iiir .^ Class 12,16, Rnnk .Ci>b J L'^i THE SOUTHERN STATES SINGE THE WAK. 1870-1. BY HOBEUT SOMERS. WITE MAP. E. Sonbon anb |Tcto gorh; MACMILLAN AND CO. 1871. r 1. — 3 of cirtl oH- 1 anta- ge 37 / fziu i-o.vno.v ««EAD STREET HILL. PREFACE. There is little to say by way of preface to this book. To explain how it came to be written would lead only to personal details of no interest to the reader. Its defects cannot be extenuated nor its merits enhanced by any statement in this form; and a Preface might as well be wholly dispensed with but for a tribute of thanks which it is alike incumbent and pleasing to pay. To John Pender, of Manchester, who warmly encouraged my design from first to last, and gave me letters of introduction that proved most valuable — to Robert Dalglish, M.P. for Glasgow, who readily obtained from the Foreign Office a letter commending Her Majesty's Consuls to render me such assistance as they could properly afford — and to all in the United States* too numerous to name, from whom through these and other relationships much information was received — I owe the most cordial acknowledgments. Nor can I omit to express my '~^ admiration of the general civility of the American people, 'y}! from whom, during a soioum of months among them with ^nta- all the curiosity of an inquirer, not a word escaped in my hearin!? v — ''■ ' +o a stranger or a British subject to b vi PREFACE. This Inquiry has been accomplished without connection with any Association, mercantile or political. The Author alone is responsible for the manner in which it has been performed, and the conclusions to which it comes. Among the many writers who visit the United States with somewhat similar purposes of observation, one so seldom directs his steps to the South that I am fain to hope there may be found in this circumstance alone an ample warrant of publication. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introduction : General Subjects of Inquiry Fage. 1 CHAPTER II. Mount Vernon. — Washington's life as a Planter. — The Woods of Virginia. — Aspect of the Country from Acquia Creek to Richmond. — Agricultural Divisions of Virginia — Their general Characteristics .... Page 7 CHAPTER III. City of Richmond — Some features of its Trade and Industry.- — Tone of Politics. — The General Assembly. — Testimony borne of the Freedraen by Employers. — Rate of Wages.— Dearness of Articles of Consumption, and its Causes. — Population of the State and City. — Schools for the Negro Children Fage, 14 CHAPTER IV. The Land Question in Virginia. — Estates and Farms for Sale without Pur- chasers. — Eflects of War and Revolution. — The Annual State Fair. — Abundant natural Fertilisers. — New Industries. ■ — Regularity of the Markets for Tobacco and other Agricultural Produce.- — Railways. — Desir- ableness of Virginia to Middle-class Settlers Fage, 21 CHAPTER V. The Pine Forests of North Carolina. — Extended Cultivation of Cotton.— Jay- ment of Negroes by Shares in the Crop. — Small comparative Cost of Rail- ways. — The Port of Wilmington. — Exports of North Carolina since the War. — Partial compensation of lower Prices by higher Exchange Value of the Dollar. — Wilmington, Charlotte, and Rutherford Railway. — Governor Holden versus the White People.— Great increase of Negroes in Wilming- ton, — Rate of Wages i • . . . . Fage, 28 CHAPTER VI. City of Charleston— its Ruin in the War — Marks of gradual Restoration. — The Battery. — Great Fire of 1862. — Charleston account of the Losses of the Southern States.— Loud Complaints of Misgovernment and Financial Jobbery. — Majority of Negroes in the Legislature. — Atmosphere of Poli- tical Suspicion. — Eflbrts of the Whites to regain a share of Representa- tion.— The Reform LTnion Page 37 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. Exports of Cotton from Charleston before and since the War. — Ojjening nuule for New York .Si»eculators. — Decrease of Bankinj^ C'apital in South Carolina. — A Fortunate Development — The Pho.sphate Deposits. — Their E.xtent and (Jharacteristics— Manufacture into Manures. — Great activity of the New Trade. — Rice Cultivation likely to tliminish.— The Environs of Charleston Varjc 44 CHAPTER VIII. The_Neff'o's-J- feest ~ Jrie.nds." — Sinister complexion of Politics. — Kindly Social Influences at work. — State of Ediicition. — System of Medical Relief in Charleston. — The Health Statistics. — Proportionate Mortality of Whites and Blacks. — Salubrity of the Climate. — Freednien's Savings Banks Fage 50 CHAPTER IX. The Capital of South Carolina.— The State Fair a failure. — Usury. — Governor Scott on the Position of Affiurs. — The Blue Ridj^e Railway project. — Mr. Treasurer Parker on Taxation and Negro Free Labour. — Political Opinions of the Farmers. — Arguments for and against Payment of Negro Farm- labourers by AV^ages or Share of the Crops. — Riiilway Freight. — Cotton- bagging and the Price of Cotton Page 56 CHAPTER X. Entry into Georgia. — The Town of Augusta— its Buildings— its Cotton Market. — Revolution in AgriciUture. — Importance of selected Cotton Seed.— Large amount of Cotton grown by Small Farmers.-^ JDpinion on the Negroes. — Augusta Cotton Factory.— ^Education Act. — Observance of tHeSabbath Page 62 CHAPTER XI. The Country from Augusta to Savannah. — Alleged Poorness of the Soil. — Population of the State. — (Competition betwixt the Cotton Lands of Georgia and the Mississippi "'Bottom." — Probable effects of Good Farming. — Want of Stock ajid Grass. — The Central Railroad Compjuiy . . Page 68 CHAPTER XII. The "Forest City." — Abundant demand for Labour.— Great increase of Cotton Exports. — Small proportion of Imports. — Disadvantages to Savannah of indirect Trade. — Rate of Wages. — Relative purchasing power of Money in England and the United States.- -Conclusions of the iiritish Consul.— State of Public Health. — Mortality of the Negroes. — Banking in Savannah.— Sylvan features of the City .... Page 74 CHAPTER XIII. The Railway System of Georgia.— Convenience of the Cars.— The " Captains " or Conductors. — Safety of Single-rail Lines. — Greater fertility of the Soil in the Interior. — Want of facilities of Branch Traffic. — Dilatory Cotton-picking. — General Characteristics of the various Divisions of Georgia "... Pag« 81 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV Central positiou of ISIacon. — Comm;md of the Rciilway Sj'stcm. — Great development of Railway Enterprise. — Success of the Old Lines. — State Endorsement of Railway Bonds. — The system of Railway Financin<_!:. — Does State Endorsement add to the Security of a First-Mortgage Bond I — Macon Cotton Manufactures Page 8G CHAPTER XV. Extraordinary rise of Atlanta from the ashes of the War. — The H. I. Kimball House. — Interview with a " Drummer" of the latest Patents. — The "Asses' Bridge."— The Hotel System.— Population of Atlanta.— Removal of the State Capital. — Origin of the Kimball House Specula- tion. — New Executive Mansion. — An Education Meeting. — Costume. — Peaches. — The Granite Mountain. — Round Cartersville. — Need of a Geological Survey of Northern Georgia Page 93 CHAPTER XVI. Progress of Chattanooga. — Ascent of Lookout Mountain. — Geographical and Geological Features.— Traces of the War.— The Rolling INlills.— Danks' Puddling Apparatus. — Cost of producing Coal aiirt Iron Ore. — Visit to Mineral Properties. — Agricultural qualities of the Land. — Stream of Emigrants at Chattanooga. — Navigation of the Tennessee . , Page 103 CHAPTER XVII. The " Valley of the Tennessee " — its first Settlement by White Planters — ■ its Physica] Features. — Present Agricultural Condition. — Competition betwixt the Old and New Cotton Lands of "the West." — Marks of Desolation. — Want of Tiaho ur. — Mnvpmpnt.g t\f tliA Npf^''"pg — Division of \ Estates. — Symptoms of Revival. — Progress of the Small HiU Fanners. Page 111 CHAPTER XVIII. Routine on a Cotton Plantation. — The Surroundings. — Planting and Mar- riage. — A Ride "round" 2,500 acres. — Disposal of the Soil. — Organization of Labour in the Cotton-fields. — Cotton-picking. — Ginning and Pressing. — Need of White Labour. — Live Stock on a Plantation. — The Hogs. — "Killing Day." — Pauperism and Free Labour. — Shallow Ploughing. — The "Mussel Shoals" of the Tennessee Page\\Q CHAPTER XIX. The Town that Jones built. — Riot in a Liquor Saloon. — What the Planters complain of.— Payjiind Privileges of the Negroes. — The Plantation Bell. — - The doctrine of Equality run to Seed. — Planting discussions in Jonesboro'. — Bad Whisky and other commodities. — Need of Tariff Reform. Page 126 CHAPTER XX. Town of Florence.— Traits of the War. — New Bridge over the Tennessee — The CiDtton Eiictory. — Abundance of Water-power. — Tariff Duties on Machinery. — Possibility of manufacturing Yarn in the South for Export. CONTENTS. — Cypress Creek. — Natural Beauties and Characteristics of its Ravines. — The l)rii)ping Spring's.- — The Phintations. — Openinj,' for Dairies.— Severe spell of Frost Vage 134 CHAPTER XX l. Corintli in Mississippi. — The Soil and Surroundings. — A Cotton Manufac- turinrr Scheme. — The Country southward on the Mobile and Ohio Rail- road. — The " Prairie Land." — Okolona. — A large Plantation on the " Prairie." — Preference of the Negroes for their old Masters. — The Share and Wages Systems. — The late Robert Gordon Fage 142 CHAPTER XXII. Stoppage on the Railway.—" Doctoring " the Engine. — A Word of Advice to Railway Companies. — The Town of Meridian. — Supposed Traces of Coal. — The " Ku-Klux-Klan'' — its Rise, Progress, and Decline. — Difficulty of finding Teachers of Negro Schools Page, 149 CHAPTER XXIII. From Meridian to Eutaw. — Mr. Stanton's failure to pay the Interest due on the A. and C. Bonds. — The Alabama "Prairie" Land. — Bridge over the Toml)igbee. — Tuscaloosa. — Decline of Learning in the University.— River System of Alabama.— The Warrior and Cahawba Coal and Iron Fields. — The Chinese on the Railway Works Fage 157 CHAPTER XXIV. Xj'he Vicksburg and Montgomery Railway. — Demopolis.— Desj2air of the ^ Planters for Labojjr. — Negro Women. — Selma — its CottoiT MllFl. — ReT'dVln omie"STunicij)ality. — Claims of the Town to be a Railway Centre. — Free School System in Alaliama. The Negroes and the School or Poll Tax. — Distribution of the School Money. — National Banking. — Patent •' Cotton Transplanter " Fage 165 CHAPTER XXV. Progress of Trade and Population in Montgomery. — Opening of the Mineral Districts by Railways. — Existing Ironworks. — Coal and Iron Seams in the Cahawba Basin. — The Red Moinitain — its Deposits of HaMuatite. — Proximity of the Warrior and Cahawba Coal-fields. — Recent Survey of Mr. Tait, F.G.S. — Analyses of Alabama Conl and Iron Ores. — Agricultiinil tonalities of the Mineral Region. — Probable Geological History. — Relative Price of Montevallo Coal and Pennsylvania Hay Fage 172 CHAPTER XXVL Night Journey to Mobile. - TheTiml)er Region. — TensawRiver. — Emigrants. — Obstiidcs to Shipping in the Bay. — Extension of Railway Connections. — Expoi-ts of ( 'otton and Lumber. — Increase of the Trade in Coffee. — Want of (?ai)it«l. — Banks. — Papa* ^auuikcture.— ('otton Oil Mills — Lesson to Planters. — The late Elections. — Health and Amusements . . Fage 180 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVII. Tiie New Road from Mobile to New Orleans. — Singular character of the Oountry. — The "Iron Horse" crossing Bays, Lakes, and Lagoons. — The " Rigolets." — First Impressions of New Orleans. — Goods on the Levee. — The Custom House. — The Streets and Avenues. — The Shell Road. — Weather in January.— Vegetation. — Sunday in a City of "AH Nations." Page 188 CHAPTER XXVIII. Population of New Orleans. — Natural Resources. — Revival of Business since the War. — Cotton. — Sugar. — Tobacco. — Rice and Grain. — Financial Disability. — Disproportion of Imports to Exports. — Great Decline of Imports of Coffee and Internal Trade Page 190 CHAPTER XXIX. Grievances. — Review of the Tariff — its baneful Effects on the Producing Classes. — Deficiency of Mercantile and Bi'.nking Capital. — The " National Banks." — Severity of Taxation.— Importance of a Revision of the Fiscal System of the United States . . • Page 204 CHAPTER XXX. Trip in the Bradhh Johnson down River. — The Sugar Plantations. — River Traffic. — Passengers. — The Scenery Page 214 CHAPTER XXXI. Woodlands, Point Celeste, and Magnolia Plantations. — The Sugar-Mills. — Sugar-refiniiif Apparatus. — Culture of the Sugar-Canes. — Fowler's Steam Ploughs. — Thomson's Road and Field Steamer. — Large Fixed Capital of Sugar Estates in Louisiana. — Chinese Labour Page 220 CHAPTER XXXII. Matters of general interest in New Orleans. — The " Negro Legislature." — The Negroes and the Poll or School Tax. — More about Sugar-growing and Sugar-making. — Cost of Louisianian Sugar- making Machinery. — Comparison with Prices of Glasgow Machinery for Sugar Plantations. — The " Sugar Concretor."- — Probable Causes of backward state of Sugar Culture in Louisiana Page 226 CHAPTER XXXIIL Mineral Traces in Louisiana. —Discovery of Rock Salt. — Rich Deposit of Crystalline Sulphur. — Ramie. — Ladies' Costume in New Orleans. — Tea. — Health Statistics of New Orleans. — Carrolton. — Stroll on the Bank of the Mississippi. — Fine Art " Remains."^ — Floral Development in February. Page 233 CHAPTER XXXIV. Incidents at Summit. — Want of Towns in the Interior of Mississippi. — Mr. Solomon's Account of his Commercial Relations with the Planters and Negi'oes. — The Law of Lien. — Usuiy. — The Free-trade Question. — Some Characteristics of the Dram and Drug Shops Page 23!;'^^ CONTENTS. CHAITEII X\XV. The Capital of IMississippi. — Interview with Governor Alcorn. — Average I'roduct of Cotton \wr Acre in the " Mississippi Bottom." — Vital and Kcononiio Statistics. — Comparison of Wliite and Negro Births and Mar- ria),fes. — Value of Farms in 1860 and 1870. — Proposed Payment of the Old State Debt . "" Page 247 CHAPTER XXXVl. The "Mississippi Bottom." — Plantation at Austin. — Ob.staclcs to Culti- vation ^"i/e Sof) CHAPTER XXXVII. Progress of Monij)liis. — Receipts of Cotton. — Buying on Spinners' Orders. — Through Bills of Lading. — Import of Foreign Goods at JNlemphis. — Politics and Railways of Arkansas. — Extensive River Comniunicatious. — Definition of the " C'otton Belt." — Banking and Insurance Capital. — Jefferson Davis. — The Southern Presbyterians and the Free Church of Scotland. ^^ Page 258 CHAPTER XXXVIII. West and Middle Tennessee. — Backwardness of Rural Ijabour.— Proportion of Corn and C'otton Crops. — Spring like " Glorious Summer."— Necessity of an approved Rotation of Crops in the Cotton States. — Similarity of Cotton and Turnip Husbandry. — City of Nashville. — Disorder of the State Finances. — Fanning in Tennessee. — Fallacy in the question of Free v. Slave Laboj X. — Conclusions as to the ProspCtts Of Cotton Culture; — — Page 266 CHAPTER XXXIX. Concluding Remarks Page 275 Index Page 285 THE SOUTHERN STATES SINCE THE WAR. CHAPTER I. Introduction : General Subjects of Inquirj'. [Washington — October 23.] I PURPOSE, in a not too liurried tour of the Southern States, to give some account of their condition under the new social and political system introduced by the civil war. I shall endeavour to collect such notes of the progress of their cotton plantations, of the state of their labom-ing population and of their industrial enterprises, as may help the reader to a safe opinion of their means and prospects of development. It will no douljt al.«o fall to me tt give such information of their natural resources, railways, and other public works, as may tend to show to what extent they are fitted to become a profitable field of enlarged immigration, settlement, and foreign trade. It is a prevailing idea on both sides of the Atlantic that the Southern States are likely to make vast progress in the next ten or twenty years, and it must be matter of common interest to see, by a near though brief view, how far this idea is supported by tlieir actual circumstances. The production of cotton is the chief material interest in the Southern States. It is the supply of cotton wool they have yielded, and may be made to yield, which gives them so powerful a hold on the a '■ention of the manufacturing interests of the world. ]jut while I shall make close observation of tlie state and prospects of cotton culture in the South, I must guard this inquiry against all supposed intention of trying to affi^ct the current price of cotton, or of making guesses at the crop of the coming year or the next. Such questions are discussed in a thousand quarters, and from every possible point of view, with a keenness and intelligence that no single individual could hope to rival. My inquiry will lie one of a more genernl, though at the same time, perhaps, of a somewhat deeper and more per- manent character. The desirable end is that the Southern B INTRODUCTION. [en. i. States, in due course, should produce two, five, or tenfold the quantity of cotton they have yielded any year since the war. It is probable that only through a reduction of price can any such expansion take place. A few cents per lb. may decide whether the looms of Lancashire are to be half idle, to work full time, or to be increased in power and number with a rapidity that would sjieedily overtake the largest crops which America and other cotton regions of the world might produce. But whatever the possible demand for cotton-cloth may be were it only cheap enough, and whatever the manufacturing resources of Great Britain, it is clear that the growers of cotton will not pro- duce increased cro]»s save on terms wliich, in the whole circum- stances of their agriculture, will yield them a satisfactory profit, and that the two interests thus involved can only move forward in harmony and in step with each other. The question of a larger supply and lower price of cotton resolves itself practically into a question of greater skill of culture, greater efficiency and economy of labour, better handling in all respects of the whole agricultural resources of farms and plantations, whereby the necessary profit may accrue from the larger quantity of cotton produced at the same cost.. This is a problem which has been solved satisfactorily in nearly every department of industry. It is a problem wliich the Southern planters have to solve, not only in competition with one another, but in competition with other cotton-growing countries which now occupy a much higher posi- tion in cotton supply than before the American civil war, and which, though not so capable in some respects as the Southern States, have peculiar advantages of their own — such as cheap labour and notions of profit quite im-American — that have kept them steadily for years, and may keep them permanently, as etTective competitors in this branch of production. It may be well, while on this point, to give the relative proportions of cotton supply in Great Britain during the three years following the close of the American War : — COTTON IMPORTED INTO THE UNITED KINGDOM IN nALES.l 1861). 1S67. 1868. American 1,102,740 1,225,690 1,262,060 Brazil 407,650 437,210 636,807 EsVTt 167,450 181,170 188,689 Turkey, &c 32,770 16,990 12,758 West India, &c 111,830 129,020 100,651 Surat 1,206,660 1,095,440 1,038,925 Madras 294,370 163,400 243,949 Bengal 346,730 249,910 169,198 China and Japan 18,840 1,940 — 3,749,040 3,500,770 3,660,127 Exports from U.S. to all countries 1,548,000 1,553,000 1,656,000 ' John Pender and Co.'s " Statistics of Trade." cii. r.] ' GENERAL SUBJECTS OF LYQUIRT. 