Explore "Life on the Mississippi, Part 8" by Mark Twain on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a bride -- no, much more so; like a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now -- no modifications, no compromises, no half-way measures. The magnolia-trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want distance on it, because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom blossoms -- they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in the South at last; for here the sugar region begins, and the plantations -- vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered together in the middle distance -- were in view. And there was a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.
And at this point, also, begins the pilot's paradise: a wide river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore to shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.