New Orleans stands on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, one hundred and ten miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and is called the "Crescent City," because of the sublime and beautiful sweep of the "Father of Waters" around the city in a perfect circle, striking in on the north, thence circling to the west, then south, then east, then gently north, on a bend enchanting to behold, coming up to the landing at a point due east two or three miles only, from the river on the west of the city, where it first heaves in sight to the traveler on the deck of a steamer coming down, making a distance of ten to fifteen miles in the circuit, and leaving the city stand on a grand dead level peninsula, almost an island. The magnificent bosom of the waters heaves and presses up the river sides in fresh beauty constantly, as if "Old Neptune's" soul stood beneath in the river's mighty depths, and throwing out broad shoulders and long arms spanning its breadth, were intent on heaving the waters over its leveed banks to deluge and drown out the inhabitants.

Water is taken from the river and conducted along either side of the streets, just at the edge of the sidewalks, in stone ducts, built up square a foot or so in depth and width. With such facilities for irrigating the streets New Orleans may be, and is, one of the cleanest and sweetest cities in the world. The spirit of the people seems broken since the war, and doubtless many a year will pass ere the old romantic gayeties and business pluck and prosperity will come back again. The evil genius of the "peculiar institution" is gone never to return, though its corporal presence remains, to man the live industries of the olden times.

But to resume our narrative of travel. We staid in New Orleans during the night of the 21st of January, but did not remain the next day to witness the further movement of secession, but crossed the river ferry at eight o'clock in the morning, and took the train at Algiers, on the west side, for Berwick's Bay, seventy-five miles distant, and the terminus west of the railroad. Most of the route may be characterized as crocodile or alligator swamp. It was covered with water and heavy timber, and a thick undergrowth of cane, Spanish daggers and dwarf palm, such as is manufactured into palm-leaf hats, with other kinds of water shrubbery. When cleared up and properly prepared these lands will make splendid rice and sugar plantations. The alligator will migrate before the hand and foot of civilization.

Thence we shipped by "Morgan Line" of steamers to Galveston, two hundred and fifty miles, on the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing occurred to mar the general pleasure of this part of the journey. Neptune was unusually quiet, only showing his disposition in gentle undulations of the deep; no heaving billows, with white caps breaking on their angry crests, and dashing the iron-bound vessel up in the air, and dropping her again in cradles of the deep; no qualms and retching to make one feel he didn't care whether the vessel lived or went to the bottom, but rather preferred the latter; and the sooner the better. No, a "norther'" was blowing off mainland—now and then in sight—and laid the waters smooth so that we took regular meals and kept them down, and were not thrown from our berths by a bouncing boat.

On approaching Galveston at sea, twenty miles away, vision is frequently cheated by the intervention of a mirage, the effect of which is to give to the city the appearance of air-suspension—a heavenward elongation, sitting on the lap of the ocean with no terra firma beneath. But on nearer approach the illusion disappears, and there stands before you, on a small piece of nature's ground-work, and as though painted by a fairy hand, in spiritual shadows, on the low extended horizon beyond, Galveston, exciting the strange beholder into the romantic feeling that it is a city of fairies. And though the romance is toned down by the reality on landing, yet there she stands, one of the finest and most beautiful cities in the South of her size. She had before the war a population of twelve to fifteen thousand, and in one year after the war she had twenty-five thousand souls, and three thousand additional buildings.

Galveston stands on the east end of an island of the same name, running northeast and southwest, thirty miles in length, and with a varying width of two to four miles. Plausible tradition has it that when the island was first occupied and settled by Anglo-Americans, forty to fifty years ago, they found as its lone occupant a beautiful Castillian woman in male attire, supposed to have been connected with the notorious Captain Lafitte, who, with his band, committed piratical depredations on the Gulf and in the West Indies, and who had headquarters there and up the wilds of the Trinity River. Hence the island was first facetiously called "Gal-with-a-vest-on," but afterward it was reduced to the more elegant trisyllabic of Galveston.