3 So that the total exports of cotton to all countries from the United States have for these years been less than half the cotton of all countries imported into the United Kingdom ; while oj" the British imports of cotton the United States have contributed less than India alone, after making allowance for their somewhat heavier bales. It is important to note in connection with these facts that Great Britain retains for her own factories but a moiety of the cotton she imports from her possessions in India: while she now re-exports a smaller proportion of her shipments from the United States than in former times. Thus, of the total Indian exports in 18G8 the Continent took 720,000 bales, or 46'73 per cent., and Great Britain retained 821,000 bales, or 53'27 per cent. In the same year Great Britain exported only 197,000 bales of American cotton. Whether the cotton of India be worked up in France and Germany and other Continental countries, or in Great Britain, it enters equally into competition with the cotton of the Southern States. But the fact that Great Britain parts so largely with the cotton of India in favour of American proves the identity of interest which subsists betwixt her manufacturers and the growers of the United States. If cotton is to be the chief staple of the South, and if by its extended production she is not only to restore her prosperity but to develop her vast resources to an extent hitherto unknown, it is only through the instrumentality of the cotton manufactures of England and Scotland that the process can be carried out. The cotton trade of the United Kingdom leans to American cotton. It is the United Kingdom which has its haad on the fabrics, the markets, and all the mechanical, artistic, and commercial resources by which the produce of the Southern plantations can find a profitable outlet. The British merchants and manufacturers say they can take an indefinitely increasing quantity of American cotton, but it must be produced at softening rather than hardening prices, since every substantial advance in value at once checks in all the markets of the world the profitable consumption of cotton goods. If the South cannot meet these conditions, the progress of British manufacturing industry will be so far retarded. If the British manufacturers cannot extend their operations at the price necessary to produce the raw material, the progress of the South, so far as it depends on the growth of cotton, will be retarded also. Such is the equal disability which the question of cotton supply imposes on both sides, and there does not appear to be the slightest room for any misunderstanding. There are questions at issue in the Southern States worthy of investigation, which, however closely bound up in the com- B 2 4 INTRODUCTION. [ch. i. mercial problem, have also a moral significance of the highest human interest. The emancipation of four millions of negro slaves is in itself a revolution of wliieli the world has seldom seen the like, either in magnitude, in suddenness aid com- pleteness, in the desolation of war amidst which it was accomplished, or in the influence of its ulterior results on the future of mankind. In contemplating such an event one is raised above commercial interests to the Ijorders of the divine and the religious in human destiny. To ol)serve the effect of such a total change of personal standing and social rela- tions on the character, the industry, the sense of responsibility, and general habits of the negroes — how well or ill they adapt themselves to their new conditions of life, and whether they are likely, as IVee ])eople, to rise in dignity and prosperity, or to stumble downward into deeper physical and social degradation — must be acknowledged to be matter of more than merely com- mercial interest. Yet, in such a line of inquiry there is obviously the key to the immediate future industrial condition of the Soutliern States. In its economic bearings, it is the question of the relative value and efficiency of slave and free labour in the South, with negroes as the labourers, so often contested in theory, but now put to the test of practical experiment. The five years that have elapsed since the war cannot be expected to have solved this question, worth so many years of valiant trial and endea- vour. But it may be discovered whether, so far, there be signs of that success of free negro labour so much to be desired, or of that failure so often feared. Nor can it be much less interesting to see how the white ]w]mlation of the South, more especially the owners of slave property, arc bearing themselves under the new system. They were doubly crushed— crushed by a war in which they engaged with reckless bravery, and crushed under the fall of a system of servile labour with which their wealth and fortune, the cultivation and existence of their estates, were so closely intertwined that to destroy it seemed to be utter ruin. The mettle of the Southern people is thus ])ut to a severe trial. If the well-doing and well-being of the emancipated negroes would be gratifying to every benevolent feeling of the human heart, a course of fresh energy and enterprise on the part of the whit<3 jtopulation of the South would be lionourable to the courage and i-esource of the superior race. Are they throwing off all lethargy- and despondency, and exerting themselves with hearty resolve and enliglitened effort to build up the prosperity of the country on a new and more stable basis ( AVhat improve- ments have been made in the system of cultivation, and in the means of economising labour and fertilising the soil, to compen- sate the lost profits of slavery ? And to what extent does Federal legislation aid and encourage, or hinder and discourage, CH. I.] GENERAL SUBJECTS OF INqUIRY. 5 the freed labourers and the owners and occupiers of land in the South to accomplish the great work which they are called upon to do ? If taxation be necessarily heavy, is it levied with equity and justice ? Does the tariff give fair play to the agricultural industr}'- of the South and West, or, in being made more consis- tent with the just interests of these great sections of the Union, may it become more consistent with the interests of the whole American people ? I am indicating the questions which must occupy any investigation of the condition of the Southern States, and do not know that I have nearly exhausted them. It would be vain to think that a definite and conclusive reply could 1)6 given to so many queries ; but as they have all been moi-e or less keenly canvassed by an extremely intelligent and energetic population, and are amenable to facts, it may be possible to throw some light on a subject so deeply interesting. It is mani- fest that great caution will have to be observed against too hasty conclusions. I shall have, in the first instance, to describe simply, and to collect facts and corroborations, and allow evi- dence to accumulate, before attempting to arrive at results. It must be said that, so far as the production of cotton goes, the South is giving proof of gradual recovery from the exhaus- tion and disorganization of the war. It may be wrong to rest on cotton as the sole test of Southern prosperity. Yet, as cotton is the chief product of the South, it is a good index, and it may be well, as evidence of the progress made under free labour and of what had been done under the slave system, to put on record here the crops in the following years : — UNDER SLAVE LABOUR.l 1858-9 4,019,000 1859-60 4,861,000 1860-1 3,850,000 UNDER FllEE LABOUR.^ 1866 1,900,000 1867 2,-340,000 1868 2,380,000 The crop of 1869 shows a further increase, and has been stated unofficially to have been fully 3,000,000 bales ; while the crop of this season promises a much larger annual increase than any year since the war. On the other hand, there are some unfavour- able symptoms in the Southern States. There is not only much political agitation, which may be sound and unavoidable enough, but there are signs of disaffection to Federal rule, and occasional outbreaks of violence, engendered apparently by fierce party 1 Report of B. F. Nourse, United States Commissioner to Paris Exposi- tion of 1867. 2 Department of Agriculture, Report, 1868. 6 INTRODUCTION. [cu. i. hatred, that may he of small moment in presence of returning prosperity, hut, if spreading or long-continued, cannot fail to react unfavourahly on the material interests of the country, and require to be taken into account. It may be added in these introductory remarks that I did not leave home without recommendations and facilities of access to the best inforniiition in tho principal Southern States ; and that I have also cordially to acknowledge the courtesy of the heads of various depailments of the Administration at Washington. "\\'ith respect to the census returns, I must own a certain degree of disappointment. A census of the whole United States is taken, by Act of Congress, at the close of every decennial period. Many of the States also take a decennial census within their respective bounds, and so order it in point of time as to make it fall in the middle term of the decennial period of the Union census. Had this outline been fdled up, there would have been a return of the population of the United States in 1860, when the war was just beginning ; again in 1865, when the war had just closed' and now in 1870, when five years of peace have followed five years of sangiunary intestine strife. But a census is not taken, probably cannot be taken, in the United States, even in time of peace, with the swiftness and accuracy of the smaller though more densely peopled areas of European countries. There are consequently both blanks and delays in the census returns of the United States, and I may not derive so much advantage from this source as I anticijiated. Still, incidental advantages and disadvantages apart, the period at least is not ill-chosen for the i)urpose I have set be- fore me ; and, considering the magnitude of the subject and its numerous ramifications, the utmost any w-riter can w'ell hope or promise to do, is, while keeping a steady eye on the more im- portant practical questions at issue, to convey such knowledge of tlie country and such means of judgment as may be gathered only by personal travel and observation. CHAPTER II. Mount Vernon. — Washington's life as a Planter. — The Woods of Virginia. — Aspect of the Country from Acquia Creek to Richmond. — Agricultural Divisions of Virginia. — Their general Characteristics. [Richmond, Va.— Oc«. 26 to Nov. 3.] Befoke proceeding from the American capital southward into Virginia, I could not deny myself the pleasure of a visit to the ancient homestead of Washington, whose historic figure and noble character are ever present to the mind at the quiet city in which the Eepublic has not unwisely estahhshed its seat of government. The pilgrimage to Mount Vernon is easily accomplished. A sail down the Potomac is almost as delightful as a sail on one of the Highland lochs of the Clyde. The scenery, indeed, is neither bold nor picturesque, but is well de- fined, and in many of its features beautiful. Tb i shore on either side is traced by a line of yellowish sandy bluffs, not very high, but wavy in their outline, and clothed to the water edge with young forest wood, arrayed at this season in all the colours of the rainbow ; with a background of rolling upland, on which there is the same crown of forest timber, sombre in the distance, and stretches of corn and pasture visible in the middle space, over which a brown and moorish aspect rests. I had noticed a similnr air as of wilderness on more level tracts, all the way from Ntw York to Philadelphia. The stalks of Indian corn in autumn are either gathered up in large sheaves, or left standing gaunt-like where they grew, shorn only of their richly-laden ears, with no white stubble, but only the red-brown till beneath. On pasture land the wild grasses have sprung far up in autumn, and over- shadowed the more tender blade, which, after the scorching heat, has begun to grow green again under the rains and temperate sun of a second sunnuer. AVith Alaryland on one shore of the Potomac and Virginia on the other, both of which States have passed in a few years from slave culture to war and devastation, . and not infrequent desertion of lands, the darkening elfect of such natural causes can only be increased. But as the great white-coated steamboat, drawing only two or three feet of water, glides rapidly on, there is no want of objects made memor- 8 MOUNT VERNOX. [cH. ii, able by the war, if nuthing else, to arrest attention. AVithout even looking back on the city of AVusliington, with the dome of its Capitol always prominent, but always less enchanting as distance brings it into more critical view, there is the long bridge, slanting many miles over the shallows of the estuary from Washington towards Alexandria, across which the Federal troops defiled to meet the hosts of the Confederacy ; overlooking it is Arlington House, the residence in ante-war times of General Lee, now the property of the Federal Government on an arrear- of-taxcs title, and converted into a military cemetery ; on the other side is Navy Yard, and away down on the Virginia shore is Alexandria, with the steeple visiljle of Christchurch, to which, though ten miles from j\Iount Vernon, General Washington was accustomed to go with his household for Divine worship, and where a pew ]')ible of his is still preserved as a sacred relic. The remains of earthworks are seen on some of the higher ground on both Ijanks, and Fort Foote, an extempore construction, armed with heavy guns, is still a power on the INTaryland shore. On the same side is Fort Washington, an old defence of solid mason- work, wdiich was destroyed in the war of 1812, and afterwards rebuilt. Such is the approach from the city of Washington to the country-seat of the Commander-in-Chief of the War of Independence. !Mount Vernon is situated on a somewhat higher bluff, and its woods are richer than most others on the Potomac. Its little cupola and grey roof, when first seen, are not striking. It is oidy on ascending to the colonnade of the mansion, formed of eiglit stately pillars, and looking round, that one perceives the beauty of the site, the good taste, the simple dignity, the fine order and arrangement of the whole place. The Potomac, as seen from the piazza, and in reality the rear of the building, is more like an inland lake than an estuary or a river. It is land- locked towards the capital by the ridge on which Fort Washing- ton is erected, and by the sinuous shores towards the sea ; there is a grassy ]>lot down to the edge of the shelving bank of forest ; and as one looks through the openings among the trees upon the smooth and glistening waters of the Potomac, and a coiisting schooner or oyster wherry with her white sails passes by, the effect in the pure bright atmosphere of this part of the world is extremely lovely. The landward front of jNIount Vernon is not less interesting in its way. On one side is the kitchen and on the other the domestic servants' apartments. A covered way of light open arches connects these houses with the main building. The lawn, though not extensive, is neatly laid out. First, a circular plot, then a long rectangle of grass. Hanked on both sides by old trees and avenues. At the end of the lawn is a gateway which appears to have been the main entrance ; CH. II.] STATE OF VmaiNLL 9 beyond is a grass park, with orchards sloping downward on either hand ; behind all, woods and woods. One could hardly imagine a more exact re})roduction of an old English country seat. Parallel to the lawn there is a vegetaV)le garden on the same side as the kitchen, and on the other side a flower garden, with the remains of a row of negro houses, the windows of which seem to have had the full benefit of the fragrant flowers and plants of which Washington was evidently an ardent admirer and cultivator. There are still shown in this garden two " sweet-scented shrubs " (Calycanthus Ploridus), presented to him by his compatriot and successor in the Presidential chair — Jefferson. The leaves of this plant shed a delightful odour, and when in full flower its sweetness fills the whole air. The uflices are situated in a hollow part of the ground, to which a paved M-ay descends iVom the front of the mansion. Considering that JNIount Vernon is a frame building, it seems in a quite wonderful state of preservation. The frames are raised above the ground-level over cellars extending under the whole building, and entered by a flight of steps and wide door at each end of the colonnade. These doors, when left open, allow a current of fresh air to pass through all this under-story, in which ^\'ashing- ton kept his wine and other household stores. It is hardly necessarj" to speak of the interior, which has been so often described. There are the quaint rooms and quaint stair- cases one expects to find in old country houses, and various relics which have hardly a place in these notes. There is a noble dining-room, that appears, with the apartments above it, to have been an addition to the original building, and from which a door opens on the coloiniade, and on the cool and refreshing breeze and charming scene of the Potomac. One can fancy Lafayette retiring here from the table to smoke his pipe or cigar of pure Virginian, and, in presence of his sincere and noble-minded host, indulging in delightful dreams of the coming age of " liberty, equality, and fraternity." All the details of Mount Vernon, apart from political associations, convey a vivid impression of a planter's life and surroundings in America a hundred years ago. Washington is said to have possessed ten miles of river shore and six miles inland. There was accommo- dation at Mount Vernon for all the service required in the household, the gardens and orchards, the stables and dairy, and such work -of cultivation and forestry as belonged to the esta- blishment of a country gentleman, liut Washington liad his extensive territory to reclaim by degTees, and he would have his cleared ground and labour settlements among the woods, and the work of the axe and the plough would go on from year to year under his Avise guidance, with occasional military operations against the Indians, in which his heroic spirit would find vent in MOUNT FERNON. [ch. ii. through all the kindly tendencies of his nature. Still, with all this activity, the passion of money-making, so rampant in the present day, could scarcely have been felt by Washington. Blount Vernon is not in the tobacco region of Virginia. It was the Westmoreland, even by name, of this second England. It had soil, and sun, and variety of product, in comparison with which, indeed, the northern moorland of England was but a desert. There would be alumdance of Indian corn, some wheat, every variety of fruit and fowl, trattickings in timber, and all the rude plenty of a wild but teeming land. But no money-bags, no accumulation of speculative stocks, or of solid capital in the Funds. The only plan of life which can be conceived as followed by Washington is that of working out, by great personal sacri- fice and heroism, in Virginian wilds, the highest form of life then known in England. A great change seems to have j)assed over the world since those days. To be master of thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of dollars in " cash down " is now the ruling passion. There are multitudes of rich men and their sons in New York, and other great American towns, who, if animated by only a little of the spirit of Washington, could ])lant many a ]\Iount Vernon, and cause many a wilderness in the United States to blossom like the rose. But the spirit ^vhich founded America and American Independence is not remarkffbly pre- valent in the world to-day. The fortunes made by trade and commerce in the old country are often turned with happy and beautifying effect on the waste places of England and Scotland ; yet this seldom occurs in the United States, where the heroic ■work of subduing the untamed land is left for the most part to the poor tempest-tossed emigrants of Europe. The Virginian shore of the Potomac down to Acquia Creek is of the same type as at Mount Vernon. The sand bluff is more or less naked to the eye, the foliage more or less varied and brilliant in its hues. A few miles past Mount Vernon there is a long range of building, not in very good re]iair, but which yet might be supposed to be the residence of a landholder struggling under difficulties of labour and want of cajiital. It is occupied as a fishing-station, at a rent of 1,000 dollars per annum. There are shad and herring fishings on the Potomac. The herring shoals begin to come in the spring, and there is probably a busy scene at that period of the year. But there is little mark of extensive fishery operations on the Potomac, and the herring probably have a good time of it in these and other American waters. 1 should scarcely have noticed this fishing station but for the bright and exquisitely blended colour of the trees amid whicdi it is set. The composition of the Virginian woods affords scope for a much deeper study than I can give to it. The very bru.shwood develops elements of commercial CH. II.] STATE OF VIRGINIA. 11 value. But besides the hickory, the cedars, and maples, one is struck by the various oaks, the ashes, the chestnuts, and beeches, so familiar in the "Old Country," and some of the species may not be indigenous. Six or seven generations of British planters have passed over this memorable land of Virginia. The leaves were falling fast towards the end of October, but the bare branches, seen from a little distance, only added a new variety of colour to the beauty of the woods. The Eichmond and Potomac Eailroad soon passes literally from the bosom of the water to a table-land of considerable elevation, which drops down again into the valley of the Eappahannock, where Fredericksburg, the scene of a heavy Federal defeat in the war, conies in view. The old town does not seem to have suffered nuich from the furious cannonade which the hostile forces poured over the tops of its highest steeples from the opposite banks of the river, and there was a stir of people about the station, including not a few thriving-like country folk, that was cheer- ing to see. The heights behind Fredericksburg, on which the Confederates were posted, are neither so steep nor so lolty as the accounts of the battle might have led one to imagine. The character of the country, indeed, all the way from tlie IVjtomac to near Eichmond, is the same. There are no mountains or hills, and no rock, but a rolling alluvial country, broken only by ravines where the streams in the course of ages have washed a deep bed out of the unresisting soil. The deepest cuttings of the railroad track reveal only the same bottomless deposit of clayey sand, with but a light top-dressing of vegetable mould, as is seen on the exposed bank of the Potomac. The land is well cleared, the woods in many places having been cut down to mere belts, the boundaries betwixt one property and another, and not more than are necessary for shelter. The soil has also at one time been nearly all cultivated. The marks of the plough are everywhere seen. But thousands of acres are rapidly re- turning to a state of nature, and little forests of young pines are springing where Indian corn and even wheat may have recently grown. There is a curious fact mentioned in connection with Ihe Virginian woods. When the oaks are cut down, they are followed by a crop of pines, and when the pines fall under the axe the oaks come again. When the soil has been exhausted by bad cultivation, and is left to take its own w^ay, it is prolific of pines. Of this peculiarity I had ocular proof in many fields, over which the furrows were still traceable, covered with little pine-shoots, thick as if planted in a nursery. The soil in this district of Virginia is certainly not so rich as to dispense with the aid of skilful and liberal culture ; but the tracts on which crops had been grown this year showed, in the standing stalks of corn, fair powers of vegetation; and the alhudal character of 18 RICHMOND. (on. u. the soil must render it duly responsive to subsoil jtloughing and manure. Along the Orange and Alexandria llailroad, M-hicli passes from Washington to liichmond larthcr to the west, there are richer and more pt^opled districts, and yet nmch land ready for new owners, the highest i»rice expected for which is twenty dollars, or 4/. to 5/. ])er acre ; but from five to ten dollai-s per acre would pi'obaljly purchase farms of any size along the railway route from Ac(j[uia Creek. The district to which I have been referring is the last which the ])eo])le of Virginia wish a stranger to see. It is held to be the poorest part of the State, and is " the Wilderness " of the war times, where most of the great battles were providently fought. Yet from Fredericks! )urg to Ashland, some fifteen miles from Kichmond — a pretty little place, with several fine houses, and a Methodist College, attended by a large number of hearty young men — there must be tens of thousands of acres, in the immediate vicinity of a great line of railway communication, capable of successful settlement, and of develojting all the conditions of fruitful, prosi)erous, and happy country life. In thus attempting to estimate the worst part of Virginia there is at least the advantage of arriving a fortiori at a conception of what the bettor ])arts must be. At Uiclnnond the scene changes, and it is only in the capital of the State that one finds a key to all the various districts and agricidtural resources of Virginia. The tide flows up the deep channel of the James Eiver to Richmond, l)earing large sea- going vessels to the bridges ; but it flows no farther, a series of falls immediately above Kichmond stopping thus abruptly the tidal flow. This has led to a division, not infrequent on the American continent, into " Tide-water Virginia," ajjplied to the territory along both banks of the James Iliver betwixt Richmond and the Atlantic, and " Granite or Piedmont Virginia," the region round the upper course of the James, terminated by the famous Blue liidge jNTountain chain, where the sulphur springs are found, and whither the Americans, from New York to New Orleans, repair every summer season for health, pleasure, and invigoration. There are many large and i)roductive larms along the tidal course of the James, and in the peninsular countries formed by the James and York Rivers. Two sons of General Lee, whose death has called forth profound marks of respect in Richmond as well as all parts of the South, cultivate large estates in tide-water Virginia ; and new families, both from the N'orthern States and from England, have purchased hind ami settled in this i)art of the State. But the heat in sunnner is severe to all but the acclimatised. The land is low, and in some places swam])y ; and near Norfolk, the great shipping port of Virginia, witii probal>ly the best and most capacious harbourage CH. n.] STATE OF VIROINIA. 