Iberia Parish, New Iberia 

The one place on the continent that really possesses the triple allurement of an ideal climate, absolutely unlimited agricultural and horticultural possibilities, and a pastoral beauty of scenery inexpressibly charming and fascinating is, beyond doubt, that region known to its familiars as the Teche country.

It is a country in which the cotton field and the conservatory, the sugar refinery and the oil mill may thrive side by side with the cloth mill, the dairy, the orchard, the apiary, the wooden-ware factory and the saw mill. It lies below the huge red shoulders of the hill country, and its fair fields and deep woodlands occasionally swell gently out of the level in long sunny slopes that rest the eye, and satisfy in one that home hunger that is the refining travail of true hearts. The warm waters of the Gulf temper the atmosphere, the deep and narrow Teche is braided in and out of the fair fabric of its rich mosaic-hued soil; and its many lakes lie limpid and silvery in their shallow cups of earth.

It is a land of sunshine, sweetness and roses smiling under the blue. It is not a new land, nor a new country with unconquered beauties, causing the old, wild barbarian blood to leap warrior-mad in the veins, but a mellow, matured land, wearing a look as if prolific of peaceful homes, of yellow fields of grain and haystacks clustered about the gray barns under the grateful shade of old oaks. It is a land that appeals to the peaceful and the civilian side of one’s nature, a home-like land, the very place of all others to build the home hearth by whose torches one may win compensation and repose after the vexing worries of the world.

Those who live here are blessed with good health and long lives. Under the gray, moss-cropped roofs of the old Spanish mansions, fine old patriarchs—bearded like the trees about them, their own brain-roofs gray cropped—live lives that have known only the changes made by the subtle touches of docile time. Occasionally, at long intervals, one of these old fathers wears out. He lets go of life as gently as a ripe leaf floats from its tree and is lost on the river. For a few days he lies with idle hands and fine radiant face stilled, with candles shining at his feet and head, and there he goes for the last time, feet foremost from the old home and away from the annals of the parish.

Is he forgotten? Nay, in this old land traditions and reputations and lives are handed down from one generation to another; they become the reminiscent heirlooms of tremulous lipped and gentle gossips. And so this fair and fruitful land with its clean fields, its hay-cocks like peaceful encampments; its overflowing barns; its old, red, vine-grown mills, sweet with the smell of sugar-making; its rude hoppers in which the yellow corn is ground on Saturdays for the next week’s bread, has that mellow-lined, deep perspective of homeliness mingled with romance and chivalry. It is a warm land and the natures of poets and painters who make pictures of true life should warp to it kindly, just as the nature of the homemaker, full of tender domesticity, should warp to its sunshine and its roses, its rolling pasture lands and its oval lakes.

In this Teche country, or rather in its queen parish Iberia, the easy methods of the people, their bourgeois independence of the world, the unvexed way in which each one pursues the even tenor of life, indicate very truly the beneficent effect of climate on temperament and habit. It is principally the climate that has mellowed the old wine of blood in these veins and that makes the people genial, makes them look at life with friendly and unafraid eyes, keeps the front door open and a perpetual welcome like a perennial rose in bloom smiling there for all who come; makes them hope for the best with a most cheering and inspiring philosophy, and above all and beyond all it kindles some sense of freedom in the heart that will not consent to the slavery of endless toil.

In this southern land, life is not all one miserable unlovely grind. The farmer elsewhere climbs from boyhood up a mountain of work until he tumbles into his grave at the top. His wife often scrubs and cleans and scours her way into a madhouse. Faces are too often sordid and labor-conscious, the curse of labor is written in wrinkles on unsmiling brows. Here in the southern country one takes time to see the roses, to hear birds whistling in the thickets, to note, as one may now, the frosty red sky deepening and paling beyond a neighbor’s jessamine hedges. In point of fact, the conditions for pastoral simple, plenteous life in the Teche land are more nearly perfect than anywhere else in this country.

