Their honesty was proverbial."--GRACE KING, _New Orleans, the Place and People_, pp. 346-349. CASWALL'S ACCOUNT OF BISHOP POLK'S EFFORTS IN LOUISIANA IN 1854 "Bishop Polk, of Louisiana, was one of the guests. He assured me that he had been all over the country on Red River, the scene of the fictitious sufferings of 'Uncle Tom,' and that he had found the temporal and spiritual welfare of the negroes well cared for. He had confirmed thirty black persons near the situation assigned to Legree's estate. He is himself the owner of four hundred slaves, whom he endeavours to bring up in a religious manner. He tolerates no religion on his estate but that of the Church. He baptizes all the children, and teaches them the Catechism. All, without exception, attend the Church service, and the chanting is creditably performed by them, in the opinion of their owner. Ninety of them are communicants, marriages are celebrated according to the Church ritual, and the state of morals is satisfactory. Twenty infants had been baptized by the bishop just before his departure from home, and he had left his whole estate, his keys, &c., in the sole charge of one of his slaves, without the slightest apprehension of loss or damage. In judging of the position of this Christian prelate as a slave-owner, the English reader must bear in mind that, by the laws of Louisiana, emancipation has been rendered all but impracticable, and, that if practicable, it would not necessarily be, in all cases, an act of mercy or of justice."--_The Western World Revisited_, by the Rev. Henry Caswall, M.A., author of _America and the American Church_, etc. Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1854. See _Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom_, by Frederick Law Olmsted, Vol. II, pp. 212-213. OLMSTED'S OBSERVATIONS IN LOUISIANA IN 1860