An old Credence song came to mind as we plied our way down the river after leaving Natchez. Credence was singing about a road and meeting people ‘up around the bend’, all we met ‘up around the bend’ was more water and more bends.

Quite a few river barges passed us as well, carrying various cargoes up and down the river. It is an industrial and commercial waterway and has suffered ecologically from that experience over the last 150 years, it is starting to make a comeback. But a big job!

The Mississippi is the second longest river in the US at 3,766 km. It and its tributaries pass through 32 States. It rises in Northern Minnesota and flows south draining 2.98m sq km between the Rocky Mts in the west and the Appalachian Mts in the east. The Missouri is the longest river in the US, rising in the Rockies in Montana flowing east and south for 3,767 km, it is 1 km longer than the Mississippi an example of American precision! The Missouri joins the Mississippi at St Louis, more or less the middle of the US. The rivers form the fourth longest river system in the world. It truly is a big ditch.

Our first stop after Natchez is at St. Francisville and marks the transition from the dominance of cotton to sugar cane. It was around these parts that the sugar plantations would stretch for miles with immense wealth being generated from the application of slave labour before the Civil War in the 1860s. In St. Francisville we visit our first plantation mansion, a much restored property. The Myrtles, originally built in 1796. Quite a sight. And a great contrast with the slaves living conditions.

The plantation mansions were generally surrounded by huge oak trees, some are still here 150-250 years old. Many of the homes were destroyed during the civil war and others fell into disrepair. Later restored they have been turned into hotels and tourist attractions.
We had a short wander around St. Francisville, quite a small town at about 1800 people. It has its roots in Cajun country but there is a big English historical influence in the post Civil War Victorian homes that dot the town among a number of prewar homes.

Grace Episcopal Church also pre dates the war, the graveyard has numerous memorials to the fallen.

It was Veteran’s Day when we were there and the military had been through planting flags on all the graves of veterans, including those from the civil war.

Further down the river we called into Houmas House and Nottoway House. Their stories being much the same. Some readers may recognise the name Paul Ramsay, the Australian entrepreneur (now dead) behind the Ramsay Hospital Group. He acquired Nottoway House in the early 2000s for US$4.5m, subsequently spent US$14m restoring it for guests etc. In 2019, after his death, it was sold for US$3.5m. His plot for it hadn’t worked and he did his dough in a big way!

At the end of the Civil War the slaves were freed but in a lot of cases they really had nowhere to go. So they remained on the plantations as share farmers. Holding small plots that sold their crop to the former plantation owner who paid them. This money was then spent in the plantation store for food etc and also for supplies in order to plant the following crop. Not much if anything was left over. A bit like the English feudal system! The system eventually began to collapse with the advance of mechanisation in the years before and after WW1.

Nottoway was our last stop before journeying the last 140km or so down to New Orleans. We didn’t see much of this part of the river as we were asleep arriving in New Orleans at about 3am.
The trip has been an interesting experience. The river itself is not a ‘pretty picture’; its attraction I think is in the human history, the music story and the culinary delights that one passes through along the way. We did not see a lot of wild life on the river, even aboard the boat things were subdued!

Including us there were 8 Aussies aboard, a few from various parts of the UK and Ireland. The rest Americans. We tried to make up for them!

New Orleans awaits for a few days.