with deep and spreading galleries on all sides for the coolest comfort. For form, all ran or tended to run to a peaked and many-chimneyed centre, with, here and there, a suggestion of a dormar window. Not all were provided with figs and jessamines, but each had some inclosure betraying good intentions.
The monotonous landscape did not invite to loitering, and we passed but three nights in houses by the road. The first was that of an old Italian-French emigrant, known as "Old Man Corse." He had a name of his own, which he recalled for us, but in forty years it had been lost and superseded by this designation, derived from his birth-place, the island of Corsica. This mixture of nationalities in language must be breeding for future antiquaries a good deal of amusing labour. Next day we were recommended to stop at Jack Bacon's, and, although we would have preferred to avoid an American's, did so rather than go further, and found our Jack Bacon a Creole, named Jacques Béguin. This is equal to Tuckapaw and Nakitosh, the general pronunciation of Attakapas and Nachitoches.
The house of Old Man Corse stood in the shade of oaks, figs, and cypresses, upon the bank of a little bayou, looking out upon the broad prairie. It was large and comfortable, with wide galleries and dormar windows, supported by a negro-hut and a stable. Ornamental axe-work and rude decorative joinery were abundant. The roof was of large split shingles, much warped in the sun. As we entered and took seats by the fire, the room reminded us, with its big fire-place, and old smoke-stained and time-toned cypress beams and ceiling, and its rude but comfortable aspect, of the Acadian fireside:
"In doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fire-place, idly the farmer
Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the smoke-wreaths
Struggled together, like foes in a burning city. Behind him,
Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic,