The island is a huge long sandbank, the work of the Gulf waters for ages in sand deposits. The indentation of the main shore where the island lies was favorable for such deposits. But this alone does not sufficiently account for the fact that the island is at that particular place. The Gulf Stream, in its rebound and return movement from the shore of Western Texas, a hundred and fifty miles to the southwest of Galveston, after having been driven there by the "trade winds" that come in from the direction of the Coast of Africa—from the southeast, through the channel between Cuba and Yucatan—passes near the island, en route to the channel between Florida and Cuba, and in its passage throws off inshore the sand disturbed and gathered up in its course from the bottom of the Gulf. Besides Trinity River comes in at the head and east of the island, and passes out into the Gulf Stream in a southeasterly direction, throwing to the right, toward the island, deposits similar to those made to the left by the Gulf Stream. Thus do we theorize as to the natural causes for the formation and existence of the island. These two counter forces of water co-operate, and between them have made it what it is. Besides this sandbar above water there are lying between these two water forces, and a few feet beneath the surface, sand reefs running from the head of the island southeast, and circling south and west five or six miles, forming a splendid outside harbor, with a depth of water ranging from a minimum of ten to a maximum of seventy feet. The heaviest vessels can lie there and ride at anchor in perfect safety, as they are protected from the heavy "trade winds" from the southeast, and others from the south, by these reefs. Nature has furnished the surface of the island with a few inches of light sandy soil, warm and quick-producing, growing corn, the largest and sweetest sweet potatoes, the largest and most delicious melons of all kinds one ever saw or ate, with garden sauce of every name and nature; even Irish potatoes, if grown from seed imported from the north each year. The whole island from the city to the southwest end thereof furnishes fine grazing for cattle and other stock, and the butchers keep their beeves there a few days before they are slaughtered and sold in the market, and the beef when marketed and on the table is the sweetest and most savory the writer ever found in any country, particularly that fattened on mesquite grass. The Gulf beach in low tide furnishes the finest ride or drive imaginable, and at eventide hundreds of vehicles and pedestrians may be seen enjoying themselves there.

The commercial importance of Galveston may be judged of by the single fact that of the four hundred thousand bales of cotton produced in Texas in the year 1860 three hundred thousand bales were compressed and exported at Galveston, worth at that time $15,000,000 in gold, but would now be worth $25,000,000. The geographical location of Galveston speaks also for its commercial importance. It is the New York of Texas, and Galveston Island is the Long Island of Texas. The inside harbor lies in the bay immediately in the rear of the city, between the island and the mainland, where the bay is two miles wide. The entrance to the harbor has ten feet of water over the bar in low tide, and fourteen to sixteen feet in high tide.

Galveston lies in twenty-nine degrees north latitude, and midway between the mouth of the Mississippi River on the east, and Mexico and the Rio Grande on the west. If you draw an imaginary line commencing at the mouth of the Columbia River, in Oregon, running southeast; another line commencing at Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi, running due south, and another commencing at Portland, Maine, running due southwest; all these lines will intersect at Galveston. One of the driving wheels of the great commercial wagon of the United States stands at Galveston, and the steam of progress is driving the mighty vehicle westward, keeping pace with the "star of empire."

When that network of railroads which but for secession would now have been thrown over all Texas, east, west, north and south, tapping the wheat regions of Northern Texas, the lumber regions of Eastern Texas, the stock regions of Western Texas, and the cotton and sugar regions of Southern Texas; we say, when this railroad system shall be achieved for that great country, thus developing and bringing to the markets of the world the productive resources of Texas, a country six to seven hundred miles square, large enough to lay down on its surface the State of Massachusetts more than thirty times, and not lap anywhere, the result will be wonderful beyond all present calculations. Every variety of soil is found in Texas, and all kinds of grain and fruit can be produced there, with sugar, and cotton one to four bales to the acre.

Texas is a country of great extremes and contradictions. It is the hottest and coldest; the driest and wettest; it has the most streams and the least water, some wet and some dry, and mostly dry at that; the best soil and the poorest, very little of the latter; the most cattle and the least milk, and butter, and cheese, and beef; the most salubrious climate and most sudden changes of weather; the least rain and heaviest rain-storms; the sunniest sky and most terrific thunder-storms; the most balmy Gulf breezes and most bitter biting northers; long rivers and least navigation; the heaviest pine forests and least pine lumber; the best types of society, and the meanest the sun ever shone upon.

Portable saw-mills, located along projected railroads in those pine forests lying in Eastern Texas, hundreds of miles in extent, taking Brazos River as the dividing line between Eastern and Western Texas, would coin money for the proprietors. And the prediction is safe that the time is not far distant when the railroads will be built, those forests felled and cut up into lumber, towns spring up, and the "wilderness bud and blossom as the rose."

The wet and dry seasons come in pretty regular alternations, each in a series of seven to ten years. And nature, ever faithful, with her "canny hand" has recorded these meteorological histories in trees of the forest, and the record may be traced back through a period of two hundred years. The unmistakable record is traceable in the thick and thin rings or grains of the trees, varying in thickness from that of a wafer to a quarter of an inch, in grades from thin to thick, the former representing the dry, and the latter the wet seasons.

