Sui Generis by Charles Dudley Warner (1887)
"I never could find out exactly where New Orleans is. I have looked for it on the map without much enlightenment. It is dropped down there somewhere in the marshes of the Mississippi and the bayous and lakes. It is below the one and tangled up among the others, or it might some day float out into the Gulf and disappear. How the Mississippi gets out I never could discover. When it first comes in sight of the town it is running east: at Carrolton, it abruptly turns its rapid, broad, yellow flood and runs south, turns presently eastward, circles a great portion of the city, then makes a bold push to the north to avoid Algiers and reach the foot of Canal St. and encountering then the heart of the town, it sheers off again along the old French Quarter and Jackson Square due east, and goes no one knows where"
from Harpers New Monthly Magazine (New York: Harper and Brothers)
note: This excerpt is also the prologue of a book called RED ROOM RENDEZVOUS by Paulette Crain published in 2002. I was very intimate with all of the players (not necessarily in the biblical sense) as I had also lived for several years at the Rendezvous (or Rendezoo, as we referred to it). Paulette very graciously sent me a signed copy as a christmas present (2005) and copies are available at: http://oaktreebooks.com/RedRoomRendezvous.htm
