These
lakes have but a narrow strip of cultivable land. Along the right
margin of the La Fourche, and the left of the Teche, they serve as a
receptacle for the waters thrown from the plantations and those
discharged by the Atchafalayah and the Plaquemine, which ultimately
find their way to the Gulf through Berwick's Bay. They are interspersed
with small islands: these have narrow strips of tillable land, but are
generally too low for cultivation; and when the Mississippi is at
flood, they are all under water, and most of them many feet. The La
Fourche goes immediately to the Gulf, between Lake Barataria and these
lakes, affording land high enough, when protected as they now are, for
settlement, and cultivation to a very great extent. Its length is some
one hundred miles, and the settlements extend along it for eighty
miles. These are continuous, and nowhere does the forest intervene.
At irregular distances between these Acadian settlements, large sugar
plantations are found. These have been extending for years, and
increasing, absorbing the habitats of these primitive and innocent
people, who retire to some little ridge of land deeper in the swamp, a
few inches higher than the plane of the swamp, where they surround
their little mud-houses with an acre or so of open land, from the
products of which, and the trophies of the gun and fishing-line and
hook, and an occasional frog, and the abundance of crawfish, they
contrive to eke out a miserable livelihood, and afford the fullest
illustration of the adage, "Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be
wise.
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