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draped in Spanish moss.
Hollo, what's here?
A bank of sand lies bare and dry under the paddlewheel.
Are we ashore?
Is that white bird a crane ? Are we at sea — is this a phantom ship?
On coming to the fore, I find that we are pushing through a sea-canal, marked off with boles of trees.
This work is seven miles long, and twelve feet deep, running between Marsh Island and the swamps of Terre Bonne, in Atchafalaya River, on the eastern bank of which lies the port of Brashear: a place created out of chaos, by the necessity which has sprung up since the settlement of Texas for a shorter and safer route from Galveston to New Orleans than that by way of Pass h Loutre.
The voyage is reduced by half the time.
By boat and car a man now runs from Galveston to New Orleans in little more than twenty-four hours.
Is Brashear land or water?
Slush and mud, gutter and pool, basin and drain, all meet in Brashear; a dismal swamp and fever-den, enclosed on every side with jungle, in which every tree is hung with Spanish moss.
This ghastly parasite clings in cobwebs, of dull mouse-colour, from every branch.
“Observe this weed,” a resident in Brashear says
1875.
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