13 on the American shores, there is the " Dismal Swamp," which is neither agreeable in aspect nor salubrious in effects. The Vir- ginians themselves are of opinion that the " Piedmont " of the State, from its European temperature and upland character, tlie variety and homeliness of its agricultural productions, its water power, and its facilities for mamifacturing industry, is the best adapted for 1 British settlers. Betwixt the Blue Kidge and the Alleghany range is the great valley of Virginia, that, with the exception probably of the Shenandoali Valley, its northern part, has been less distui-bed and im])aired by the war than any other section of the State. Then tliere are the midland counties, where tobacco is the principal crop, and where "planting," as it may be distinguislied from siin])le farming, is carried on with no inconsiderable prosperity. The southern counties along tlie border of North Carolina have many cotton -fields. All the way from Petersburg to Weldon the white woolly bolls are seen at this season gleaming deep down among the green leaves of the cotton shrub. In all these various divisions of Virginia, thougli in some more than in otliers, properties whicli in auy other part of the world would be deemed valuable are offered for sale greatly in excess of the demand. CHAPTER III. City of Richmond. — Some features of its Trade and Industry. — Tone of Politics. — The General Assembly. — Testimony borne of the Freedmen by Employers. — Rate of Wages. — Dearness of Articles of Consumption, and its Causes.— Population of the State and City. — Schools for the Negro Children. [Richmond, YA.—Oct. 26 to Nov. 3.] TuE capital of Virginia, and erewhile of the Southern Confedera- tion, is a busy and spirited town, and has a very engaging population. lUit all its importance does not strike one at tlie first glance, and many a traveller ou the through route to the South may pass away from it with an inadequate opinion of a place rendered historical by recent events. The city is situated on a series of hills and vales, and only a small part of it is seen on (Altering or passing through the streets, until sonu; elevation is reached where the eye takes an extended view. It is pleasing and animating to look down a busy and stately street from the top of one of the heights, and see it, after traversing the valley below, rising in a straight line up the side of the hill beyond ; and of such coups-cVceil there are many in Kichmond. Like most of ihe American towns, its streets are laid otf in straight lines, and crossed by others eijually straight. It may be called, as well as Washington, a " city of magnificent distances," for the outlines traced for the future expansion of the capital of Virginia much exceed its actual development. It has its Broad Street, like I*hiladel])hia, intended to be the main artery of a great city, and yet occupying but a subordinate, and certainly not a central, place in the existing oi-ganization of the town. Tlie lower ground along the bank of the James liiver is Inisy and dusty, the seat of tobacco and other produce warehouses, ironworks and foundries, factories and M'orkshops, and rattles all day long with the noise of lorries drawn by four mules, with a negro mounted postilion-wiise, who loves dearly to crack his whip, and cries to his animals more than enough. Sambo is a natural-born Cockney. "Wlit'ther one meets him in the hotels, or driving his lorry in the streets, or roaring at the railway stations for the honour of carry- ing one's luggage, he gives assurance of a man who imbibes aptly en. III.] STATE OF riRGINIJ. 15 the r/enivs loci, and contributes his full share to all the smartness and animation, polite or noisy, of the scene. It is not within my purpose to describe the trade, the me- chanical industries, or the various phases of civic life in Kichmond. But some leading features may be mentioned in a few sentences. The Tredegar Ironworks, reconstituted since the war, if not the largest of the kind in the United States, execute an almost unequalled variety of work, not only making iron, but every kind of iron castings — from railway spikes to field artillery — with equal resource and success, and are carried on with vigour and activity, employing a thousand hands. The Company use annually a certain portion of Scotch pig, notwith- standing the high tariff duty of seven dollars per ton, as a sort of luxury on account of its greater fluidity and adaptation for foundry purposes. Various smaller foundries and machine shops in Eichmond display much spirit and ingenuity in the manufacture of engines and other implements for agricultural purposes. I have also remarked the great number of warehouses for the sale of phosphates and artificial manures, as well as guano, ground bones, and other natural fertilisers, showing how much the attention of the agricultural community is directed to the means of enriching the soil. Virginia has within herself an active propaganda, both chemical and manufacturing, of this new philosophy ; but manufacturers of soluble phosphates from Baltimore and other northern seaports visit Eichmond regularly, and pass down south through all the leading centres and sea- ports as far as Montgomery and Selma in Alabama, doing a satisfactory trade. The discovery of marl deposits in the tidal region of Virginia, as well as of the Carolinas, has given an impulse to this question of fertilisation that is daily extending. Though the use of artificial manures may not be so widely spread among the farming population, yet there is no part probably of England or Scotland where more genuine interest is taken in the question, and as the movement is not confined to this State, where it is not least important, it is well worthy of being noted as a sign of reviving agricultural improvement and enterprise in the Southern States. ^ The war, heavily as it pressed by fire and sword and siege upon Eichmond, has left but few traces in the external aspect of the city. A few blocks of building still stand in all the ruin in which they were left by the fires lighted on the night of the evacuation. The tobacco warehouses burned down on that wild occasion have been replaced by temporary erections. But the " Libby Prison " and " Castle Thunder," and other great houses of business, which were devoted to the reception of Federal prisoners and Confederate wounded, are now restored to trade. A sober sadness may be described as the prevailing mood of the IG RIC/IMOXl). [CH. HI. people, wliioli tlic death of General Lee has probably at the present moment dec])oned. There is no dejection, no loss of honourable pride, and little repining at the bitter consequences of the war, but a resolve, more dee])ly felt than strongly ex- pressed, not only to accept the situation, but to turn it to account of improvement, and to build up anew the prosperity of the old Commonwealth, which the Virginians love with an ardour and a faith in the future hardly credible in a community so greatly shattered, and so bereft for the time of the prestige it long maintained in the Union. The tone of politics in Virginia, after some experience of New York, seems to me very temi)erate. The old part}-- in the State, called in electioneering parlance Democrats, as distinguished from the Kepublicans and Ivadicals, or the new party introduced by the issue of the war and upheld by the authority of the Federal Government, has regained in the recent elections a moderate ascendency. An incident, which has just occurred in the Courts, appears also to be regarded with no little cjuiet grati- fication by the native Virginians. One Chahoon, a lawyer, who was made Mayor of Richmond by the Federal Executive at the eiose of the war, and who failed to be elected in regular course under the Act of Reconstruction, has been tried and sentenced to four years in the Penitentiary for attempting to defraud the State of 7,(^00 dollars by forgery. It was the case of an estate left without heirs, of which Cliahoon attemj^ted to secure posses- sion by forging documents in the name of fictitious claimants. The Federal Government could hardly avoid making what are called " military appointments " to civil offices in the state of affairs which arose on the dissolution of the Confederate Govern- ment ; and where these appointments were in favour of officers of repute and discretion in the Federal army, there was a guarantee not only of honour and integrity, but of the temporary character of such infraction of the regular course of election. But Chahoon appears to have been an adventurer — a specimen, pure and simple, uf the " carpet-bagger " — and his conviction and punishment have given nndisguisedjoy to the native party of the State, who see "in tlunn a sign that things are coming right again, and that law and j list ice will have free course in Virginia. Tlie General Assembly of Virginia has been holding fin- a sveek or two an adjourned session, and transacting without excitement a good deal of important State business. As I had strolled up to look at the Capitol, which— as well as a very plea- sant West End, Cijual in lieauty and retirement to the best parts of Brooklyn or New York, with nnich more notable in Richmond — is only discovered as one mounts one eminence after another, I stepped in to see the Virginian rarliament. The Speaker of the House of Delegates was a reflective and intellectual- en. III.] STATE OF VIRGINIA. 17 looking gentleman, himself a Delegate, and perfectly versed in the duties of his place. The Clerk, owing to some pain or weakness in his eyes, had a white bandage round his temples, ])ut was equally master of his position. 1 ctnuited among the delegates three or four coloured men, one of whom \vas a pure negro, very well attired, and displaying not more jewellery than a gentleman might wear ; while another, who seemed to have some white blood in his veins, was a quite masculine-looking person, both physically and mentally. The Senate was presided over by the Lieutenant-Governor of the State, who was altogether like a young member of the British House of Lords, as the Senate itself had a country-gentleman sort of air not perceptible in the Lower House, which more resembled a Town Council or Paro- chial Board than the House of Commons. There were two coloured Senators among tlie number, quite black, but sena- torial enough, and like men who in Africa would probably have been chiefs. In the Lower House the coloured delegates mingled freely with the othsr members, but in the Senate these two sat in a corner by themselves. Yet they seemed to take a cordial interest in the proceedings, and manifested all sympathy with the Senators who addressed the House. As I have never been able to understand the ofhcial monotone of our own courts, I cannot profess to have been able to follow- every word with all the differences of intonation here ; but the procedure was quite intelligible, and I was pleased and amused to see how truly the form and pressure of the " Mother of Parliaments," after a century of separation, were reproduced in her Virginian child. The presence of coloured men in the British Parliament is im- possible, simply because the negro element is not among us ; but the Virginian feature I have ventured to notice is only a practical reflection of the great deliverance of Lord Mansfield — that slavery is incompatible Avith the law, air, and soil of England. As long as the political equality of the negro is not pushed to any greater extreme than it is like to be in Virginia, or made the factious instrument of bad and trading politicians, it can hardly be the cause of much trouble or discord in any part of the United States. The testimony generally borne of the negroes is that they work readily when regularly paid. Wherever I have consulted an effective employer, whether in the manufacturing works of Eichmond or on the farms and plantations, such is the opinion, with little variation, that has been given. In the country, negroes get from eight to ten dollars a month, with house and provisions. In Eichmond, for common and ordinary labour, they are paid fifteen dollars a month with proA"isions, or thirty dollars and find themselves in the necessaries of life. In various branches of more or less skilled labour of which negroes are c 18 RICHMOND. [cu. in. capable the wages are mucli higher, and approach the/standard of remuneration to white \mn\ in the same occupations. A dollar a day for common labour will appear high to the best labourers in England or Scotland, but there is a necessary qualification to be made in any comparison of the relative rates of wages in the two countries. The dollar does not go so far as its exchange- worth in British money would imply. The price of nearly everything bought in the shops is very high ; the labourer cannot command the same comfort as the labourer of other countries, save at a much higher monetary rate of wages, which necessarily augments the cost of American products, and im- pairs the commercial and competitive power of American industry. This state of things, arising from artificial causes operating over the whole United States, and inflating the monetary rate, not of wages alone, but of every form of profit, without making the working or any other class richer (what is gained nominally in wages and profits passing away in expendi- ture), has already all but destroyed various branches of American trade, and enhances materially the productive cost even of such staples as wheat, tobacco, and cotton, in which the United States have a natural pre-eminence. This will probably Ije more ap- parent now every year, until it forces itself on the public mind, and brings about a wholesome rectification. ■' liichmond has several fine streets of shops and warehouses, that are not so well or fully stocked as similar places of busi- ness in towns of inferior importance in England, and yet where every article needful in any rank of life may usually be pur- chased. But one is astonished at the prices demanded and paid, and when the shopkeeper is asked he says it is the result of the high tariff on foreign goods, which is no doubt largely true. The difference, however, betwixt his price and the real value of the goods is three or four times the amount of the Customs duty, sugg(^sting other evils, starting probably from the tariff, but in active independent operation. The duties, being high, are more conveniently paid in New York than they could be in the South, where capital is scarce. Tliis leads to indirect trade as well as transit, and the piling of one large profit on the top of another before the goods reach the consumer. Prices, moreover, received an inflation from the enormous expenditure and paper currency of tlie war, which the approximation now of the pajier dollar to gold value and the pressui'e of taxation do not appear in many cases to have materially reduced. People speak, in giving an estimate of values, of " ante-bellum " and " post-bellum " prices. Things are thus floating along on an artificial level produced by all these derangements, rendering the cost of living and the cost of production in every depart- ment expressed in money very liigh as .compared with otlicr en. III.] STATE OF FIROINIA. 19 countries. It is evident wliat a heavy incubus such a state of tilings must be on a State like Virginia, impoverished and crippled by years of devastating war, and needing supremely every natural facility in the cultivation of her soil and the ^ increase of her wealth and produce. The census returns of the City or State have not yet been published, but I have been politely informed by Colonel Parker, the United States Marshal here, that the population of Virginia may be taken as 1,245,000, showing a decrease of the population of the State since 1860 of from 2(3,000 to 30,000. The popu- lation of the city of Eichmond is 51,093. In 1860 Eichmoud had not more than 35,000 inhabitants, but the apparent increase is mainly the result of an extension of the municipal bound- aries. The Marshal, however, claims for Eichmond, as it was before the enlargement of the bounds, an increase of 5,000. This result is questioned by citizens of much information, who are disposed to think the population both of State and of city lower than in the return. It is quite usual to find the census questioned in the United States, and the mode of taking it — not all in one day as in Great Britain, but by piecemeal and irregularly — is certainly not compatible with strict accuracy. The President has ordered a new census in New York, and will probably do so also in Philadelphia and other places where the returns have excited dissatisfaction. The decrease in A^irginia is believed to be chiefly in negroes, who were accustomed under the slave system to be sent South in considerable numbers, and who have migrated in the same direction voluntarily since their emancipation. Contractors, themselves coloured men, also come down from the hotels in Boston and other Northern towns, and engage negroes to go to them as servants. But the tendency of the black man is to go South, and the probability is that, Vir- ginia will continue to supply the Southern plantations with less or more labour. The Eadical party in the State take credit for having opened schools in Eichmond immediately after the war for the educa- tion of negro children. They say that from 5,000 to 6,000 were thus brought under instruction, and that the consequence now is that black children can read and write, wdiile many of the white children are untaught. There has been no school assessment hitherto in Virginia, but the Constitution under the Act of Eeconstruction requires free schools to be estab- lished by assessment over the whole State, and this provision is being carried out with the assent of all parties. The city of Eichmond has already appropriated 100,000 dollars for educa- tion. The practice is to have separate schools for the negroes. • I have been shown a large building in what was not long ago the fashionable quarter of the town, and then used as a grand c 2 • 20 RICHMOND. [cii. iii. hotel, wliicli lias been purchased for conversion into a free school for the negroes, and in magnitude will vie with the splendid free schools of New York or Thiladelphia. Seeing that buildings have to be provided, and that there are no reserved lands, as in the Western States, for the aid of common school education, the school-rate in Virginia will be ]>retty high lor some time ; but it will be a source of much protit in the end, and will make her labour more valuable, and her A\ide domains mure attractive and more pleasant to settlers of every class. CHAPTER IV. The Land Question in Virginia. —Estates and Farms for Sale without Pur- chasers. — Effects of War and Revolution.— The Annual State Fair. — Abundant natural Fertilisers. — New Industries. — Eegularity of the Markets for Tobacco and other Agricultural Produce. — Railways. — Desir- ableness of Virginia to Middle-class Settlers. [Richmond, Ya.