pretty flower-beds were now nothing but masses of weeds and dead stalks.
Along the levee matters were even worse. Instead of forests of masts, or the innumerable chimneys of the steamboats, belching forth volumes of smoke, or huge barricades of cotton, sugar, and other produce, or thousands of drays, carts, and other vehicles, such as thronged the levee in olden times, the wharves were now silent, and served merely as promenades for motley groups of poor men, women, and children, who looked as if they did not know where the next meal was to come from.
The desolation of the great city sickened me, and I was the more indignant at what I saw, for I knew that this general prostration of business, and impoverishment of all classes, was not one of the legitimate results of warfare, but that ambitious and unscrupulous politicians were making use of the forlorn condition of the South for the furtherance of their own bad ends.
I longed to quit the scene of so much misery, and fully sympathized with those who preferred to fly from the country of their birth, and to seek homes in other lands, rather than to remain and be victimized, as they were being, by the wretches who had usurped all control of the affairs of the late rebel states.
Flying from the Country.
Taking advantage of the condition of mind and pocket which a great many people were in, a number of emigration schemes were started, most of them, I am confident, by swindlers. Many persons were so anxious to get away, that they did not exercise even common prudence in investigating the facilities that were offered them, and the result was, that they did much worse than if they had remained. The sufferings endured by some of these emigrants cannot be estimated, and the story of their attempts to find homes for themselves and their children in some land where they could live in peace and quietness, and enjoy the fruits of their labor without fear of being plundered, is one of the saddest and dreariest pages in the history of the country.
I was much interested in these emigration schemes when I first heard of them, and was extremely anxious to investigate them, for my own sake as well as for that of my suffering fellow-country people of the South. Venezuela was one of