Now some crops of the country are more successfully raised in the dry seasons, and others in the wet. Cotton is produced in the greatest abundance in a comparatively dry season; corn the reverse. So that, by keeping and observing a critical meteorological record the planter can calculate with a good degree of certainty what crops would promise best from year to year. Thus, we believe, Providence has made it feasible, through science and art, for man to live and prosper in any country or climate under the sun. And further, the normal products of the different countries and climates are most suitable for the industries, health and happiness of the inhabitants thereof.

If the labor question of that country is ever properly settled and harmonized—in regard to which we are more hopeful than doubtful from recent data—the leading productive interest of Texas will continue to be that of cotton, particularly in the southern-central section. But we think the future will show that the strongest rival interest will be grape culture and wine making.

It is now conceded and agreed by practical men in the business of grape-growing there, that the soil and climate of Texas are admirably adapted to grape culture; and though in the past cotton has engrossed the attention of the people to the exclusion almost of every product except corn, now the cultivation of grapes is assuming prominent and tangible shape, and commanding the practical attention of the citizens of the State. Besides, the next few years will probably bring into the State thousands of vine-growers from the South of France and Germany, who will make this their principal business. If we look at the progress made with the vine in Ohio and other Northern States, with a less favored soil and climate, increasing from four thousand acres, ten or twelve years ago, to two millions of acres now devoted to wine-growing, yielding large profits and immense fortunes for those engaged in the business, how much greater success may be expected to accrue from an equal outlay of money and effort in the warm loamy soils of Texas.

The change in the labor system, resulting from the late war, is bringing the subject into more public notice. The system of forced labor no longer overshadows and oppresses the spirit of progress and improvement there. The inveterate slowness of the country must give way before the advancing step of reform, and as increasing light breaks in, bringing to public view the ponderous follies of the past industrial history of the country, new ideas will be allowed and patronized; new experiments made on scientific principles, and the present and prospective resources of the country, heretofore undiscovered or neglected, will be developed to a degree of profit and fortune that will astound the people themselves. When the people see that, in the matter of grape culture, a few acres cultivated in the vine will yield as large a profit as a cotton plantation ten times as large, and requiring ten times the labor, many more will be tempted to plant vineyards and reap the easy reward; so that after they are well planted and cared for, and by the third year have reached the profitable bearing period, instead of fifty dollars per acre, at most, net profit, as with cotton, for wine only a clear profit of five hundred to one thousand dollars per acre may be realized from grapes, and equally so for table use. Nor is there danger of overstocking the market with so useful and healthful a delicacy. The greater the supply the greater the demand. Our remarks on profits of grape culture are not imaginary guesswork, but based on well ascertained facts in the experience of vine-growers in Texas, with whom we have a personal acquaintance. They recommend the following varieties as doing well and being profitable there: The Concord, Clinton, Diana, Delaware, Iowa, Ives' Seedling, Herbemont, Creveling, Hartford Prolific, Perkins, Black July, Jacques, and Rogers' Hybrids numbers 1, 3, 4, 9, 15, 19, 22; and they say the beginner will do well to commence with the Clinton, Concord, etc., which will almost take care of themselves. The Diana is a fine grape for either table or wine. The Delaware and Isabella are fine table grapes, and the best native growers they have. But in Texas the trouble is to choose, for they nearly all do well.

As an indication and natural justification of the most sanguine ideas of grape culture in Texas, we will state that the indigenous Mustang grape grows there spontaneously in great wasteful abundance, along the water-courses, on the uplands and upland "dry runs." There are cart-loads, car-loads, yes, steamboat loads of them growing wild over the country, and in different varieties. From this kind of grape are manufactured just those claret or sour wines most grateful to the tastes of people in hot climates.

It is thought by many good people in Texas, and as a temperance expedient too, that Providence hereby indicates what drinks, aside from water, are needful for the health and temperate habits of the country. The question is, why is the country so overstocked with this kind of grape? not by accident, or for mere ornament, certainly, nor for the use of bird or beast, for they touch them not, nor yet for table use, as no human tongue or lips would last long coming in contact with the powerful acid of the hull of this kind of grape. The pulp has a most delicious flavor, but can not be sucked from its dark inclosure without bringing with it the biting acid. There is no alternative; it was intended for man's use after being transformed into wine.