than a mile wide. The channel is very deep, and the current rapid. Boats, destined for the city, are sometimes swept down the stream for several miles, before they can make a landing. The inhabitants of the place procure all their water from the Mississippi; but it is generally filtered before using. The boatmen, however, drink it as it is; and some suppose it, in this state, conducive to health. It must not, however, be taken from the eddies.
The numerous stories, which have so often been circulated, and believed, respecting the cruel modes of fighting, prevalent among the boatmen of the west, are, generally speaking, untrue. During the whole of my tour, I did not witness one engagement, or see a single person, who bore those marks of violence which proceed from the inhuman mode of fighting, said to exist in the west, particularly in Kentucky and Tennessee. The society of this part of the world is becoming less savage, and more refined.
The judicial proceedings at New-Orleans are recorded both in the French and English languages; and the juries there consist of men of both nations. In all cases, excepting those of a criminal nature, the Code Napoleon prevails; but in criminal cases, {238} the Common Law is the rule of action. Here genius is not trammelled by the rules of special pleading. The allegations of the parties, if intelligible, have to encounter no quibbles.
The science of special pleading is, no doubt, a science purely logical; and so far the courts of New-Orleans recognize it; but in the New-England states many rules, in relation to this subject, which have no foundation in reason, and which are the vestiges of ancient sophistry, are adhered to, by some of our lawyers, with all the pedantry of ignorance, and the pertinacity of dullness. Many a genius has left the bar of our judicial tribunals, because