—OcI. 26 to Nov. 23.] The land question is the absorbing question in Virginia. How to get the estates formerly productive again brought into culti- vation — how to attract settlers of a superior class from England and Scotland, who would take their place in Virginian society as landowners and give a fresh impulse to tlie work of improvement going on — how to fertilise the soil and increase and improve the farm stock — how to turn the woods, the mines, the beds of marl, the streams and waterfalls, the fruits and game, and all the abundance of nature to productive account, and so fill with new blood the wasted frame of the old CommonwealtK^occupies the minds of all classes with an intensity of interest to which no other public concern can be compared/ Tlie first question asked of a stranger is whether he has come to look at land. I was not three minutes in Eichmond till a pushing Irishman offered to sell me a very fine milch cow and calf on tlie spot, or tell me where I could get a nice bit of land on very economical terms. But the stranger who is landward-bound is not left to sucli chance means of information. /^There are dozens of respectable estate -agents, every one of whom has lists of farms and estates for sale which he advertises in the newspapers, and offers in fee- simple at a rate per acre that in England or Scotland, or even Ireland, would be deemed but a moderate annual rent, and pay- ment of which he is willing to take in cash just enough to pay tlie expenses of suit, with the balance in instalments spread over three or four years. Every one of them states in private that he has even more lands on his list for sale than he advertises. Nor is this all. The State of Virginia has appointed a Board of Emigration, composed of gentlemen of the higbest standing and reputation, with General Kichardson, the Adjutant-General of the State, as secretary, whose sole object is to guidci and assist, by every kindly office, persons from abroad wishing to invest a 22 THE LASH qVESTlUX. [cii. iv. little capital and .scttk; on the .soil ol" Viv,L;inia. T ini,Li;lit fill pages witli a (l('sciii)liou of lanus and ])lantatinii.s, and lots, large and small, of land tliat are thus in tlie market. But I shall only niention a lew ]iarticulars from a list i)resented to me hy General liiehardson. To show the great variety of choice, as regards situation for example, some of these farms and estates are in the innnediate neighbouihood of Eichmond, some are in Koxlnidge county, some in Orange county, others in Culpeper county, Chesterfield county, King William county, Louisa county, James City county, Xew Kent county, and so on. One is a tohacco plantation in Fluvanna, one of the most famous tobacco counties in Virginia. In the county of Orange there is an estate of 0,000 acres of inijiroved land, with several dwelling-houses on it, the purchaser of which could make a large home-farm I'or himself, and have besides half a dozen or even a dozen farm tenants. The Luuls are " very fertile, and suited to grass." The purchase-money of this estate would be taken in instalments, spread over ten years if necessary. There are also many small farms, and lots of 20 to 50 acres. The highest price asked for any of these lands, which are im])roved, is 4/. per acre. One estate of 800 acres, " land good, with abundance of greensand marl only four feet below the surface," could be bought for fifteen dollars an acre. Among the number there are " 2,000 acres of undeveloped coal lands." Land rights are carefully registered and guarded in A'irginia, and there is seldom any difliculty in tracing a clear title back through a long period of years. To understand the avalanche of land bargains at present in Vir- ginia, one has to remember that before the war the soil Nvas owned chielly by slaveholders, who had large estates which they never fully cultivated, but on which they shifted their crops about from one ])lace to another, and who, finding themselves with ])lenty of money and little troultle under this system, allowed tlicir overseers and the slave-dealers to settle all tlie hard matters between them. At the close of the war, when the slaves became free, it is easy to perceive that with lu) means left to cultivate such large tracts of land under the new conditions, it became a neces.-^ity, as well as tlie best thing the owners could do, to sell large portions of their estates, and to retain just as much as they had ca})ital and labour to cultivate ; and this they have done and are doing to some extent. In many other cases, i)roprietors, not rich save in land before the war, have since become embarrassed, and, falling into debt and arrears of taxes, have had decrees passed against them in the court.s, under which sales are ordered to proceed. There have been instances also of gentlemen "slain in battle," or driven from the country, or ilying from it in despair, and of every form of vicissitude and ruin that follows in the train of war and social revolution. The consequence is that a CH. IV.] STATE OF VIRGINIA. 23 large proportion of the landed property of a great and long settled State is literally going a-hegging for pciople to come and take it. The like has seldom been seen before. The deluge of encumbered estates in Ireland was nothing comi)ared to it, for the land in Ireland, when brought to sale under a l*arliamentary title, readily commanded purchasers atf good prices. Yet there are no agrarian nmrders in Virginia. Nor is it a new and unde- veloped country, where every element of civilization has to be introduced, but an old land of renown, wliere law and order pre- vail and every social comfort may be enjoyed. There is hartlly any part of Virginia where a settler on the soil would not only find towns and markets, and roads and railways, but have as his neighbours gentlemen who are no mean agriculturists, who are versed in all the science of husbandry, many of tlieni breeders of the rarest and iinest stock, and deeply indjued with the spirit of agricultural progress and improvement. The annual State Fair at Kichmond has been held this week. This is an institution which is spreading ra})idly in the Southern States. I had early note of agricultural fairs at Augusta and Atlanta, in Georgia, but found it inipossible to be present. The Georgia fairs from all accounts have been most spirited gather- ings. Charleston has also its first fair since the war this week, which I may be just in time to get a glimpse of. There have already been fairs in Lynchburg and I'etersburg, in this State, and these now culminate in liichmond. The fairs are competi- tive exhibitions of stock, produce, implements, and manufactures, where planters, farmers, and engineers meet to comjjare notes, and where the young country people of far distant counties come to enjoy town-life for a few days, to assist at races and other field amusements in the afternoons, to fill the great hotels with balls and routs at night, and let all the gay spirit out, as most young country people everywhere love to do. The fair at liich- mond was held on a large open space that was the Champ de Mars of the South in the war times. I was struck by the com- pleteness and permanence of the erections ibr this annual gathering. The lioyal Societies of England and Scotland them- selves cannot vie, in the temporary fabrics of their great peri- patetic shows, with the pavilions, committee-rooms, grand stands, restaurants, ware-rooms, and stalls for stock, made to last, on the fair-fjround at liichmond. A circular racecourse, ibrmed within the s(piare outer enclosure, is exactly one mile round. The exhibition of stock M^as not very extensive, but it contained some superb specimens of Hereford and Durham shorthorns, Ayrshire and iJevon cows, and immense i'at bullocks, all native- bred. There were many notable fine-wool sheep — South-downs, Cotswold lambs, one Cotswold ram (a very fine animal, im- ported from Gloucestershire), and Spanish merinocs, whicli are 24 THE LAND qUESllON. [en. iv. a favouiite stock in Virginia. The lueriiioes were from Culpcper county. The Ihitish races of sheep and cattle seem to thrive, and to be capable of the same high development as at home. The large breeds of swine i)robably exceed in size anything seen in the old country — Chesters, Pjedfords, and Woburns being pro- minent. There was as line a show of light thorough! nod liorses as could be seen anywhere, but very few draught animals. I saw a grey Norman stallion, that had been im])orted, as large as a Clydesdale, but with a longer and smaller body than the barrel- like trunk that gives the characteristic aspect of concentrated strength and power to that famous breed. There were some line mules, and a few donkeys which seemed as large as horses, and brayed with corresponding volume. The implements and machines formed, perhaps, the most extensive dis[ilay in the agricultural department of the Fair, and several steam-engines were at work on the ground, including a road-engine, with broad wheels, but of the ordinary type, and wanting in the pro- perties of the india-rubber tire and other ada])tations for draught imd ploughing invented by Mr. Thomson of Leith. A show-room contained specimens of the varied manufactures of A^'irginia, and a large open shed was devoted to the raw nuiterials and produce of the State. In this latter department I saw marls from various counties in the tidal region, and from Hanover county, north from liichmond ; puddling clay and tine moulding sands ; and manganese from the Cabell mine in Nelson county. On the day of opening, ]\[r. Jett'erson Davis, who was on his return home from Europe to ^Mississippi, appeared on the platform with the President and oliice bearers, accompanied by General Early and other associates in the war, and delivered a short speech, in which he congratulated the Virginians on the reviving prosperity of the State, and made passing allusion to former days and circum- stances. ;Mr. Davis is an acconi] dished speaker, and expresses himself with a nervous force that thrills and rouses his audience. No politics were spoken, but it was obvious that the people retain a deep respect for their former leaders in the Senate and tlie held. The trotting races were a source of great attraction, and the A''irginian horses certaiidy display amazing j>owers in thi.s line. The light buggies in which they were har- nessed Hew round the course like chariots of the sun. There is an amusement on these occasions which must be regarded, 1 suppose, as an outcome of the " chivahy " of the South. It is a tournament, wherein young men mounted on fine bloods, and dressed in fancy costumes of the olden time, endeavour at full gallop to run tlieir lances through iron rings about two inches and a half in diameter, suspt'uded from cross-trees jdaced in a line at some distance from each other on the field. The gallant knight who excels in this achievement has the honour of namintr CH. IV.] STATE OF VIRGINIA. 25 among the fair ladies " the (j)ueen of the Tournament," whom he crowns with roses amidst the cheers of the spectators. Whatever inroads may be made on tender hearts at these Southern fairs, there can be no doubt that they have many useful results, and are a manifestation of public spirit of the most commendable kind. The agricultural characteristics and resources of the various districts are arrayed before the eye till they become familiar to all ; and every new invention, dis- (5overy, or means of improvement receives a degi-ee of publicity and discussion which could not be so effectually attained in any other way. The Fair at Eichmond this year is deemed scarcely up to the mark of former seasons ; but it was anticipated that a great flood which, three weeks ago, swept the banks of the James and North liivers, destroying life and property, and washing away soil to an extent of which there has been no pre- cedent for a hundred years, would interfere most materially with the exhibition. " The hand of God," a pious old statesman said to me, " has lain heavily on Virginia for some years, and this flood is our most recent visitation." It must be regarded as a signal proof of the buoyant spirit and substantial resources of Virginia that " twenty thousand people," as the local papers reckon, should have flocked into Eichmond on this occasion, and that so varied and excellent an exhibition of agricultural stock, and of the materials and products of industry, should have been made. Since the discovery of the great marl deposits in South Caro- lina keen interest has been excited and eager search made for similar treasures in the neighbouring Atlantic States. Virginia has shared this excitement, and every year seems to add to her discoveries of these native means of fertilisation. There can be no doubt that from Acquia Creek in the north-west of the State to south of Eichmond, and from Eichmond towards the sea, beds of marl are to be found not far from the surface, more or less rich in phosphates and annuonia. The marl is of various kinds. There are blue marls, white marls, greensand marls, and other sorts, the composition of which differs ; but they are all beds of shells and Ibssil remains, and by proper treatment and manufacture yield phosphates of the higliest utility in fertilising the soil. Along the eastern shore numerous banks of half-decomposed oyster shells have been found, which, without any manufacture, have since the war enabled the agriculturists to dispense with lime. The l*iedmont or Granite region, from the less exhausting nature of its husbandry, stands in less need of chemical manures than the tobacco, cotton, and wheat lands; but in the Great Valley limestone everywhere abounds, and there can be no question of the ample and convenient means which Virginia possesses for the renovation and enrichment of her soil. Necessity is the 26 THE LAND QUESTION. [cu. iv. mother of invention, and not only is this manure-question giving rise to promising developments, but new uses are being found for materials with whicli the; Avoods and wildest parts of Virginia ab )und. The bark of the oak-trees is made in liichmond to yield tannin ca])able of prolitabU; exportation to the most distant markets. Shumac, worth 70 to 90 dollars per ton, is now produced in increasing (quantities from a till lately neglected shrub ; and the bark of the black oak of Vii'ginia is ground into quercitron, used in Glasgow and elsewhere for dyeing purposes, and fetching 35 dollars per ton. The reeds of the IJismal and other swamps, by a machine which I can only liken to a big gun, are torn into rags, and the rind completely separated from the inner pulp, which makes excellent paper, — a manufacture of unlimited de- mand in the United States. For the great products of A'^irginia there are the best of markets. Every pound of tobacco-leaf is bought in the Tobacco Exchanges of liichmond and the other towns for cash by firms of the most am])le resources, and by agents of the French, Austrian, and other Continental Govern- ments, as soon as sent in. The Corn Exchanges of the various towns are conducted with similar regularity, and there is an advantage to the wheat of Virginia in being so near the seaboard that it gains in cheapness of transit what it loses in yield as conipared with new and more productive soils. The farmer in the virgin lands of the Far AVest has to produce two bushels of wheat to carry one to the consumer. The minor farm products of Virginia find ready sale in all the principal towns, at prices which the inhabitants of even a European city would consider high. Thus, in Petersburg, I find eggs 18 to 20 cents a dozen; butter, 35 to 40 cents per lb. ; chickens, 25 to 35 cents each, wholesale prices. Fruit of every kind in Virginia is produced in larger quantities than can be consumed on the spot, but is preserved in various foiins and sent abroad, and, raw, is daily bought and sold in the domestic markets. It seems only a nightmare, or some hideous misunderstanding, or unaccountable cai)rice of evil fortune, that can retard the progress of Virginia to prosperity and wealth greater and more substantial than she has known at any former period. The following figures show the crops of tobacco in the four years before and four years after the war : — Hlul.ollar. ^^'iln^m;iton, Charlotte, andKutherford Kailway. (.Jovernor 1 [olden vcrattn the White People. — Great increase of Negroes in Wihuiiig- toi). — Ivute of ^^'ages. [GOLDSBOUO' — Noi'. no. WlLMlNUTON — NoV. 7-9.] TiiK sun was just risin^^ as the railway train, on my way south- ward t'roni roiorsbiu'L!;, ]ilungc(l into the depths of the great pine forests of North Carolina. The scene by this time was not quite new to me. The Atlantic slope southward from Xew Jersey through Pennsylvania and N'irginia to this ])oint, so far, has all nnu'h the same natural features, but Pennsylvania is more cleared of wood, though (what I saw of it) not much better cultivated than Virginia, and the woods of Virginia have more variety than the forests of almost pure pine which flourish in North Carolina. The rising sun, as seen through these dense thickets, suffuses a vast golden radiance from a binnished centre, on whith the eye can look steadily, and trace from background to foreground, and on tiiis side and that, the lines of light with which it pierces the glades, brightens the leaves, and ])lays round the dark trunks of the forest. It is as if all the distant outer edge of the wood were on lire, M'ithout smoke, or noise, or ilame — aglow, sim]>ly, with irresistible, advancing, autl spreailing iire. P>ut as the cars sweep on, the tall junes begin to whirl round in an endless dance, and the golden radiance seems to move through the wood with the speed of lightning, till the eye grows weary, and the brain, overtasked, anil itself ablaze with the iire of imagination, becomes dizzy. One is glad to fall back on the seats for relief, but again and again leans forward to ga/e anew on the glorious scene. The pines, which, as far as 1 can estimate, grow to a height of 70 to StI feet, are bare a>ul straight as the masts of a sliij), with only a small cupt>la of branches and leiives at the top. It seems as if the very thick- ness with which they spring up ])recludes any other develop- meut. They crowd and jostle one another into nakedness, lu nil. v.] STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA. 2!) ilio fiorco contest to o'o ahead, the lower hranehes, " eahined and (■oufincd," and choked to deatli, I'all oCI' till nothintf hut th(> haro stem with its hood of Iblian'o remains. The very hrushwood cannot live amidst the aflluenee and mastery of the pine in the Carolinian forests. Long as the woods of North Carolina have yielded enormous (|[uantities of tur])entinG and naval stores to tlie world, it proves the inexhaustil)ility of the sources of these valuable products, that I nnist liave travelled fifty or sixty miles through forest scenery without setung a single tree that had been tn])ped for oil. It is only in the interior, and as one approaches nearer the port of Wilmington, that the manufacture of "naval stores" hcuiomes visible in incised trees and turpentine distilleries. Yet the hand of man has long been busy over all these north- eastern tracts of North C'arolina. There are numerous chnirings in the woods under cultivation, and farms and ]»laiitat ions, which yield Indian corn in abundance, aiul always cotton more or less successfully. Many of the cotton-fields, indeed, show but an inhirior growth, but others in their immediate vicinity are flourish- ing, even luxuriant. In some instances the heads only of the negro pickers were seen above the tops of the plant, while in others, no doubt the majority, the ])lant was not more than a foot and a half or two feet high, with considei'able portions of the fields here and there showing either a total failure or a partial extinc- tion of the culture by overgrowth of grass and weeds. The best crops arc usually found in the neighbourhood of the dwelling- houses of the larger plantations and of the villages, and are the result obviously of niiuuiring and more caniful handling. The negroes and other small cidtivaf,ors have settled on many of the clearings in the forest, and have not yet the art or the means cither of growing or pickinff their cotton well. Yet one could not but observe the abundance of bolls on fields where the plants were smallest. An English pasture, covered with white daisies, is the closest simih; which can be given of the aspect of many of these cotton patches. Tlu; picking was not mon^ n]-> to the mark than the pridiminnry culture, and, generally sp(\aking, was most advanced wlusre the cotton ])lant was largest and most carefully cultivated. I must remark, at the same time, that several negro lots have come under my observation which are little modcds of industry and improvement, from the cottage outward. The dwellings in this part of North Carolina are for the most part very ])oor— mere woodiin shanties, without paint, or any other mark of condbrt or substance. But this is by no means the universal character of the country. The railways pass through the poorest districts lying between important l)oints of traffic, and it is only by getting away from the tracks of the cars and behind the woods that one discovers all the rural 30 G01DSB0R0\ [ch. v. development. There arc ni;my lar^fe plautors in tliis rot,non, wlio grow spacions breadths of cotton, and send as well-pressed iron-tied bales to market as are to be seen anywhere. The extent of cotton cultnre in North Carolina, and the fervour and enori,'y with which it is prosecuted, are nnich greater, indeed, than one expects to lind so near the northern- limit of thc^ Cotton Belt. The area M'itliin wliich cotton is grown in North Carolina may be defined by linos drawn from Norlhani})ton county on the northern frontier, eastward through Halifax and Martin counties to I'andico Sound, south-westward through Halifax, Nash, and Johnston counties, and thence direct westward as far as Meck- lenl)urg county, which is said to bo one of the best cotton dis- tricts ill the State. An extension of