With the exception of this sweet spot, I thought all the little towns and villages we passed wretched-looking in the extreme.' Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways now, and is adding to them--pushing them hither and thither into all rich outlying regions that are naturally tributary to her.

And like Vicksburg and New Orleans, she has her ice-factory: she makes thirty tons of ice a day.
In Vicksburg and Natchez, in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich could wear it.

But anybody and everybody can have it now.

I visited one of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar regions might look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics.

But there was nothing striking in the aspect of the place.