The next months ensuing Gibson spent in working up material for the illustration of a series of papers prepared by Mr. Charles Dudley Warner and Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis, descriptive of life and nature in the South. In March, 1886, he had left New York to join Mr. Warner in New Orleans. They made a tour, two months in length, covering Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, in which he took over five hundred photographs and accumulated much material in notes and sketches. A bright and picturesque letter to his wife gives a fine reminiscence of this delightful trip. “NEW IBERIA, LA. “_May 12/86_. “MY DEAR WIFE:-- “I have just returned from a trip in the outlying country to find your two letters awaiting me. Since leaving New Orleans I have been gadding about the country north, east, south and west, and am not yet done. The Téche country is mightily interesting if one can only live through it. The days come and go and are filled with enjoyment, but as to the night no man knoweth what may be in store for him. My hotel experiences would interest you, but I cannot write them. I left New Orleans with a Mr. William King as a companion, a young man who knows the country thoroughly and whose company Mr. Warner recommended I should request, as Warner was obliged to leave for the north. By the time we reach New Orleans again about five days hence, we shall have traveled together over one thousand miles of the Téche and other Louisiana territory. The weather has been charming, no hot weather which has not been deliciously tempered by the never failing breeze from the gulf. Cool breezy nights.