the area of cotton culture is not at the moment a question of supreme importance as regards either the Southern States or an ample supply of the staple to the factories of Europe. The area may be extended without materially in- creasing the aggregate produce, and the question of the time appears to be how, by skilful culture and the application of manures, the same area may be made to yield a larger crop. It is to this object that the attention of growers in the South ap- pears to be mainly addressed. Yet it is the opinion of persons of experience here that in North Carolina there is probably 20 per cent, greater breadth of cotton this year than last, though doubts are expressed whether the increase of produce will be in ])roportion. The weather, however, is fovourable beyond ex])ectation for the utmost yield of the cotton ])lant. The (liHiculty so far north is the shortness of the season, but up to this date there has not been a nip of frost ; the days are as warm as in July in England, the nights clear and pleasant, and there has been neither rain nor storm to retard the labour or destroy the liopes of the planter. AVith such weather, there is no reason wliy cotton should not turn out as well for the grower, even in North Carolina, as any crop that could be cultivated. Since long before the war this State has suffered from emigration to the richer cotton lands of the South, and this is one of the social dilliculties arising from the very superabundance of natural resources in America which it is hard to overcome. Some say that for every native in the State there are two strangers, and ask how any proper consolidation of society or stable industrial progress is possible in such circumstances ? But an extended cultivation of cotton is at least not a bad symptom in the meantime. The testimony borne of the negroes by candid and sui)stantial |K^ople is that, Avhik^ they do not ahord the supply of .steady laliour necessary, and there is room ft)r more of them, or of more eflicient labourers, they are doing much better than was expected before emaneipation. They are en. v.] STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA. 31 paid on the cotton farms in some instances by wages, and in others by a share of the proikice, the relative merits of wliicli modes of remuneration are likely to become an important practical question in the Southern States. The acknowledged disadvantage of the latter mode is the uncertainty and inequality of tlie return for labour. The negroes on the share system, for example, had a larger remuneration last year, when the price of cotton was liigh, than they will have this year, when it has suffered a heavy de- cline. Can the negro be expected to understand or be satisfied with this fluctuating scale of remuneration for his toil ? Is it desirable that he should be dragged, at his present stage of pro- gress, into all the ups and downs of cotton speculation ? Is he likely to comprehend that, while doing liis l)est probably in both years, he should have less this year than last, because France and Prussia have gone to war ? And if he cannot comprehend this, is there not a danger that he may be discontented, and think himself the victim of some fraud or injustice nearer home ? Railways generally are — or, if not, ought to be — made at very little cost in this part of the world. On my way to Wil- mington, I have remarked about forty miles over which the rails pass in as straight a line as could be drawn mathematically, on ground almost as level as a bowling-green, and with only the fine, light, marUy soil of the Atlantic slope to cut through. Not a rock, scarce a creek or stream, or marsh, in all this long dis- tance. The American engineers have usually carried their lines along the ridge of the country to be traversed, and hence the few bridges, and the forest land with which the traveller in America becomes so familiar. On looking down on the track — for which, by the way, the construction of the cars, allowing free passage at all times from one end of the train to the other, affords peculiar facility — one sees for the most part a simple narrow clearing through the forest, a certain amount of spade and barrow work, with embankments here and there only a few feet deep ; ribs of timber, or " railway sleepers," laid across ; and then, longitu- dinally, the iron rails, bound together by bolts, without the " chairs " and jointings which the heavy traffic on British rail- ways renders necessary. Two light trains a day, with probably one freight train in the same period, form the general average of traffic, and can be conducted safely without the elaborate expen- diture on " way " and " maintenance of way " in other circum- stances indispensable. The railways IierealDouts have numerous stations, which are simply landing-places, without buildings of any kind, for letting down passengers to farms and little centres of population in the neighbourhood; and they have also " depots " where there may be a little town or not, but where there are great amounts of produce to be " shipped," and 32 WILMINGTON. [en. v. where the companies erect sheds and provide every structural convenience necessary to the trallic. The main outlay of American railways, however, away from tlie <;rcat cities, is the iron rail. The timher is got on either hand in ahundance at every step of the road, and the projjrietors of the lands are so eager to have railway communication that they not only open their woods, hut give tens of thousands of acres along the track for ever to the companies. The earthworks, and all into which lahour on tlu> spot enters, have to bear, indeed, the great inflation of prices which dates from the war, and which renders the monetary cost nearly double what it was before. But the iron rails are the most formidaljle difliculty. AV'ilmington is the only shipping port of any magnitude in North Carolina. The railway system of the State, converging at Goldslxu'o', has been extended to Beaufort, about 100 miles north of Wilmington, M'here there is said to be deeper water, and other advantages, and which is expected to compete with Wilmington for the export and import trade. But the results hitherto have not been equal to the most sober expectations. It is always a ditficult and tardy process to divert trade from an established channel. Wilmington, like all the old Atlantic ports, has gi'eat depth of water u[) to its warehouses. It was the chief port for blockade-runners during the war, and the success with which that trade was conducted in the face of the Federal cruisers is adduced as a proof of the safety and convenience of the harbourage and its outlets. The stormy dangers of Cape Ifatteras, which increase the rate of insurance at New York, may be a drawback in the coasting trade betwixt Wilmington and seaports to the north, but not betwixt Wilmington and any port south of North Carolina, while they can hardly affect, in any degree, the direct trade of Wilmington with Europe. The cotton steam-press here was destro3'(*il in the Avar, and has not yet been replaced. There is a great number of intelligent, energetic, and honourable men of business in Wilmington, in- chuling a few prominent Northern men, who have made money in North Carolina, are imbued with an earnest desire to develop the prosperity of the State, and will not readily allow the trade of the port to dwindle. The ex])orts of North Carolina, of which the great bulk passes through Wilmington, have lieen steadily on the increase since the close of the war. With the exce])tion of IStKJ, the first year of peace, when a considerable quantity of produce stored uj) during the blockade found outlet, and when the export of cotton amounted to 04,000 bales, the cotton exported annually has been ,"iS,000 bales till the past season, in which it has increased to .^)7,Hr)r) bales. Th(> ])ro(luction of cotton in a State can sehlom be iiderred from the exports of its own harbours, owing to the en. v.] STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA. 33 divers linos of transit by which cotton finds its way to market, and Nortli Carolina itself is not an exception to the general rule in this respect, since some of its cotton, with much more from farther South, goes to Norfolk in Virginia, and some to Charleston in South Carolina. ]>ut North Carolina exports hardly any cotton which is not the produce of its own soil, and the rapid increase of export during the past year shows a largely extended internal production. The average price of cotton realized in North and South Carolina in the four years after the war was 282 cents per lb., while in 1869-70 it was but 22^- cents per lb., and has since been still further reduced. But it is worthy of observation, that while the average value of the dollar, in the four years succeed- ing the war, was 6'49 to the pound sterling, during 1809-70 it has been as high as 5"70 to the ])Ound sterling. This difference may not be immediately felt by the grower under the roundabout style of business and the elaborate frustration of economic prin- ciples prevailing in the United States, but it shows that a fall of the currency price of cotton is not exactly equivalent to a fall of value, and that, under any moderate approach to free trade, and a fair rating of goods and materials of every kind, the possi- bilities of American production of cotton and other staples, with a handsome profit to the producer, would be immensely increased. The exports of spirit of turpentine from North Carolina in 1866 wore 57,000 casks, in 1867 they rose to 89,000 casks, in 1868 to 96,000, and last year to 120,000 casks. In 1870 the same ratio of increase will not bo shown. The pro- duction has not been so great as in 1869. The benzoin spirit distilled from petroleum is interfering with the demand for spirit of turpentine, and the increased labour and energy thrown into the production of cotton naturally marks a diminished attention to the industry of the forests. The price of the spirit of tur- pentine has fallen since the war from 25 dollars to 15 dollars per cask, and crude has declined in equal proportion. Yet, what with the increased quantity produced, and the higher value of American currency, North Carolina has been receiving annually an almost uniform sum in pounds sterling for her turpentine and other naval stores. The export of rosin has increased from 343,451 barrels in 1866 to 544,498 barrels in 1869. The price has dropped in the same period from 5 to 2^ dollars per barrel, but the dollar is worth in British money from 15 to 18 ])er cent, more than in 1866. The export of lumber of all kinds has been well maintained year after year since the close of the war, and though at slightly reduced rates, has of late been increased ; so that, with the extended cultivation of cotton and other marks of reviving agriculture, the gradual recuperation of North Carolina seems beyond question. Wilmington is striving in various ways to develop the resources D :}4 WILMINGTON. [cii. v. ot" the State and to iiupnjve its own position as the i)ort of ship- nu'nt. Chief among the objects anxiously promoted by its leading men is the completion of the Wilmington, Charlotte, and Kutherford liailroad. There are 170 miles of this line in opera- tion, but a considerable extension is still necessary to render the projected communication complete. Along the southern border of North Carolina there are several well-settled and productive counties which have no railway communication with the coast, and the object of the promoters of the railway is to open up these counties and to form a connection with the Tennessee line and the great thoroughfares to the South and West. I'he leading ports on the Atlantic seal»oard have all a lively ambition to get into direct railway conunuuication with the Western States and the route to the I'acitic. This appears to them to be the great highway of future connnerce, while at the same time tlie exten- sion of their lines westward meanwhile serves most important local objects. There is little reason to doubt that, by means of direct railway communication with Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, Wilmington as well as other Southern seaports would command a share of the Western traffic with Europe, at present carried by a longer route to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. New York more especially, by its great concen- tration of capital and means of communication, and the keen- ness, not to say unscrupulousness, with which the latter are worked in its favour, overshadows and overlays as with an in- cubus the natural and regular development of the Southern sea- }>orts, and introduces some very uneconomic elements into the trade of the South and West with Europe. Whether this want of balance can be corrected remains to be seen, but, at all events, there is every propriety in North Carolina seeking to have the moans of carrying her own produce quickly and cheaply to the seaboard. The counties yet to be penetrated by the Wilmington and Jiutherford line are rich in agricultural and mineral resources. JMecklenburg, one of the number, has long been among the fore- most cotton-growing counties in the State. The whole district is largely peopled by thrifty and iiulustrious Scotch settlers of long standing. On being shown the bf)ok of a cotton factor here, 1 found, \\\t\\ some surprise, that fully one-half of his con- signers were " Macs." Many of the planters of North Carolina send down their cotton to Wilmington, bale by bale as they gather it, under llea^y charges of transit, which, in a state of declining prices, may one day turn the scale against production. As it is, there is much grund)ling this season. The growers say that 15 cents per lb. at the gin is the lowest price at whicli they can ])roduce cotton, as 15 cents go at present in the I'nited Slates. The cheapest access to market is thus of the most vital importance. Yet the promoters of the Wilmington and Euthcr- CH. v.] STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA. 35 ford Railroad, notwithstanding all the outlay and substantial progress they have made, are met by great difficulty. Three years ago they were authorized by their charter to borrow 2,500,000 dollars on iirst mortgage bonds, than which there is no better security ; but there would seem to be little hope of getting the money on this Continent unless the company sell its bonds at 50 for 100 at 8 per cent, interest, or, in other words, borrow at 16 per cent, and pay at last in principal 100 for every 50 bor- rowed ! New York, which is the chief centre of these financial operations, has probably no great disposition to promote railways which threaten in some degree its own imperial monopoly, or it may not have funds enough for all the projects of this kind urged on its attention ; but such things might surely somehow be better and more easily accomplished. The waut of confidence betwixt the white people of North Carolina and the State Government that followed upon the war continues to prevail, though in a limited and subsiding degree. Notwithstanding the test oath, by which persons who took part in the war are excluded from office, the negro mass vote, and the high-handed measures of the party in power, the white population of the State are gradually acquiring inducnce, and have made considerable gains in the elections this autumn. The Governor, Holden, has weakened rather than strengthened his influence by a cry which he raised, in a case of supposed murder, against Ku-Klux conspiracy and outrage in the State, and the military and other measures he adopted on the occasion. The fact that a murder had been committed might be clear enough, but that a secret confederacy existed among the white people for purposes of violence was denounced as an invention of the Governor to agitate the negroes, and to keep them banded on his side in the elections. The case at all events broke com- pletely down on inquiry, and the parties arraigned right and left on a charge of complicity were discharged by the Eadical judges. Governor Holden is not a " carpet-bagger." He is what is called here a " scallowag," or what in the amenities of electioneering parlance in England would be termed " turn- coat." He is said to have been more fiercely Confederate than the Confederates themselves during the war, but upon the surren- der to have turned round, and, placing himself at the head of the negToes, secured his pre-eminence.^ The fierce passions excited betwixt North and South by the war are kept alive by the system of rule which has almost inevitably followed, but there are symptoms that bitter feelings and inane resentments will gradually give way. A Northern man of business readily ^ Governor Holden, since the above was written, has been impeached, found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours against the State and the liberties ot the citizens, and expelled from office. D 2 36 WILMINOTON. [en. v. attains the position due to him among his fellow-citizens in tlie South. Mr. Silas Martin, the present IMayor of Wilmincjton, though a Northerner, was freely elected to his office, and is held in deserved respect by all classes of the population for his business qualities and standing, and the zeal and probity with which he promotes tlie interests of the port and of the State. The white and coloiu'ed population of North Carolina are nearly equal in number. Here in Wilmington the negroes are in a large majority, the census of this year having brought out the following results : — White males 2,697 White females 2,832 Total whites .... 5,529 Coloured males 3,446 Coloured females 4,455 Total coloured . . . 7,901 Foreign males 348 Foreign females 200 Total foreign . . . 548 Total population of Wilmington . . 13,978 This is an increase of fully 4,000 since the previous census, which is remarkable, considering the vicissitudes throu"h which the town has passed in these ten years, and is indicative, not only from the large majority of negroes, but the large excess of coloured females over coloured males, of the tendency of the negro, since emancipation, to desert the country for the town, and to do so in a loose and vagrant fashion. Society cannot be in the most healthy condition where the coloured females are four to three coloured males. But there is abundance of employ- ment most part of the year in "Wilmington for all the able-bodied negroes willing to work. The rate of wages paid them for com- mon labour is from 1 to 1'25 dollars a day, and for whitewashing, bricklaying, and labour more or less skilled to which negroes have been trained, as high as from 2-50 to 3 dollars a day. CHAPTER VI. City of Charleston— Its Ruin in the War — Marks of gradual Restoration. — The Battery. — Great Fire of 1862. — Charleston account of the Losses of the Southern States.— Loud Complaints of Misgovernmeut and Fmancial Jobbery. — Majority of Negroes in the Legislature. — Atmosphere of Poli- tical Suspicion. — Efforts of the Whites to regain a share of Representa- tion. — The Reform Union. [Charleston, S.C. — Nov. 10 to Nov. 14] Charleston — " old Charleston," fondly so called by its citizens — tliat has braved " the battle and the breeze," if not a thousand, a good hundred years — the centre of Carolinian trade and commerce, the centre always of strong political emotion, and the centre also where the negro element was densest and negro slavery was intrenched as in a stronghold alike by fear- and interest — is getting, slowly but surely, on its legs again from the downfall inflicted by the war. Never had a completer ruin fallen upou any city than fell upon Charleston in the years from 1860 to 1865. Her planters, who, with noble country seats on the banks of pleasant streams, amid groves of live oaks affording deep shade from the summer sun, could afford to have their winter residences here in town, were reduced, as by the grinding of a nether millstone, from affluence to poverty — her merchants were scattered to the four winds of heaven— her shopkeepers closed their doors, or contrived to support a pre- carious existence on contraband of war — her young men w^ent to die on the battlefield or in the military prisons of the Noith — her women and children, who could, fled to the country. The Federal Government, mindful of Fort Sumter and the first indignity to the Union flag, kept Charleston under close block- ade, and added to its miseries by occasional bombardments. ^^^len this process in five years had reached the last stage of exhaustion, and the military surrender gave practical effect to emancipation, the negroes in the country parts, following up the child-like instinct of former days that Charleston was the El Dorado of the world, flocked into the ruined town, and made its aspect of misery and desolation more complete. The streets were empty of all but themselves ; the houses had not only 38 ' CHARLESTOX. [ch. vi. lost all their bright ])aint without, but were mostly tenautless within ; many fine mansions, long deserted, were fast mouldering into decay and ruin ; and the demand for labour and the supply of provisions were at the lowest point. Seldom, with a deeper ruin of the old, has there been a more hopeless chaos out of which to construct a new order of things than Cliarleston pre- sented in those days. Yet the process of amelioration has year by year been going steadily forward. Many of the old merchants of the city, and many active agents of exchange, botli new and old, have come to put the wheels of trade once more in motion. Some of the old planters have also survived, and are seen, thougli in diminished numbers and with saddened countenances, yet with the steady fire of Anglo-Saxon courage in their eyes, attending to att'airs like men determined to con- quer fortune even in the depths of ruin and on the brink of the grave ; while others, not so much to be respected, unwillmg to work and ashamed to beg, seek to maintain some remnant of the ancient dignity no one knows how. The quays and wharves are busy; new ones, to meet new branches of trade, have been built with files of counting-rooms to suit ; the cotton presses are again at work ; lorries laden with the staple products of the interior pour the livelong day along the streets towards the river ; revival is extending from the business parts of the town to the quiet quarters of private residence ; and the hotels, always of the first consideration in America, are already, with their stately colonnades of white pillars, their freshly painted fronts, and their troops of polished waiters of various hues of ebony, magnificent in Charleston. I went down one evening to the Battery, an esplanade at the seaward end of the peninsula, formed by the Cooper and Ashley Elvers, on which Cliarleston is built — not of great compass, seeing that the embouchure of tlie two rivers here draws the land to a narrow point, but beautiful and refreshing, looking out on the spacious bay direct to Fort Sumter and the far Atlantic, and calling up associations of the Spanish Main and the West Indies, the distant British Islands, and of naval and historic gloiy, at the crowding thoughts of which tlie heart of every English-speaking man leaps to his mouth. Though Charleston, like other cities, has its "West-End — as 1 have seen from the tower of the Orphan Asylum, a noble institution which the war has left in full vigour — where goodly houses along stretching avenues of trees, and ample garden grounds, afford a happy and elegant retreat to prosperous men of business, yet there is reason enough why the Battery shoidd be a point of peculiar eminence and fashion in Cliarleston. The residences round the es])lanade — ])alaces in their way — after long neglect, are undergoing rapid renovation. I. am told that, apart iVom the "nabobs" who live in these charming marine villas, the cii. VI. J STATE OF SOUTH CAliOLINJ. 