The crowding and haste of other days no longer stirred the great wharf at New Orleans, and steamboats did not now as then struggle for place or preferment, but lay apart, a melancholy picture of the changing fortunes of carriers and the fluctuations of our country's commerce. On the wide expanse, once piled high with goods, only scattered packages lay, and these hid away under grimy coverings, like corpses awaiting burial. About the boat I sought, the tumult of the shipping ebbed and flowed, and to one side the great city lay as if deserted, or asleep under the hot afternoon sun. Close by, and near the river's edge, a procession of convicts came on, winding in and out amid sacks of coffee and bales of cotton, sad and noiseless, as specters might have marched.