There are in some parts of this Teche land settlements where a fascinating and unique people dwell, so closely united, so materially independent of the outside world that they are almost like tribal communities. The climate has done almost its genial best for these people. They know nothing of books or literature; they never have heard of any of the "ologies" and "isms" that percolate brains elsewhere, but they live close to nature. They produce absolutely everything they use or eat. They make pretty pictures in their simple little homes, pictures that appeal to one as a barnyard scene on canvas, or the suggested coziness of a Dutch interior painted by a great master appeals, rather than the representation of a wizened Faust nosing over tomes in his dim laboratory.

The great truth of life for these is to live and to love, to dwell in comfort with many children, to fear God and to obey the priest, to die confessed and absolved, to lie shrived in the sweet little church and afterwards to sleep under the purple gorse and passion vines in the grass-green cemeteries. This is life’s truth and mission for these simple folk.

The history of such a home, the convincing proof of its existence, is the best immigration document any parish can put forth. We want nothing better, more moral, more progressive than immigrants striving to earn sweet homes; for these will bring with them the manufacturer and the businessman, planting industries that shall yield good harvest of work and prosperity.

Iberia, the queen parish of the Teche country, the richest, the roomiest, the most available and the most inviting, has been most unfairly represented by a picture of a dismal swamp, a snake and a deserted cabin. It is a parish really of good high land, with but a small portion of swamp lands, or lands that re not susceptible of the greatest cultivation. Its bayous are not black, deadly, tropical, but clear, wholesome streams flowing between sloping banks, and lined with fruitful farms. Its forests are not jungles, but are those clean, shady, cool and beautiful forests, where the distant blue sky and the low lying fields of grain seem threaded through the course mesh of the oak, the sweet gum, the magnolia and the maple trees.

It has a climate that would have precisely suited Golden Hair of the fairy tale, being neither too hot nor too cold, but just right, and one might make a sentimental calendar of the flowers that bloom beside the Acadian cottages in the winding road and even in the heart of the forests. Today, anyone who runs may read in footnotes of goldenrod and gorse that this is September and the afternoon time of the year. It is great game country and during the winter the quaint French inns, the big old hotel and the home-like lodging houses are often crowded with sportsmen, and women too, who go daily to the lakes for fishing; to the lowlands and fields for duck, snipe and papabotte, or to the forest for deer.

Standing on the brim of the bayou at New Iberia I have often watched the floating islands of turf slowly sailing past me. Sometimes one will be so large that I should like to capture it, anchor it somewhere, and set up upon it as a Robinson Crusoe. It will be beautiful with its feather grasses rising like an Indian princess’ plumes—its silver green rushes burnished in the sun, its white lily cups or flags of iris floating like a royal standard. Sometimes these floating islands go down the bayou in fleets, as after a storm, but whenever seen they are bonny voyagers, and are fit to make one go back to the old sweet belief of fairy folk. In truth they are fragments wind-torn from the "trembling prairie." In winter times the hunters go out to this prairie and with a spade dig a hole in it. They dig a foot or two and then come to water. A fishing line is dropped in this novel well, and they may catch fish all day long.

The assessed lands of Iberia Parish which by the winding waterway is distant 400 miles from New Orleans, number 365,417 acres. Of this, 110,283 are this year in cultivation, leaving idle or uncultivated 255,134 acres. Corn is the chief product, with 69,320 acres. Cotton occupies 27,308 acres, cane only 8,520 acres, and rise 3,700 acres. There is more money in cane than in cotton and the small planters all over the parish are anxiously waiting for the building of central refineries so that they can put the most of their lands down in cane. Last year the net profits on eighteen acres of cane amounted to $1,546.20. There are more than 50,000 acres of land for sale in the parish at prices ranging from $9 to $20 an acre, while thousands of acres can be rented, worked on shares or otherwise be put into cultivation under the admirable tenant and share systems that are obtaining with the most progressive of the large planters.

I am writing this letter from New Iberia, the busiest, briskest, brightest, most thriving town I have visited during my summer of Louisiana Outings. Just at this point the Teche bends pliantly back upon itself, forming a huge S, and upon the back of this the town lies. It lies in the sunshine like a flower on a fence; it dreams and is sweet but it most certainly is not asleep. Within the water clasp, opposite town, is that Fausse Point settlement I visited last week. Six miles above town is a wonderful lake—Lake Tasse—that will someday I hope have a white circle of villas drawn around its beautiful shores, and outvie the famed Floridian winter resorts.

