Gambling is too much the order of the day. A large billiard room faces the main street in this village, and seems never to lack for customers. In this room one man killed another by striking him on the head with the _cue_, and his trial was just finished as I arrived. He was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to ten years confinement in the State Prison. The result of the trial gave general dissatisfaction among the people. They thought he ought to have been convicted of murder and suffered its penalty. Not much attention is paid to the cultivation of vegetables or fruit. The peach and fig-tree were the only fruit trees I saw, and but few of them.--The fig-tree much resembles our northern quince tree, but grows some larger in size. The only vegetables we had at table, were turnips and sweet potatoes. The northern potatoe will not produce a crop unless new seed is obtained every year. All the beds in this region are surrounded with thin curtains, or as they are termed here, moscheto-bars, to protect the inmate from that pestiferous, anti-sleeping insect, the moscheto. Of all insects this world produces, the moscheto is the most troublesome and annoying. To lie down without a bar, as I sometimes did, and fight the moschetoes all night long is dreadful. Too tired and sleepy to keep awake, I would fall into a drowse, only to be aroused in a moment by half a dozen dabbing into my face, and singing in my ears. They are indeed, too familiar by half; and the only chance to cut their acquaintance is to flee. I would not spend my days in the region of moschetoes for the sake of wealth, for I should only possess splendid misery. CHAPTER XVI. About a mile above this place, we left Red River, and travelled the road on the bank of Bayou Rapide for twenty-five miles, to the mansion house of a Mr. Henderson, where we stayed over night. In this day's ride, we passed over as rich land as I ever saw, covered with extensive cotton plantations. It is all river-bottom land of a red clayey soil; and all along the road, as we passed, we saw clouds of negroes with bags and baskets at their sides, picking cotton. The land produces an abundant and a profitable crop, and the planters appear to have grown rich. But it seems not exactly to be a paradise, if there be indeed, any such a place on earth. It is excessively annoyed by moschetoes, and is very unhealthy. During the warm, sickly summer months, the planters with their families flee to the pine woods, where the air is fine and salubrious; and leave their overseers and negroes to battle with disease and moschetoes, the best way they can. They are very companionable, hospitable and kind, and their style of living is much the same as that of the southern planters generally.