Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana, on the Mississippi about fifty kilometers from the Gulf of Mexico. It is a town of just over eleven thousand souls: a bluff, a port and a river.
| Type | Place (town) |
| Spanish entry | Baton Rouge |
Access and name
From Port Arthur it is four hundred kilometers by rail, one to two days. At night it shows a row of lights on the water. Rail and river are the only ways in; there are no automobiles, only horses, carriages and boats. Downriver lies New Orleans, the earlier capital, which “served for the reconstruction”; afterward Baton Rouge became the capital again.
The French name means “red stick”: the Indians’ territorial post, “always full of hanging things”, an explanation associated with Jean Tourbouche.
Layout
The plan in use (1860) shows two sections: Intramuros, the old town on the bluff, extending north, with the richest properties; and the new town on swampy, neglected land won from the river, where “like Venice” some buildings are sunk. The cathedral, “a kind of mini Notre Dame” in mixed French Gothic, holds Sunday mass. Over the river, a building of three tall stories of open sheds (“more or less eight stories”) dominates parts of the town.
The port, beside the train station, is a dark area of sheds, mud and rotten wood, like the surroundings of the port of Buenos Aires, where “wounds and screams are muffled”.
Government
A chief mayor and a council govern. One councilor runs the port sheds, through which passes “the dirtiest merchandise, or at least the untaxed kind”; another was killed by a passing company. The town was once “a nest of pirates”; Henry the Coward remains from that time, with a political post.
Trades and residents
The town is navigated by trade: drugs, poison, top cotton, crafts, spider collectors. It has a taxidermists’ quarter; puppeteers calling themselves “the professors”; a violent mental asylum; a madam’s house; taverns, small hotels and dives in the shallows (half past seven is recorded as an ordinary evening hour at one tavern); a meeting point for sages; one of the druids; and the lord of the bugs, whose house sheltered a company for one of its two nights there.
The climate is humid and hot. Insects fill the town in the afternoon; steam keeps them away.
Open questions
- The council’s nature, size, selection and rank relative to the mayor are not recorded.
- Names and places of the madam, cathedral, eight-story building, druid, sages’ meeting place and asylum are unknown.
- Whether a certain Mary Ann was in Baton Rouge went unanswered.
- What the insects are, and whether the steam is deliberate, is unknown.
- Whether “Intramuros” is a real wall is unclear.