Away, inward from the bayous, the fields are unrolled, treeless, lovely, shining in the September sun like cloth of gold, and chopped off into triangles, and squares, and oblongs by their thorny hedges. Off at the horizon like dark clouds piled high are the graceful outlines of the hill islands. If one should climb in the towers of the handsome courthouse that is one of the beauty spots of the town, one would have a view of wooded lands, of sloping fields, of velvet green bayou banks, of haycocks and gray roofs, of clustering trees and peaceful spires and shining water, as can be had nowhere else, even in the Teche country.

The bayou at this point is narrow and deep; so narrow that places are cut out in the banks to allow the steamboats to turn around; so deep that when a boat sinks, as boats sometimes do, she will go quite out of sight. The streets of this town are long and narrow. They are lined with wooden shops; big brick edifices; sweet old-fashioned homes, retreating, like shy old maids, under cover of old-fashioned flowers. Some of the older residences are of mellow, red brick, with deep stone porches and cumbrous roof, supported on stone columns that make one think of Samson.

The shops are crowded with goods, and display such fine assortments as to speak well for their patronage. On one corner is a charming red brick church, its steep walls and roof and belfry covered with ivy, that gives it the mellow look of having been there for ages. In another part of the town a large Catholic church of pink brick and gray mullioned windows is being built. When finished it will be as beautiful as that beautiful church on Napoleon Avenue, New Orleans.

New houses are going up everywhere. The healthy, inspiring music of hammer and saw is heard from morning until night, and New Iberia is at this moment more rapidly and solidly improving than any other town in the southwestern part of the state, and perhaps than any other place in the state, save Shreveport.

New Iberia, the trading place for hundreds of farmers, the shipping point for a vast amount of farm products, is one of the busiest factory towns in the South. I sit here in the bow window of this sweet home, shut in by roses and flowering honeysuckle from the outside world, and retired as I am I can hear the hum and buzz of mighty mills at work, and I know that when noon time comes hundreds of factory hands will go pouring down the street.

This morning Mr. Richard Pomeroy, the progressive and cultured immigrigation agent for Iberia Parish, drove me over the town and suburbs on a factory inspection tour. We visited twenty-five factories and mills. At one, the interesting process by which cotton is sucked up from the cart, ginned, baled and loaded into freight cars was shown us. At another, the seed was ginned into pulp and made into oil, oil cake and soap. At others, fire bricks were being made, shingles, sashes and blinds. This list of factory industries, circulating thousands of dollars weekly in the town, giving steady, remunerative employment to an army of skilled workmen, includes cistern and wagon factories, saw mills, tannery, coke and broom factories, foundries, an ice factory, wagon factories.

If a cotton factory were erected here the evolution of the product from the white floss to the white fabric, from the gray seed to the bottle of refined oil or the cake of perfumed soap, could be observed in all its detail. The manufacturer should seek the place where his raw material abounds, and for this reason the Teche, already margined at this one little city of 5,000 inhabitants with so promising a list of industries, presents its compliments to capitalists, who should study its resources and its adaptability as a great factory center for the entire Southwest.

The educational advantages of New Iberia are in keeping with its prosperity and the culture of its people. There are twenty-seven public schools in the parish with 2,207 pupils, and in the city proper there is a fine high school, the pride of the citizens, and for which the ladies are collecting money to build a fine schoolhouse. In addition to this and several graded schools, there is a good convent and other private schools of more than local reputation. The most noteworthy and praiseworthy sign of the times, as it affects the young men of the city, is evidenced by the healthful growth and prosperity of the literary society, of which Mr. Lee, a most accomplished and elegant young gentleman, is president.

The debates of this society, which is doing a real work of culture, take place on Saturday evenings, when the society becomes the host for many of the best citizens. The discussions are happy indications of the mental growth attained by the young men of the town. This, at least, is better work than that of "regulators." The society owns a fine library of several hundred volumes, which could easily be converted into a free public library, a luxury that ought to be a necessity in a town like New Iberia.