39 ])atteiy in ante-war times was the resort every evening of a long- array of carriages, in which fair ladies reclined, and happy gentlemen cooled themselves after the heat an.d toil of the day. The only equipage I sav/ was the handsome buggy of a dry-goods man from the North, who is rather liked for the spirit he dis- plays. But the ladies of Charleston meantime take a constitu- tional walk on the Battery with their babies and nurses, and the gentlemen say the carriages will come again in due time. Such is the hopeful uprising of commercial progress in Charleston just now. But the old town has much to recover. In the winter of 1862 a calamity more destructive and terrible than all the Federal bombardments befell the devoted city. A fire broke out in some negro shanty on the Cooper River, and, favoured by the wind, spread and swept down all before it in a curious zigzag but generally straight line through the centre of the town, till stopped by the Ashley Eiver on the other side. This appalling conflagration, the desolation and misery cuased and the hospitality evoked by which, amidst all the troubles of the w^ar, cannot be described, still leaves its mark, like the course of a caterpillar that has eaten its way over a cotton leaf, upon the city of Charleston. Fires, once sprung, must propagate here with fearful rapidity. A large proportion of the side streets of Charleston are built of wood. The houses are simply frame erections. They are all dry as tinder, and airy as they can be made. An accidental spark or flame which in our British towns would be instantly smothered by the damp atmo- sphere, the stone walls, the dense fogs, and the absence of sun and ventilation, is here fraught sometimes with alarming conse- quences. Not the slightest suspicion of incendiarism rested upon the great Charleston fire of 1862. The negro is not given to the folly of setting his house on fire to roast an egg for somebody else to eat ; and such is the power of discipline and habit over him, that he continues, save on election nights or other periods of great excitement, to turn into bed at the early hour in the evening prescribed to him by a sort of curfew law in the days of slavery. The question asked when one surveys the vast ruin caused by this fire is, What became of the insurance companies ? The insurance companies of the South ? The war soon rendered their position untenable. The number of persons caring to insure rapicUy diminished, and as the destruction of fire and sword spread wider and wider, the companies went down by the board, till the whole insurance capital of the Southern States, and all the interests centred round it, shrivelled up like a scroll and disappeared. One must go to Charleston in order to hear all the ruin of the war summed up in good round emphatic English. Any old merchant citizen will reckon on his fingers what the war lost of property, capital, and substance of every kind to the South. 40 CHARLESTON. [ch. vi. rirst, the proi)eity in negroes, whicli, whether property iu right reason and natural ecjuity or not, was introduced under the sway of Eughuid, was recognised by the Constitution of the Republic, Mas ])roteeted Ijy the hiws of tlie United States, and was to all material intents and purposes as essentially property in the South as anything elsewhere which makes profit and can be bought and sold; — this ])roperty was abolished, and was four hundred millions steiling. The whole banking capital of the South, which can- not be estimated at less than two hundred millions more, was swamped in the extinction of all i)rofitable banking business, and, finally, in a residuary Hood of worthless Confederate money. The whole insurance ca[)ital of the South — prolialjly a hundred millions more — also perished. The well-organized cotton, sugar, and toljacco plantations, mills, factories, coal and iron mines, and commercial and industrial establishments, built up by private capital, the value of which in millions of pounds sterling cannot be computed — all sank and were engulfed in the same wave. Every form of mortgage claim, with the exception of two or three proud State stocks, shared for the time being the fate of the principal, and only now crops up amidst the subsiding deluge like the stumps of a submerged forest. And so on the account goes as long as the fingers hold out, till the demonstra- tion made is that the South by the war was peeled to the bone, and left not only without a cent in its pocket, but without any- thing by which a cent could be made, save the rude but produc- tive land and the bright sun, powerful indeed as natural germs of wealth and prosperity, but needing, to give them vitality, more capital and labour, more invention and ingenuity, more of everything which it seemed most dilHcult to supply.^ Terrible though the picture of ruin and impoverishment be, as thus * The census returns of the total value of the taxable property of many of the States have been published since my visit. The basis may not be a very accurate one, but is doubtless an api)i'oximation to accuracy. Referrinj^to the figures, the total valuation of Florida has dcclinfd from §GS,i)29,(J85 in 18(50 to §31,167,4(54 in 1870; Georgia, from §()18,2:}2,387 in 1860 to $202,063,557 in 1870; Louisiana, from $435,787,265 in 18(;0 to 8250,588,510 in 1870; while in Mississippi the decrease has been from §509,427,912 in 1860 to $154,635,527 last year. South Carolina has not suffered as {freat a depreciation as some other States, the returns placing her present valuation at .§174,409,491 against §489,319,128 in 18(50. The valuation of Virginia and West Virginia in 1870 was §480,800,267 against §657,021,336 ten years ago. Kentucky appears to be recuperating, her valuation in 1870 being 8423,776,099 against §528,212,693. The imi)overishment of the South has told materially on the total taxable property of the Union. This value incrciused betwixt 1850 and 1860 from ;£l,200,000,0(K) to £2.100,000,000, or 75 per cent. The increase in the last ten yeai"s has been only 25 i)er cent., or about £500,000,000. The country, on the other hand, now owes a National Jlebt, without reckoning State and City debts, of an amount nearly equal to what appears to be the whole increase of taxable jn-operty in ten years. CH. VI.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 41 (Ivuwn here in Charleston, I suspect it is in the main true of the whole South, and the marvel must be that affairs should already be so lively, so hopeful and elastic, as they eveiywhero appear. It was to be expected that the young men would enter upon business with fresh life and energy; but more reniarkable than they are the men of advanced life who, still on the top of the M'ave, are guiding and controlling by their experience the new order of things. Charleston, like Boston — for a good comparison there is nothing like the antipodes — has an English look about it. The old city has not fallen so mathematically into the parallelo- graiA formation as the cities of the United States in general. Tiie inhabitants still cast many a fond look towards the old country, and contrast the present misrule with the time when the laws of England were the laws of South Carolina. Such is the deep sense of change and revolution produced by the down- fall of State Eights and the inroad of Federal power and innova- tion, that they profess not to know what the laws of South Carolina now are, or whether she has any laws at all. Ask what the system of rule is, and the reply will uniformly be that it is " nigger rule," which is in one sense true. The negroes are more numerous than the whites in South Carolina. Being all citizens of the United States, they have all the right of voting, while many of the whites are not naturalized ; and the War Radicals who came in to take the lead in political affairs, and to hold offices for which the prominent men of the State were dis- qualified by the test oath, have succeeded in controlling the negro vote, and casting it almost en masse in their favour at the polls. There not being " carpet-baggers" or " scallowags" enough in the State to fill all the seats in the Legislature, the negroes have largely returned men of their own race to watch over " laws and learning," and " ships, colonies, and commerce," at the Capitol. The House of Eepresentatives consists of 80 coloured men and 44 whites, and the Senate of 11 coloured men and 20 whites — there being one seat vacant just now. The white people of South Carolina are thus practically disfranchised, and a pro- letariat Parliament has been constituted, the like of which could not be produced under the widest suffrage in any part of the world save in some of these Southern States. The outcry of misgovernment, extravagant expenditure, jobbery, and corrup- tion is both loud and general. The negroes are declared to be the dupes of designing men, comparative strangers to the State, whose object is simply to fill their pockets out of the public S])oil. Political charges are not mniced in South Carolina. There is room, indeed, to hope for a good deal of exaggeration. The exclusion of the superior part of the population li'om all influence in public affairs must of itself tend to magnify the 42 CHARLESTON. [cu. vi. enormity of everything enormous, and to distort everything not quite square that is done. The members and dependants of the iState Administration are said, after having dei)reciated the Soutli Carolina bonds to 40 and 35 cents, and bought in Largely at such prices, to have then offered gold interest at New York, which at once advanced the price to 95 cents, and enabled them to pocket millions. I'ossible and condemnatory enough, but it was a good thing in itself to restore the financial credit of the State ; and in North Carolina, for example, the business men and the pro- prietors have since the war urged upon the Legislature to place the public credit of the State on the best footing, and will not desist till they succeed, under the conviction that honesty tJlf the public creditor is the best policy, and the corner-stone of all progress and improvement, v State Commissions are said to be issued on roads, lands, and other departments, the members of which do little but job and make profit to themselves and their friends. The State Government buys lands on which to settle and give homes to negroes. This is commissioned, and land is said to undergo sale and resale before it becomes the property of the State. It is not believed that the ilegroes will in any considerable number make homes on these properties, and the only advantage I have incidentally discovered from such settle- nunits is in one instance where the negroes, not ha\ing crops enough of their own to occu])y their labour, formed a reserve force from which a neighbouring planter has drawn extra hands to gather in his cotton. Railway contracts and railway bonds, in which the State has its finger, are also suspected of offering opportunities not exactly consistent with the public good. The ])liosphate deposits in the bay and rivers have been leased at a royally of a dollar per ton to a single company, not, 1 am to believe, without heavy sums distributed in the House of llepre- sentatives; but the principle of this transaction is discussed freely by all parties, and it is thought by some that the law of the United States will not sanction a commercial monopoly of what is public estate. A State census was taken last year, which is thought to have been a superfluous labour, seeing that tilt' deceimial census ordered by Congress fell to be taken this year, and the Governor is supposed to have sought in this way to give employment to partisans, and to secure votes. Every- thing thus moves in an atmosphere of political suspicion. v One of the most favourable signs, indeed, is the keenness with which the acts of the State Government and Legislature are scrutinized, and the activity with which the native white population endea- vour to recover inttuence and authority both in the State and in C(jngress. Trior to the recent elections, they organised a Eeform Union on the basis of the political and civil equality of the negroes, turned out in large numbers to the liallot-boxes, pro- cH. VI.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA A?. tected the negroes who were voting on their side, and in Charleston succeeded. But, throughout the State, the move- ment so far has failed to divide the negro vote with the Radical party, who remain in a large majority. The principles of the Eeform Union seem to he consistently maintained in practice. Many of the white electors in the city voted for Delarge, a negro tailor, as representative of their district in Congress, because they believed him to be more trustworthy than his white opponents. I allude at this length to political affairs in South Carolina, because it is very o])vious that a system of government restiog almost wholly on the votes of the negroes is not a desirable state of affairs as regards either the State itself or the general interests of the Union. It destroys confidence in the integrity and stability of the Administration, prevents the investment of money, and renders impossil)le that hearty co-operation of the public authorities with the substantial people of the State which is so essential to the interests of all classes of the community. CHAPTER VII. Exports of Cotton from Ch;irleston before and since the War. — Opening inaile for New York Speculators. — Decrease of Banking Capital in South Carolina. — A Fortunate Development. — The Phosphate Deposits — Their Extent and Characteristics — Manufacture into Manures. — Great activity of the New Trade. — Eice Cultivation likely to dimijiish. — The Environs of Charleston. [Charleston, S.C. — Nov. 10 to Nov. 14.] Immediately before the war the port of Charleston passed out to sea as many as half a million of bales of cotton in a year. This large supply was drawn from many wide districts beyond the borders of South Carolina, the total production of ginned cotton in which was 300,000 bales in 1850, and 354,412 bales in 1860, tliis latter being the largest crop wliich the State had ever produced. The extended commercial relations of Charleston, and its convenience as a place of shipment for the cotton of parts of North Carolina, Middle Georgia, the Sea Islands, and regions still more distant, were thus well established before the war. Charleston is resuming all her old connections, but has to contend with new conditions of railway comnnmication in the interior, as well as with the fresh How of capital and commercial energy into ports formerly occu^jyiug a subordinate position which has characterised the last few years of reviving industry and enterprise in the South. But all the old sections of the country from whicli cotton came to Charleston continue to send her more or less still ; and with some furtlier d(3velopment of her railway system, and an increase of banking and connnercial capital, Charleston is certain to maintain a leading position both as a market and a port of shipment for cotton. She exported in the year ended August 31 last, 238,000 bales of Upland cotton and 13,000 bales of Sea Island, which, though much short of ante-war times, show a large increase on preceding years since the war, and from the high prices realized present a volume of trade in money value which com])ares favourably with the most prosperous times in Charleston. Tlie cotton exported here in the past year is estimated at 25,750,000 dollars, and, with a new crop still larger coming forward rapidly to market, has produced cii. VII.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 45 a very satisfactory feeling, both retrospectively and prospectively. There is probably, in the meantime, a larger proportion of the cotton exported from Charleston sent forward here simply for shipment, .and giving little return to the town itself, than in former times. The cotton speculators at New York push over the heads of the local merchants and factors, and, by cutting before the point, do little good probably to themselves, while impoverishing the trade of the Southern seaports and muddling and cont'using the market. Instances have occurred in which they have bought cotton in the interior, cash on the spot, upon which advances had already been made by Southern merchants ; but this, of course, is a practice which cannot extend, and immediately checks itself Yet the excessive activity of speculation in buy- ing and moving cotton is very apparent, and is of doubtful benefit either to the planter or to the consumer. The poverty to which the cotton dealers of Charleston were reduced by the war, and the ruin which fell upon all her financial resources, made an opening for the capital of speculators of which they have availed themselves, and which only closes up as the profits of trade once more accumulate and the town becomes richer. Before the war Charleston had a banking capital of 13,000,000 dollars, whereas to-day she has a banking capital of only 1,892,000 dollars. The State of South Carolina, outside of Charleston, had a banking capital before the war of 3,000,000 dollars, but now of only 300,000 dollars. The crippled capacity of planters and merchants to raise and move such large crops of exportable produce as those of South Carolina may be inferred from these facts. The charges for the use of money are enormous. The banks turn over money at the rate of 1 8 to 24 per cent., on a class of business which presents little or no risk. In the country districts the rates are still more exorbitant, so that it is with money as with everything else that enters into the production and transport of cotton — it is loaded with a costliness in dollars of now all but par value with gold, which to an Englishman or Scotchman appears simply unbearable. Hence the cry for a high price ; hence the difficulty and discontent into which every fall seems to plunge the producer ; and hence the struggling condition of the Southern States despite their natural advantages and hold on the commercial world. Until capital be more largely established on the spot for the trading purposes of the country, and substantial reductions of the tariff permit a more direct trade between the South and Europe, and bills on England become saleable in the great depots of Southern produce, the cotton trade can hardly be in a sound condition, while it is impossible that such cities as Chaileston can be enriched by the vast inland countries behind them, or be to them in return the strength, support, and ornament they might well be. 46 CHARLESTON. [en. vii. Afcanwhile, the most fortunate thing that Cduld lyive occurred in the present circumstances of Charleston has o/zturred, and is in full progress of commercial development. \^\\n.?: been found \vithin the last two or three years that all round Chai'leston, and at a few feet from the surface, there are immense marl deposits, so full of phosphates that they cannot be anything else than incalculalile heaps of animal remains tlirown or washed together, such as science has hitherto not been able to explain, and as commerce, with its clear eye for means of wealtlyind profit, has not hitherto discovered in any part of tlie world.6^iie deposits are in the form of little lime-like nodules, light in weiglit and easily crushed and pulverized. Mixed with these are all but completely petrified ribs, vertebrae, tusks, and other bones of both land and sea monsters of the early tertiary period. So perfect in form are these petrified bones, that, with a collection ample enough, an Owen might have little difficulty in constructing skeletons of the original animals. From some specimens as much as 85 per cent, of pure bone phosphate has been obtained by chemical analysis. But the petrifaction in most cases is too complete for easy treatment, and the great matter commercially at present are the little chalky and irregularly rounded nodules, which yield from 45 to G5 per cent, of bone phosphate. They are found lying in layers under a thin top-dressing of sandy soil, embedded in a bluish clay and earth, and are dug out by pick and shovel much in the same fashion as potatoes. The scientific record is that these layers extend over an area of 70 miles by GO, but, as known to conmierce here, there is given an area of 60 miles by 20, including tlie river beds. The deposit is found in the beds of all the shore rivers, and on the land lying between. The layers vary from six inches to several feet deep. The digging, being done by hand, is not pursued beyond four feet, but a new trench is opened, and the digging carried on in the easiest form. An acre has been known to yield 1,:^00 tons of nodules. The river and marine deposit differs from the land deposit in being of a blackish colour, harder, and with not so large a percentage of phosphate. The average richness in ])hosphate of these deposits is usually given at 45 for river and 57 for land. The nodules, when dug up, are washed in long troughs with paddles worked by a strong stream of water from a force-pump, and, thus freed from clay and sand, are sold on the wharves or conveyed into the factories constructed at Charleston for their conversion into soluble phosphate manures. These establishments first put them through kilns to dry them thoroughly, then crush them into pebbles, and afterwards grind them into fine ])owder by the ordinary circidar millstones. In this state the materiid is taken to a loft, where it is washed with sulphuric acid, and subjected to such varied chemical treatment en. VII.