Notorious Woman: The Celebrated Case of Myra Clark Gaines

II. The City by the River

IIThe City by the River In the spring of 1833 a ship carrying Myra and William Whitney entered the mouth of the Mississippi River at Balize Point. For William, it was his first view of Louisiana. Myra had returned to her birthplace at least twice with her adoptive parents, but never with such a sense of anticipation, nervousness, and excitement. She and her new husband believed their journey was the beginning of a quest for fortune and honor; almost certainly , they did not expect it to be the start of a lifelong battle for justice.1 Travelers like the Whitneys who journeyed to New Orleans in the early 18305 had a choice of three approaches to the city.Those who came downriver on steamboats passed stately homes and slave cabins, with unending rows of cotton and sugar cane lying just behind the levee. For izo miles above New Orleans, orange trees and oleander blossoms perfumed the air and live oaks hung with Spanish moss arched over the river. Other visitors to New Orleans arrived by steamboat from Mobile along a coastal waterway protected by a chain of low, sandy barrier islands. From the decks, these travelers could watch seagulls and pelicans on the beaches. Their steamboats stopped at Lake Pontchartrain where the passengers boarded a canal boat or railroad train for the six-mile journey through alligatorfilledswamps into the city. Coming from Cuba, Myra and William used a third approach to New Orleans, through the South Pass of the Mississippi River where the muddy water of the river met the blue Gulf. Nineteenthi . W. W. Whitney to GeneralJoshua Whitney, Oct. i, 183z, Joshua Whitney Papers, Broome County Historical Society, Binghamton, N.Y. The City by the River 31 century travelers described the entry point at Balize as a "sandy, boggy, loggy, grassy, and snaggy strip of land," the most "desolate and lonely spot on earth." Only a small cluster of shacks huddled at the base of the lighthouse marked any human presence, and for miles no vegetation marred the landscape.2 "Passing the bar" at Balize Point represented a challenge that could only be handled by experienced bar pilots. Every ship entering the river took on one of these navigators who were responsible for guiding the ship over the mud bar deposited by the river as it entered the Gulf of Mexico. For most of the distance from river mouth to New Orleans a channel fifty feet deep allowed oceangoing ships to reach the port, but at the entrance to the river the average depth was only twelve feet. Late winter and,early spring—when Myra and William traveled—was the most treacherous time to approach New Orleans from the south. As floodwaters from the Mississippi poured soil-choked waters into its channel, the bars blocking the entrance might enlarge almost overnight, shutting off the river and its port from all major foreign commerce. Ships caught inside the river might be delayed for months, while ships outside also had to wait patiently for the waters to subside and the entrance to deepen.3 The one-hundred-mile journey upriver from Balize to New Orleans took an average of two weeks during most of the year. Swift currents could make the trip much longer. One ship from Hamburg took sixty-five days to cross the Atlantic and seventy-six days to sail from Balize to New Or2 . Newton, Americanization of French Louisiana, 155; A. Oakey Hall, The Manhattaner in New Orleans; or, Phases of "Crescent City" Life (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1851), i; Joseph G. Tregle, Louisiana in the Age of Jackson: A Clash of Cultures and Personalities (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999), i. Numeroustravel accounts describethe approachesto New Orleans. See Henry Tudor, Narrative of a Tour in North America, . . . with an Excursion to the Island of Cuba, 2. (London: J. Duncan, 1834); Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America, 2. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, 1833); and James Stuart, Three Years in North America, 2. (NewYork: J. & J. Harper, 1833). 3. James P. Baughman, "Gateway to the Americas," in The Past As Prelude: New Orleans, 1718-1968, ed. Hodding Carter (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1968), 260. The French recognized the problem of sedimentationat the mouth of the river soon after the founding of New Orleans. In iyzz, the due d'Orleans offered 10,000 livres to anyone who could achieve and maintainfifteento sixteen feet over the bars. No one succeeded in winningthe prize. In 1725 royal pilots were stationed...