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Seafood Sigh tseeing
(Continued from Page 7)
After grading and another final inspection the women hand packers go to work, rapidly filling the empty cans which are fed to them from an overhead trpck, putting into each can the required weight of shrimp determined by the scale on which each can sets while they are filling it. Hot fresh water and a salt tablet are added to the uniformly filled cans as they move down the conveyor to the closing machine that caps and seals them.
In this process each can is coded so that any customer or dealer anywhere in the United States can anytime pick up a can of shrimp, oysters or crabmeat and by this code trace back not only the factory that packed it and the grade placed in it, but also , the month of the year and the day of the month.
The final factory process is the cooking—in which the cans of shrimp are placed in steel baskets and placed in pressure cookers where they remain 12 minutes at 250° fahrenheit.
The next time you see them will be on the grocers’ shelves of the nation bearing the “DeJean” label—a Mississippi Gulf Coast trademark with national consumer acceptance for well over a quarter of a century.
Cat Island
Continued from Page 5)
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As the Couevas family originally discovered Cat Island’s mineral rich grass, fresh artesian water and size make an excellent combination for raising cattle.
ficer named Duroux.
Captain Duroux, finding himself far from the supervision of his superiors, began immediately to abuse his authority by working his men night and day — not at their expected soldierly duties, but cutting down the trees that covered the island to make charcoal in huge kilns and producing lime out of the abundance of oyster shells — all of which he sent to New Orleans on the regular supply boat through bribery and sold for his own personal profit.
Not only did he use them as laborers but never paid them their wages as soldiers. and when any complained Duroux meted out such gentle punishment as ordering them stripped naked and spread-eagled under the broiling sun, or causing them to be tied to stakes with their hands bound behind them and exposed to the torture of the swarming thirsty mosquitoes.
The men endured this cruelty for months until practically all of them
were covered with bloody welts from repeated floggings, until they were transformed by pain and hate into an angry mob of desperate savages.
Then, one day, while Duroux was absent from the island on a fishing trip they made their plans. When his skiff pulled into shore at sundown their own appointed firing squad, lined up on the beach, riddled him with bullets and left his dead body lie in the crimsoning surf.
Knowing full well the penalty for killing an officer the whole detachment rowed to the mainland and set out through the tangle of jungle with the hope of deserting to the British in the Carolinas and thus save their lives.
Some made it. But most of them were betrayed by what they thought were friendly Indians and were turned over, bound hand and foot to the French military authorities who took them back to New Orleans for court martial and death.
On lonely and lovely Cat Island the raccoons again freely foraged, only temporarily disturbed by the brief but bloody reign of Dictator Duroux. On the island to this day can be found faint traces of the camp of the Swiss mercenary mutineers.
THE HERO OF CAT ISLAND
Over another half century was to elapse before Cat Island became the backdrop for the man who was to play an important role in the winning of the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815 by General Jackson’s outnumbered and hastily collected army. Here is the story.
Couevas Street in Biloxi and a seldom visited tomb in Biloxi’s old French Cemetery are all that are left to remind us of Jean Couevas, who is honored in American history as the Gulf Coast’s Hero of the War of 1812.
Jean Couevas and his family were the only inhabitants on Cat Island when the British anchored at neighboring Ship Island to attack New Orleans with the greatest amphibious invasion force ever launched by a foreign foe against American soil. It was Jean’s stubborn courage in a moment of decision that helped save us from losing not only the Battle of New Orleans, but with it the entire half of our present nation, then still known as the Louisiana Purchase.
Back in the 1780’s Juan de Couevas of Biloxi received a Spanish land grant
v_^ing him title to the entire western half of Cat Island. When the family took possession Jean was about 20 years old.
They began raising cattle on Cat Island, which thrived on the lush marsh grass and soon Couevas beef was in demand all along the Coast from New Orleans to Mobile. And by the time the British arrived at neighboring Ship Island in December of 1814, the Couevas family on Cat Island was one of the wealthiest along the Coast and Jean was a middle aged habitant with a grown family of his own.
The British, of course, with 10,000 troops to feed soon discovered the nearby existence of the Couevas cattle on Cat Island and sent a foraging detail to commandeer them. Trying to protect his property Jean was shot in the leg and was taken prisoner.
However, when the British commanding officers discovered the local prominence of the Couevas family, and the possibilities of this Frenchman who undoubtedly owed no allegiance to the new United States, they promptly administered to his wound. Then they courteously offered him his freedom, full compensation for the cattle and all damage done, complete protection for all Couevas property and future favors when their occupation was complete. All he had to do — they suavely summarized
—	was instruct their pilots how to negotiate the safest and shortest water route to New Orleans. The unthinkable alternative — they sweetly insinuated — was continuance of the incarceration and further confiscation of his cattle and property should he be so foolish as to refuse.
To the utter astonishment of the assembled Gold Braid Jean emphatically did refuse. And so it was that in the crowded cabin of a man-o-war the British invasion suffered its first defeat to a lone enemy who was not even an American.
For the personal courage of this Cat Island inhabitant in the War of 1812 definitely delayed the enemy from attacking New Orleans until they could find a competent and willing local guide
—	from suddenly appearing on its outskirts and finding it unprepared and unable to put up that brilliant defense nearly two weeks later which decisively turned the Battle of New Orleans into an overwhelming victory.
(Continued on Page 12)
The small fry and the not so small can enjoy themselves on the children’s playground of the ever expanding H road water Beach Motor Ilotil. Equipped with merry-go-rounds, sliilcs, seesaws, strings and rocking horses it provides plenty to do.