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 47 and composition as may be desired in the iinal product. When wheeled off from the chemical apparatus into a heap, it cakes, and has to be ground again, after wliicli it is put into bags, and is ready to be transported and applied to the soil. An inunense business has already been done both in the raw and manu- factured article. The nodules wei^e first extracted for manufac- ture into manure in the North, but the whole business has been taken up briskly in Charleston, and to import artificial manures into South Carolina is now like carrying coals to Newcastle. An export of the nodules to the most distant parts is growing into magnitude. Vessels are loading just now with this phos- phate deposit for England and Scotland ; and such is the energy with which the Charleston men have thrown themselves into the utilisation of this mine of wealth round their shores, that the export of the raw material is likely to increase with rapid stride, freight being probably the greatest difticulty in the case. As for the manufacture of superphosphate manures here for local purposes of fertilisation, the result is placed beyond all doubt. The Wando Company, which was the first to enter fully into the trade, divided 30 per cent, of profit, and created by its success a little furore for phosphate digging and manufacture. There are now twelve companies operating or about to operate in this ]iew industry, and local works for the maimfacture of sulphuric acid have also been set agoing. Tlie planters are taking the manure freely. On the day I arrived in Charleston, bills for a million dollars of this home-made manure fell due and were satisfactorily discharged. One effect has been to benefit the railways in giving them more inland freight, of which they have hitherto felt the scarcity. Some of the planters I have met with say that the manure is as good as Peruvian guano, while others do not give quite so favourable a report. The price is 30 per cent, less than guano ; and with an expenditure of three to five dollars to the acre there is the most abundant practical testimony of its productive and profitable results. The scientific men have hitherto not thrown much light on this remarkable natural phenomenon. I believe Dr. Shephard, of the Medical College here, has had more to do in bringing this extraordinary deposit into notice than any other. Agassiz came and looked at it, and was deeply interested, but declined to enter into any elaborate scientific diagnosis or investigation. It seems that the people had been long carting the nodules off the soil as an obstruction to the plough, and were laying the streets with them, ignorant or heedless of their valuable properties. They are, no doubt, a superficial deposit, and cannot be dug out to much depth. There is usually a rapid end to such concen- trated animal remains. The nodules overlie an immensely deep bed of white limestone marl, in which Dr. Shephard has found 48 CHARLESTON. [ch. vii. froni 2 to por cent, of phosphate of lime. There is an artesian Avell in Charleston, that has been bored clown 1,200 feet for water, passing throngh eight or nine hundred feet of this white limestone marl, which has been recognized as under- lying all the country round. Over this dense bed of marl tlie l)hosphate nodules are found, sprinkled as in a layer in some })laces of a few inches deep, and cropping out in stray pieces on the surfiice of the soil; but from the varying thickness of the layers, and the frequency with which the diggers have not exhausted them at the depth of three or four feet, the pro- bability is that they will be found in pockets of occasionally great richness. The deposit has already, at all events, been found uniformly over an immense area, and science has begun to forecast it.s discovery at other points of the coast from Ac([uia Creek to the shores of Florida. The remarkable thing com- mercially is that these phosphate deposits of South Carolina have been brought into daylight and practical use at the moment Avhen they are 'most needed to fertilise the sandy and exhausted soils of the Atlantic States, and to bring them up to a better competitive level ^^•ith the richer lands of the Gulf and the ^Mississippi. To South Carolina they are indeed twice blessed, for while increasing tlie productiveness of the inland soil, they wUl gather immediately at Charleston a large amount of capital, which is here one of the things most wanted. The phosphate " diggings " may be expected to make serious inroads on the rice lands round Charleston. But this is i)ro- bably no great loss. Nothing could be easier than to extend the cultivation of rice all about Charleston, which on various sides has broad, shallow, sedgy swamps, through which the tide flows from the rivers. I went out a few miles to a cotton plan- tation, and a part of the road — made by a heavy deposit of shells — passed through a section of this swampy ground. The part of the swamp thus separated was rapidly forming into good agricultural soil. The tidal water must be banked off from rice land, and a free command of fresh obtained for irrigation. It would not be difticult, by a few embankments, to make much new rice ground about Charleston ; but the wet culture of rice is admitted, even in these parts, to be more fatal to human life than almost anything else, and to extend it up to the very streets of a large town would be bad policy. liice was a diminishing product of the United States for ten years before the war. Yet South Carolina sold of her crop of the year just ended 40,000 tierces, which were not only an increase on the previous year, b\it were two-fifths of the total production of rice in the American Union. Almost the whole went to home consumjjtion. South Carolina rice has all but ceased to be an article of export to foreign countries. The cotton plantation CH. VII.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 49 which I went to see did not present a paradise to be put in contrast with a rice-field. It had been the pet place of the owner and cultivator of several plantations. There was a splendid mansion closed up, and flower and vegetable gardens over which the pigs of the negroes had free " ish and entry," and a noble verandah from which there was a delightful view of the Cooper liiver and of fine avenues of trees by which the plantation was approached and bounded on all sides. There were also superior fields of cotton, sown with Dickson's seed and amply phosphated, and so full of young bolls that it was doubtful whether so late they could ever come to maturity. Yet it was confessed to me that all would not pay. This is probably not the way in which cotton can be profitably cultivated in these days, and my city friend, who pays a rent of 700 dollars for the place, seemed quite conscious of the fact, and not to care much about it one way or other. Yet I could not but admire the environs of Charleston — good roads which one expects to see on approaching any place of importance, \*hether it be the chiet city of a State or the residence of a duke or a millionaire — noble trees, too deeply draped perhaps with the mossy veils peculiar to miasmatic regions — summer gardens which adverse circumstances have closed, and many other places of public and private resort, now silent and neglected, but capable oi being repaired and reanimated with a richer and brighter life than that of former days. CHAriER VIIL The Negro's " best Friends." — Sinister complexion of Politics. — Kindly Social Influences at work.— State of Education. — System of Medical Relief in Charleston. — The Health Statistics. — Proportionate Mortality of Whites and Blacks. — Salubrity of the Climate. — Freedmen's Savings Banks. [CiiARLESTox, S.C. — Nov. 10 to Nov. 14.] Apart from the passing excitement of the elections just over, and the disappointment of the white population at the voting of the negroes en masse for the Republican or Eadical party, the general tone of social life in Charleston is kindly and temperate, and all classes of society are working together with considerable harmony for mutual good. The negro is beset at present by two parties who claim to be his " best friends." ^ The Republicans, who came in with the close of the war, appeal to him as his best if not only friends ; and, looking at the political issues of the war, and the decree of emancipation, with its elaborate guarantees of reconstruction, the negroes could not but regard the Republican party politically as their friends. Nor can it be denied that the organs of the Federal Government have laboured to introduce institutions for the moral and social benefit of the negroes, and, as far as their limited means would allow, have be- friended that large portion of the population. I have not found any one on the other side who is prepared to blame the negroes for voting almost imiversally as they did in the elections which raised General Grant to the Rresidentshi]), or who a})pears t() have expected that they Avould or should have been other than fast adherents of their emancipators. But the political agitators and hungiy spoil-and-oilice hunters of the party are accused of appealing to the ignorance and passions of the negro population ■:— of telling them that the white people of the State arc eagerly seeking an opportunity of restoring slavery, which they have certainly no wish to do, and which they coidd not do even if they would ; and now, after five years of this, it is considered hard that the negroes — when there are great public objects of economy, protection from jobbery and coiTuption, and a sound and healthy administration of the affairs of the State to promote, CH. VIII.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 51 in which the blacks are as closely interested as others — should cast their votes in a body against the great majority of the white population, and terrorise such of their own colour as are disposed to act differently. This feeling breaks out violently just now in bar-rooms and at street corners, and is often expressed more quietly and reasonably, yet firmly, in private circles. IMany seem ready to despair of the negro as a politician, while others talk of a " war of races " and other disorders sure to arise. The feeling is no doubt all the stronger since the evils of " carpet- bagging " and negro demagoguery are apparent to respectable men of both parties, and, while violently denounced on one side, are not denied, but sometimes admitted and deplored, on the other. Though politics in South Carolina thus %vear a some- what sinister complexion, yet there is a healthy action and a sober practical opinion underneath the surface that promise beneficial results. The issues left by the war are being rapidly closed ; the Reform Union, which has figured prominently in the late elections as the organ of the native white people of the State, recognizes fully the civil and political equality of the negroes not only as an election platform, but as the fundamental law of the United States ; this position is likely to be main- tained, and may be expected soon to bring about in this, as in other Southern States, a better balance of parties. Meanwhile social bonds are being knit together, and many ameliorative influences are quietly at work. The ladies, who had a long apprenticeship of self-devotion during the war, are exerting themselves to give work, and to sell the work of poor needle- women of both races. Nearly all the old charities of Charleston remain in operation, and schools and missions are doing much to improve the population. By a law passed five years before the war a public school system was introduced into South Carolina, which became well developed in Charleston ; and now the State has passed under the new free-school principle, embodied in the Constitutions of the Southern States under the Acts of Eeconstruction. It is only by degrees that this system can get into general operation, and, indeed, it is doubtful whether the ground lost in education during the war has yet been recovered. The official statistics for 1860 give 20,716 pupils in 757 public schools, whereas they show for 1869 only 881 public schools and 16,418 pupils. The new law is now, however, being put into operation ; the State has appropriated 50,000 dollars to this object,, and, aided by the Peabody I'und and other voluntary contributions. South Carolina may be expected soon to be tolerably well furnislied with the means of education for the whole population. Charleston is probably more. advanced in this respect than any other part of the State, and the education of negro children is already quite a E 2 I 52 CIIARLESrON. [en. viii. prominent feature, one buildiiijT devoted to the coloured people Leinu; capable of receiving 1,000 scholars. There is in Charleston a well-ori^anized system of medical relief, and much attention is paid to sanitary conditions and arrangements. The city is divided into five health districts, over each of which there is appointed a physician in charge, with an office and dispensary, where attendance is given an hour every morning and an hour every afternoon. The physicians are also reipiired, when called upon, to visit certain public institutions — such as the Alms House, the Old Folks' Home, the Small-pox Hospital — situated in their districts. From the annual report for last year of Dr. Lebby, the City Eegistrar, which is very full, it appears that the total mortality of whites was 220 males and 233 females — 453 ; and of blacks, 421 males and 497 females — 918. The greatest mortality of whites occurred in the months of June, July, and August, and of blacks in July, August, September, and October. Of the 453 whites who died, 181 were children of five years and under; and of the 918 blacks who died, 461 were children of five years and under — the mortality of infants among the coloured people being propor- tionately much greater than among the whites. Both races seem ecpially long-lived, though the coloured people would seem to have the advantage. Among the deaths are recorded 33 whites from 70 to 80 years, 9 from 80 to 90 year.s, and 6 from 90 to 100 years ; and 44 blacks from 70 to 80 years, 29 from 80 to 90 years, and 10 from 90 to 100 years. But the remarkable fact is tlie greatly larger mortality of the negroes, in proportion to their total number, as compared with the white people. The census taken last year by order of the Governor, and generally accepted as substantially correct for Charleston, gave the popula- tion of the city as 20,354 whites, and 24,570 blacks and coloured. On this basis, the mortality of 1869 shows one death in 4493 whites, and one death in 26*77 coloured people. In other words, very nearly twice as many coloured people died as white people in proportion to their respective numbers. Before the war this disparity in the mortality of the two races was not so marked. The returned population of Charleston in 1860 was 26,969 whites, and 21,440 coloured. The mortality of whites in that year was 719, or one in 37'5, and the mortality of coloured people 753, or one in 28-47. The health of tlie whites has greatly im])rovod since the war, while the health of the negroes has declined, till the mortality of tlie coloured population, greater than the mortality of the whites before the war, has now become so markedly greater, that nearly two coloured die for every one white jicrson out of equal numbers of each. To those accus- tomed to tliink of slavery only as prolific of every form of evil, this increased mortality of the negroes under tsmancipatiou CH. VIII.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 53 may appear siiqDrising. But when one considers the strict, ahnost domestic control under which the slaves were kept in Charleston, how they were cared for when young and provided for when old, and how their number in the city was kept down to the actual demand for their services, one finds natural reasons enough for an increased liability to death in the severe ordeal they have passed through since their emancipation. In 1860 there were 5,529 more white than coloiired people in Charleston. There are now 4,217 more black and coloured than whites. The absolute increase of the negro population of Charleston since 1860 is 3,130. They flocked in from the country at the close of the war, deserting the Sea Islands in large bodies, and produced all the evils of overcrowding at a time when the white popula- tion, who could alone employ and maintain them, were not only thinned in numbers, but reduced to poverty, and the trade and wealth of the town were destroyed. Such a state of tilings could only have a disastrous effect on health and life, the traces of which still remain. The ph5'^sicians in charge of the health districts also complain of the extreme carelessness of the negroes in following their advice, and administering the medicines pre- scribed. A negro woman will come with her sick child to the dispensary at the morning hour, but does not return in the afternoon or next day as she ought, but makes her appearance a few days after to announce that she administered some charm of her own, and that the little patient is dead. New classes of disease are also notable in the returns of negro mortality — such as consumption, from which they used to be peculiarly exempt, and diseases which spring from immoral causes. Yet with all this access of negro mortality in Charleston, the whole deaths in 1869 were not more than 1 in 32-77, which it would be quite possible to match, and even exceed, in the mortality returns of various large cities of the United Kingdom. But if the negro population and mortality of Charleston be excluded, and the white population only considered, there is a degree of healthful- ness which is almost vmequalled in large towns of the old country. The mortality of whites in 1869 in Charleston was only 1 in 44-93. The mortality of all England in the same year I find to have been 1 in 44-17, and of aU Scotland 1 in 42-52. I imagine there is much nonsense thought and spoken about the unhealthiness of these Southern countries and Southern sea- ports. Any passing impressions of mine, indeed, would be a very unsafe guide ; for I have been travelling in an atmosphere so bright and clear, and yet so temperate and agreeable, and so pleasant by night and day, as to form a rather fascinating con- trast to the climate of the United Kingdom at the same season of the year. This is the famous " Indian summer" of the South, and Charleston has its earlier and fiercer summer, when there is 54 CHARLESTON. [cii. vni. a considerable amount of sickness, and when febrile affections prevail. lUit this city has been singnlaily free from all epidemic disease for some years past. On tlie hottest day in 1809 the mean temperature at 2 p.m. was 8()-77, and the thermometer is never known to rise above 97 degrees ; while in eight months of the year the temperature has an equable range from 50 to 05 degrees, with fair weather, and rainfall only heavy at very rare intervals, as the prevailing characteristics of the climate. No doubt the health of the town owes much to the M'cll-organized stair of medical oflicers and the efficient an'angements made for the treatment of disease among the poorer classes. I was politely shown through the City Hospital by Dr. Lebby — an establishment of great extent, marked by scrupulous cleanliness and order, and devoted equally to white and coloured subjects. The white ftnnale ward is probably as lightsome, airy, and fine a sick-room as is to be seen in a public hospital anywhere. There is a lunatic ward, the inmates of Mdiich are chiefly blacks of a veiy low order. There were only two M'hite women in the number — one of whom, a lady of Italian origin, had been driven to distraction in her matrimonial relations. Surgical cases, some of them very difficult, are also treated with marked success, the proportion of negroes operated upon being about 6 to 1 of whites. There is no general registry of births and marriages in Charleston, which detracts from the light thrown by its other- wise ample vital statistics on the j)hysical and social condition of the population. That the negroes are improving, and many of them rising under freedom into a very comfortable and civilized condition, is not only admitted in all the upper circles of society, but would strike even a transient wayfarer like myself in the great number of decent coloured men of the labouring class and of happy coloured families that one meets. There is an institution in Charleston which early attracted my attention. In Broad Street one sees tlie office of the National Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company. I believe this form of National Savings Bank for the negroes was founded by the Freedmen's Bureau in the first years after the war. It has spread over all the chief towns of the South, and has already in deposit upwards of two millions of dollars, almost entirely the savings of the negro population. The deposits in the Charleston branch were 105,000 dollars at the end of October, and are monthly on the increase. Go in any forenoon, and the office is found full of negi'oes depositing little sums of money, drawing little sums, or remitting to distant parts of the country where they have relatives to support or debts to discharge. The Freedmen's Savings Bank transacts a general exchange business betwixt the various points at which it has branches. Perhaps "branches" is not the exactly proper CH. vjii.