This peninsula was formed by the junction of two rivers, between which
intervened a narrow point of land, with a background of steep hills,
covered with a growth of black-jack and yellow-pine to the summit. Here
was a ferry with its Charon-like boat, of the primitive sort--flat
barge, poled over by negroes, and capable of containing at one time many
bales of cotton, a stagecoach or wagon with four horses, besides
passengers _ad libitum._
This ferry constituted the chief source of revenue of Madame Grambeau,
an old French lady, remarkable in many ways. She kept the stage-house
hard by, with its neat picketed inclosure, its overhanging live-oak
trees and small trim parterre, gay at this season with various annual
flowers, scarce worth the cultivation, one would think, in that land of
gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins, variegated
balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations, doubtless, to
make them dear and valuable to the foreign heart, to which they seem
essential, wherever a plot of ground be in possession.
Mignonette, I have observed, is a special passion with the French exile,
recalling, doubtless, the narrow boxes, fitted to the stone window-sill
of certain former lofty lodgings across the sea, perhaps, situated in
the heart of some great city, and overlooking roofs and court-yards--the
street being quite out of the question in such a view, distant, as it
seems, from them, as the sky itself, though in an opposite direction.
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