in Lake Pontchartrain, which may be called the Rockaway of New Orleans. The summer houses around the lake look more dilapidated now, because during three years of civil war nothing has been done to maintain the elegancies which, in former prosperous years, were so visible at a New Orleans fashionable watering place.
W. E. O.
Source: Vicki Betts’ Newspaper Research.