He came first to Donaldsonville, where he hired a man to
bring him in a small skiff to the courthouse of the parish of
Assumption. There he employed another to transport him through the
Verret Canal to the lakes, and on through these to Marie Jose's
landing, in Attakapas; then another was engaged to take him up the
Teche to St. Martinsville, and from there he went by land to
Opelousas. This route is nearly three hundred miles.
The banks of the Teche he found densely populated with a people
altogether different in appearance, and speaking a language scarcely
one word of which he understood, and in everything different from
anything he had ever before seen: added to this, he found them
distrustful, inhospitable, and hating the Americans, to whose dominion
they had been so recently transferred.
He used to relate an anecdote of this trip, in his most humorous
manner. "I had," he said, "been all day cramped up in the stern of a
small skiff, in the broiling sun, with nothing to drink but the tepid
water of the Teche. I was weary and half sick, when I came to the
front of a residence, which wore more the appearance of comfort and
respectability than any I had passed during the day.
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