Two or three miles out of town in a tiny, oddly-constructed Swiss villa of a house set far back on the fields away from the world, unfrequented, unvisited, all but forgotten by the world in which he has played the part of one of its truest heroes, there lives alone with a sweet little wife and a devoted young adopted son, that grand old fellow Captain Abe Smith, the man who saved hundreds of lives during the Last Island storm of 1856. In those days he was a sturdy, manly, handsome young fellow, a wholesome, hearty, big-hearted kind of a fellow, I should say, with whom no woman or child could be afraid and who rose to superb heights in his own splendid courage and idea of duty.

When that terrible storm broke over the South and all voices were mourning the fate of the hundreds of summer visitors at Last Island, Captain Abe Smith undertook to go to their relief. He owned his little boat, but he was willing to risk all he had on earth in the effort to save helpless human lives. How he reached the island, how he forced his boat into Village Bayou, how he battled like a demon fighting demons, snatching women and children and men, too, from the sharp teeth of the waves and lashing them to his boat—all this is known, or was known until it and he were forgotten.

He lost his boat. Her old, rotted hulk lies stuck in the sands of that dismal place. He lost his fortune, for it was all in his boat. He lost his health, and he finally became,, from the horrors of that terrible time, a helpless, hopeless invalid. But he saved many human lives. When the storm was over the survivors presented him with a gold watch.

The grass and the weeds towered as high as the carriage top and buried the horses’ bodies in their foliage when we drove over the abandoned fields away from the main road, searching for the home of this hero. A miserable little cabin suddenly peered out of a small clearing. A dog, a woman, a man and several children crowded to the door to gape at us. They looked lost, abandoned, desolate, hiding down there behind that dense jungle of weeds.

"Does Captain Smith live out here anywhere?" asked "R. F," the handsome, blithest, nicest young fellow that ever helped me to an "outing."

"He does," was the answer.

"Where?" said "R. F."

"Just keep on, you can’t get lost, I reckon."

And so we did keep on through the mournful stillness of a sad-colored autumnal noon, where no sound of human life or nature visited the ear, and all the world seemed buried under the over-luxuriant grasses of abandoned fields. It was a queer, picturesque little house we finally came to, with odd gables, and such an extraordinary roof that it goes beyond me to describe it. It made me think of a wrecked schooner, and at any rate it looked as if the builder had composed it as he went along, setting it up right out of his head, as some country editors do their best editorials.

A grapevine and some fruitless fruit trees filled the yard, a lean hound whined at the house corner. We entered the cottage and were greeted by the gentle little wife, who was one of those the hero rescued from the Last Island and who, alone of all the number, has repaid him for her life. What a gentle, cheery, patient ministrant is she; how tirelessly her slender slip of a figure goes here and there doing a man’s work with a woman’s heart; bread-winner and fire-tender, sweet nurse and comforter. Oh, I tell you, there is nothing so faithful, so loving, so true as a true woman. Her arms are shelters from a world of woes. It is her mission to save hearts, just as the hero of Last Island saved lives.

He sat in his big chair, helpless, voiceless, helpless as a little child. I turned my eye away that he might not see the sorrow there nor read the thought in my heart. "By the world forgotten." Are there no survivors of that dread storm save the sweet-faced wife? Is gratitude dead out of the hearts of those whom the gallant fellow saved, that he sits there day after day, week in and week out, helpless, alone, poverty-stricken, and lonesome; un-cheered, with only the little wife’s tender hand and the unskilled but loving strength of the lad standing between him and the want of the world.

This man was a hero. He seems to be meeting the fate of heroes. Let him live sadly and die un-regretted; let his dull days drag by as they may. When he is dead, his picture will be published, his deeds will be lauded and the people he saved may give him a stone.

CATHARINE COLE

 Note: LAST ISLAND (Isle Derniere), which lies west of Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico, was devastated by a hurricane on August 10, 1856. All of the island’s structures were destroyed and 200 lives were lost. Last Island has subsequently broken into a series of small, uninhabited islands. Lafcadio Hearn in his novel Chita. A Memory of Last Island (1889) gives a vivid account of the storm.