his opportunity to escape again. Judging of their condition from their countenances, and from their unthinking merriment, I should think them the happiest people here, and in general, far more so than their masters. It is a most formidable part of the evil of slavery, that the race is far more prolific than that of the whites, and that their population advances in a greater ratio. They are at present in this region more numerous than the whites, and this inequality is increasing every day. Thinking people here, who look to the condition of their posterity, are appalled at this view of things, and admit that something must be done to avert the certain final consequences of such an order of things. I remark, in concluding this subject, that the people here always have under their eye the condition and character of the free blacks. It tends to confirm them in their opinions upon the subject. The slaves are addicted to theft, but the free blacks much more so. They, poor wretches, have had the privilege of getting drunk, and they avail themselves of it. The heaviest scourge of New Orleans is its multitudes of free black and coloured people. They wallow in debauchery, are quarrelsome and saucy, and commit crimes, in proportion to the slaves, as a hundred to one. The population of Louisiana is supposed to be, at present, between two and three hundred thousand. After New Orleans, the most populous parishes are Baton Rouge, Feliciana, Rapide, and Natchitoches. Parishes in this region are civil divisions, derived from the former regime. They are often larger than our counties at the North. This country, from the character of its soil, cannot have a dense population, until the swamps are drained. The population, except the sparse inhabitants of the pine woods, is fixed along the margin of the water courses, and the greater part of the planters can convey their produce immediately on board the steam-boats.--_Recollections of the Last Ten Years. Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi_, by Timothy Flint, 1826, pp. 345-349. THE OBSERVATIONS OF BERNARD, DUKE OF SAXE-WEIMAR EISENACH, IN NEW ORLEANS