TOPICS IN THE TROPICS (Part Six)

The Cortland News, Friday, May 11, 1883.

Topics in the Tropics.

Letter from D. Eugene Smith, on board the Steamer Lucy P. Miller, mouth of the Mississippi river, March 27, 1883.

   Hearing of a small five-hundred ton banana steamer about to sail from Aspinwall, I cut my stay on the Isthmus rather short, and took passage for New Orleans. This steamer carries a cargo of bananas with a few cocoanuts, pineapples and plantains, and a dozen passengers who are willing to undergo some discomfort for the sake of the sightseeing or for a direct passage to New Orleans.

   The loading of bananas is an interesting sight. No such rough handling by derrick or hook as is seen on the New York docks; here each bunch has to be carefully taken by hand, and carried aboard, and with equal care let down from one man to another until it safely stands in the hold. We have some five thousand bunches on board, representing in the neighborhood of a half million bananas; and during the last three days they have been obliged to throw overboard a dozen bunches every morning, because they were prematurely ripe.

   Our first stopping place was Corn Island, a low coral formation, covered with palms and bananas. Here we took on a couple of thousand cocoanuts, and a few pineapples. The natives came out in their "dug-outs," and when not busy loading fruit, killed a number of sharks, a great school of which was swimming about the steamer. A lazy crowd the darkeys seemed, many with only a breech-cloth to denote a step toward civilization. From that port our course lay through a multitude of small islands and coral reefs along the Nicaraguan coast to Cape Gracias. There is little to describe that I have not already outlined.

   At Cape Gracias a river divides Nicaragua from Honduras, and it was formerly the center of the mahogany district, but the unwise, wholesale destruction of trees has nearly put an end to this industry, and commerce has sought other ports.

   The Caribbean sea was unusually quiet. Calm water and hot weather gave us a sleepy passage to Cape Catoche, the extremity of Yucatan. Leaving here we entered the Gulf and were greeted by a "norther," which dampened the pleasures of the passage for a couple of days. Last night we saw a light just east of north. It was the jetty light at the South Pass of the Mississippi. It was America, and we were all heartily glad to see it. We could say with the Laureate: "We have had enough of motion and of action, we."

   We were glad to get home—home, even though more than two thousand miles lay between that light and Cortland. The new pass of the river, the celebrated Eads jetty pass, is now the principal one for all ships. The work consisted in straightening and deepening the channel for seven miles, and it has been successful thus far.

   This morning we have passed several forts guarding the entrance to the river proper, and are now in the midst of the finest plantations on the Mississippi. The water is several feet above the level of the land, and is confined by high dirt levees, which are now being watched with greatest care lest the flood should break through. The trees look semitropical. The live oaks are draped with the grey hanging moss so common in our southern States; the plantations begin to show signs of spring-time; orange groves are seen along the banks, and the banana gives place to the cypress and cottonwood.

   The river, as I have said, is high. Driftwood is everywhere seen, and a few minutes ago we passed a floating house. A few cabins built within the levee are half submerged, the inhabitants having retreated to drier quarters. We have passed a number of cotton mills and a few sugarhouses— each the center of what was in slavery times the center of a small kingdom; but now they are mostly the mere wrecks of former power and industry.

   We reach New Orleans to-day.

Hastily,

D. E. S.

James B. Eads: http://jeffpaine.blogspot.com/2014/02/washington-letter-capt-eads-proposed.html