“We have driven for a whole day over a prairie peopled with all sorts of wild things in the way of birds. Meadow larks, plover, snipe, white and blue herons, buzzards, egrets, many birds so tame that they could easily be killed by a cut of my whip. We drove through acres and acres of blue flag in blossom, and for miles pursued the shaded roads through dense woods draped in the ever-present festoons of moss--in this country seen in its fullest perfection, every tree being laden with it, hanging like heavy trailing curtains, sometimes twenty feet in length. The effect in a breeze is indescribably beautiful. The Téche Country is the paradise of Louisiana, and comes as a welcome contrast to the filth and squalor of the city of New Orleans with which I was so nauseated. To-night we leave for the Averys’. We shall arrive there to-night and I anticipate a fine time visiting Jefferson’s Island and making trips up the various bayous. We shall try to get away from there Friday evening in time to get the steamer ‘Iberia’ here by which we shall return, through a sail of about 300 miles by lake, bayou, and Mississippi River to New Orleans. Thereat I shall spend about three days and then start for the homeward trip, stopping over at Mobile for a day or so. I will be home about June 1 as I originally approximated. “Of course you know that I am anxious to be at home again. The only way that I can keep my spirits is to throw my mind into the work and interest myself with my surroundings. In the main my health has been good, in fact, excellent, in spite of starvation cookery and God-forsaken hostelries which anywhere else under heaven would be considered good material for bonfires and their proprietors hung.