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 55 designation, for each bank is an independent corporation in itself, lias a subscribed capital, is governed by its stock- liolders, and is altogether probably too like an ordinary com- mercial bank for the humble functions it has to discharge. Yet there is a certain degree of national concentration and control. The banks are under the patronage and protection of the Federal Government, and from the centre at Washington a monthly Circular is published, which reports the progress of all the various offices, and contains an amount of general matter very suitable to the negroes, and very desirable for them to read. The funds are for the most part invested in the Federal Debt, the high interest of which enables from 5 to G per cent, to be paid to the depositors. But the Federal Government does not appear to be bound to make good to the depositors any loss accruing from the failure of a bank through embezzlement or any other cause. The responsibility in such a case would fall on the subscribed capital of the stockholders so far as it was sufficient to make good the deficiency. There is an opening in this state of affairs for partial and local disasters, which is happily closed in the National Security Savings Banks of the United Kingdom. But practically the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Companies do for the negi'oes what our National Savings Banks do for the working classes of England, Scotland, and Ireland ; and it is gratifying to find that the negroes have in five years accumulated nearly half a million sterling of deposits. This result is the more significant since it is confined almost wholly to what were formerly the Slave States, and is but very feebly developed in New York and otlier Northern towns where it has been tried. The number of depositors in Charleston is 2,790, of whom nine-tenths are negroes. The average amount at the credit of individual depositors is about 60 dollars. The negro begins to deposit usually with some special object in view. He wishes to buy a mule and cart, or a house, or a piece of land, or a shop, or simply to provide a fund against death, sickness, or accident, and pursues his object frequently until if has been accomplished. While some portion of the former slaves are probably sinking into an even worse condition than the first, there are others who are clearly rising, both morally and socially. The system of free labour, as was to be expected, will thus, in its own rough but salutaiy way, sift the chaff from the wheat; and but for the electoral antagonism of the moment, and the parading more than enough of negroes as senators, as policemen, as militia, as the armecl force and the dominant power of the State, the relations of the two races on both sides would here be more kindly and cordial, and the prospects of the negroes themselves more hopeful than could well have been anticipated. CIIAITER IX. The Capital of South Carolina. — The State Fair a failure. — Usury. — Governor Scott on the Position of Affairs. The Blue Ridervious to tlie flames. The town is b«?ing built up anew by degrees, and en. IX.] ilTJTE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 57 many fine brick houses have been erected since the close of the war. But what magnificent outlines of streets sweeping spaciously for miles over the heights and hollows of that rich landscape, having rows of fine old trees on either side, and, inter- sected by other wooded avenues equally broad and long, opening up in all directions the most delightful vistas ! These vacant streets have solitary residences here and there, and since it must have cost a good deal to lay them out, and perhaps something considerable to keep them up, the suburban residents of the capital of South Carolina enjoy for nothing an amenity which money could hardly command in any part of Western Europe. The State Fair, though attended by a multitude of happy- looking people, was a failure as regards agricultural interest or display. There was little or no stock, which surprised me more in Columbia than in Charleston, where the same deficiency was very observable. The South Carolinians cannot vie in this respect with the Virginians. There is either no superior stock in this State, or the stockowners have not sufficient interest in its extension to be at the trouble to show it. The present disjointed state of political relations has also probably something to do with it. But the truth is that the Atlantic Cotton States have, till very recently, neglected stock-raising, for which they have some excuse, not only in the absorbing attention which the cotton-plant requires, but in the nature of the soil, which is un- favourable to the development of good pasture land or winter forage. The difficulty may, no doubt, be overcome with care and perseverance, and it is only now that agriculturists in these parts are awakening to the importance of combining general elements of agricultural wealth with the growth of cotton. The cotton-growers are not in the most satisfied mood this season. The heavy fall in the price of cotton — partly in conse- quence of the Franco-Prussian war, and partly owing to the large crop of last year, now reckoned to have been 3,300,000 bales, and the still larger being gathered — has occurred when they had placed themselves under heavy accounts for manures, and disappoints their expectations of profit. The phosphates are generally allowed, however, to have had a marked and favourable effect on the crop, and increased quantity will pro- bably in many cases retrieve the fall' in value. Complaints of the usurious rates charged for money are general among the farming community. Twenty-five and even thirty per cent, is taken by banks and people who have money to lend as a quite ordinary rate; and it is doubtful whether the planters are as thrivino- as the conmiercial interests around them. Governor Scott, whose administration I had heard severely blamed, courteously favoured me with an interview, and entered freely into conversation on the condition and prospects of the^ < 58 COLUMBU. [cii. ix. State. He said that some ofllcial protection of the negroes was necessary, and, indeed, found to be unavoidable by jiersons in authority. Alluding to the dictum of Chief-Justice Tanney on the Dred Scott case, that "a negro hail no rights which a white man was bound to respect," he remarked that there were still some who seemed to be actuated by that view of the question. He had had to give safe-conducts to negroes leaving the State; and subordinate magistrates were not unfrequently called upon, and felt bound, in the discharge of their duty, to throw the ])ro- tection of tlie law over the coloured race. Governor Scott expressed a very hopeful view of the progress of South Caro- lina, and explained to me on the map the merits of the JJlue Ridge Railway, the formation of which he is most anxious to promote. This project, which was prepared two years ago, and for which a company has been organized, and the necessary powers obtained to subscribe capital and borrow on mortgage bonds endorsed by the State, is designed to connect the exist- ing railway communications of South Carolina from Anderson county with Knoxville in Tennessee and with the lines to Ken- tucky and the Western States. To get into direct and conti- nuous conmiunication by rail with the great AVest is a common object of ambition to all the Atlantic Cotton States and their seaports, and may be said to have become an absolute necessity of South Carolina if she is to keep pace with the progress made in this direction by her sister States. The Blue Ridge Railroad would not only be of essential importance to Charleston and Port Royal, but would develop a large traffic betwixt the interior of South Carolina and the rich and productive States both to the west and the south. The produce of Kentucky is sent round eleven or twelve hundred miles, and brought back to points in South Carolina within a hundred miles or two of the place from which it started. The line is being extended at both ends, and some cradincr or earthwork is beino- done, but the borrowing powers of the company have not yet been exercised. Upon my observing that American railroad companies sometimes proviiled that their rails should be home-made, the Governor said that this was not the case in South Carolina, and that, on the con- trary, it was a condition of the lUue Ridge Company that the road should be laid with the best English rails. Mr. Parker, the State Treasurer, with whom I conversed for some time, stated that, before the war, the assessment for State purposes was levied, among other means and substance, on the slaves ; that this source of revenue was now, of course, abolished ; and that a larger rate had to be laid on land and other substance proper, all of which had been greatly reduced by the war, and was only being gradually, though rapidly, restored. ^Ir. Parker is of I opinion that the labour of the negro as a free man is more effi- CH. IX.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 59 cient than when he was a slave ; and in proof of this conclusion adduces that many of the negroes perished during the war and immediately after it, that the negro women are now almost wholly withdrawn from field labour, that the children who were made available under slavery for industrial purposes are being more and more absorbed by the schools, ancl yet that, with all j these diminutions of the labour power, the production of South ' Carolina and other Cotton States is rapidly rising to a magnitude -^ equal to that of any former time. The "fairs" in the South afford a good opportunity for obtain- ing information on country affairs. The hotels are filled with intelligent men, who all seem to know one another, and M'ho are ready enough to enter into conversation with strangers ; while the railway cars form a sort of free assembly, in which affairs are discussed with all openness. In my travels from Columbia towards Georgia I gathered much opinion, as it were, in the mass. The dissatisfaction of these country folks of South Carolina with the present state of government in the United States is palpable enough. They exclaim bitterly against the corruption which prevails in public life ; they are utterly opposed to the high tariff on European goods, looking upon it simply as a means of plundering the cultivators of the soil in the South and West for the benefit of Northern manufacturers, overgrown, they say, in wealth, and adepts in bribery and lobby- rolling ; they point to the enormous prices of goods sold in the Southern towns, and long for the growth of manufactures among themselves, and the direct importation of foreign goods into their own seaports ; they express disappointment that more direct trade has not sprung up with the South since the close of the war, the high tariff notwithstanding ; they declare American statesmen of the present day to be dwarfs and nobodies com- pared with those of former times ; and when the whole gamut of political discontent has been sounded, one often hears the remark, so startling to any European admirer of American Inde- pendence, that Washington made a capital mistake, and that it would have been better for the country to have remained under the rule of England. To such an appeal to British patriotism I could only reply that England could scarcely, in any circum- stances, have continued to govern so great a country as the • United States, and would certainly not be inclined to undertake the responsibility now. On political subjects the people are very emphatic, if not a little excited, and the party new^spapers are more emphatic and excited still. But on agricultural and business matters they at once become cool, practical, and reason- able, and talk with acute apprehension of the point in hand, whatever it may be. It is felt that the old system of cultivation, or rather want of cultivation, is no longer suitable or possible, 60 COLUMBIA. [CH. ix. and that there must be deeper ploufihing, more attention ]iaid to stock and to the formation of r^ood larm-yards, uith plenty of manure and vegetable compost from the forest and the ditches, so as to give heart, vigour, and greater variety of elements to the soil. There is little or no disparagement of the negro as a labourer among respectable countrymen, who need his services and employ him. On the contrary, there is much appreciation of his good (qualities, a good deal of kindly patience towards his bad qualities, and much greater satisfaction with what he has done, and may yet be trained to do, as a free labourer, than one might be prepared to find. How to shape his relations as a farm labourer is thoroughly well canvassed. The alternative presented is that of paying him by a share of the crop or by wages, both of which plans have obtained a footing, and each of which is acknowledged by the practical mind of the planter to have its advantages. A summary of the arguments I have heard i^vo and con on this question would occupy a considerable space. But on the whole, so far, the preponderance of reason, as well as weight of testimony, inclines to the side of wages. One objection to the share system, which goes much deeper in my opinion than at first appears, is that it renders the negro indilferent to and reluctant to perform any kind of work on a plantation which does not bear immediately on the corn and cotton crops in which he has a share. A planter who cultivates on the share system must see his fences falling out of order, his manure heaps a diminishing quantity, and his hogs and cattle strayed, stolen, or starved ; or, resorting to the wages system after all, must employ special hands to do these and other kinds of larm work. As the system of agriculture improves, the neces- sary labour on plantations will become more and more varied, with the direct result of increasing the corn and cotton crops l)er acre ; and to pay wages to one class of men, probably whites, to do various kinds of work, in order that another class, certainly blacks, may share an increased abundance to which tliey have contributed nothing, will ])rove too unjust to be prac- ticable. The rapid and regular picking of the ' cotton crop, which is the greatest difficulty of the planter, has kept the share system more in countenance than probably anything else, but in practical experience it seems to fail at this point as at others. The share system implies rations to the negro from the beginning of the year to the end, and if the rations for a week are con- sumed in half that time, an additional sui)2>ly must be given, wjiich places the negTO so heavily in debt to his employer by the time the picking season has come, that he is apt, more espe- cially under tleclining prices as this year, to be regardless of the financial results of the partnership with his employer into which he entered in January. The picking of cotton, as liir as T know, CH. IX.] STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 61 does not involve any greater riatnral difficulty than harvest season in all countries, when extra labour, stimulated by higher pay, flows freely into the fields, and crowns the labours of the husbandman with a success in which all feel they have a per- sonal interest. But in the thinly populated Cotton States of America, with labour on every plantation too inadequate for its ordinary routine of work, and vast spaces of mere wood, without town or village, betwixt one plantation and another, the social conditions are, of course, different. Yet some planters in South \ Carolina succeed in employing extra hands in the picking season, I giving rations and 50 cents per 100 lbs. of cotton picked. The ! production of cotton per acre is no doubt very varied, but one hand and a mule in general cultivate 20 acres of cotton and 10 of corn, producing 10 bales of cotton and 100 bushels of corn.^ One bale of cotton on good land per acre, with the help , of phosphates and good picking, may be attained in some/ instances ; but half a bale of cotton per acre is deemed a very' favourable result in these parts. The railways in South Carolina conduct the cotton freight on a rough-and-ready rate of a dollar per bale to Charleston, with- out being particular as to the weight of the bales, or a handful of miles of transport. One result is that the bales are becoming always heavier. Another curious instance of turning the penny to advantage is that the late high price of cotton has created a demand for heavy bagging, sold with the bale at the cotton price, which only the coarsest hempen looms of Kentucky can supply. As the price of cotton falls this temptation is reduced, and the point is just about reached when the protected hempen stuff of Kentucky is dearer than the unprotected cotton wool of the Southern States. ^ A negro usually works two mules, but he cannot cultivate or gather the crop which his mules plough and " lay by, that is, finish for the season." He requires several hands, a little staff of labour, to make and gather the crop. CHAPTER X. Entry into Georgia. — The Town of Auj^usta — its Buildings — its Cotton Market. — Revolution in Agriculture. — Importance of selected Cotton Seed. — Large amount of Cotton grown by Small Farmers. — Opinion on the Negroes. — ^Augusta Cotton Factory. — Education Act. — Observance of the Sabbath. [Augusta, Ga. — Nov. 17-19.] INlY first acquaintance with the State of Georgia has heen made at the thriving and busy town of Augusta, situated on the border line of South Carolina, and connected with Columbia by an ex- cellent raih'oad. The town at once establishes in the mind of a stranger a favourable prepossession of the State. It is lively, well built, well organized, and as ami)ly furnished with mer- chandise as any small inland town of the most flourishing pro- vince could be expected to be. Augusta escaped direct devastation by the Federal armies during the war, and no doubt owes much of its compact condition and steady march to tliat happy immu- nity. But it was finally cut off from all its communications, and its inhal)itants shared the general impoverisliment which bliglited every portion of the Southern States. It is surprising, therefore, to see already so much spirit and abundance as prevail in Au- gusta. The town has a " Broadway," before which the imperial street of New York must, all circumstances considered, hide its diminished head ; for the Augusta Broadway is three times as broad as that of New York, and has a neatly-constructed market- ])lace at either end, with as much space for expansion as in future may be necessary. But the Broadway of Augusta is really no make-believe. Nearly the whole ground-space is occupied with well-stocked stores, in which everything, from a needle to an anchor, from the humble fabrics woven on the spot to the finest cloths of Europe, from the commonest earthenware to the choicest crystal, and all the products of the soil from cranberries to cotton, may be bought. And how substantial the houses are, and how many fine buildings meet the eye ! The Freemasons have a juUared edifice as chaste and pure as the AVhite House at AVashingtoii, with their insignia brightly gilt on a ground as of alabaster. The dry and brilliant atmosphere encourages every- where a cheerful style of ornamentation. It is remarkable how CH. X.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 63 widely the ancient Order of Freemasonry is spread throughout the Southern States. I find traces of it everywhere, and traces which sometimes reflect no little honour on the brotherhood. For example, a tract of land laid out in lots, with cottages and cultivation, where the widows and orphans of deceased Free- masons find quiet and comfortable homes ; or a school-house in some solitary district where it is difficult to discover a popu- lation, built by the Freemasons, who, content with the second story for their lodge-room, have devoted the lower to the educa- tional purposes of the community. Augusta is an extensive cotton market. Since the lifting of this year's crop began, the receipts have been about 1,500 bales a day. Tlie railroads place Augusta in rapid communication with the adjoining counties of South Carolina, and with all parts of Middle Georgia, and the cotton collected from these wide dis- tricts is poured down by rail to Savannah for shipment. The telegraph works all day betwixt Augusta and Savannah, and betwixt Augusta and towns farther inland, telling what cotton can be bought or is selling for ; while prices at New York and Liverpool are eagerly scanned, and form the basis of the day's transactions. The local factors and merchants deal freely in cotton, though the former operate chiefly on order from Savannah, Charleston, and New York. Seldom has cotton been brought more rapidly to market than this season, which is to be ascribed not only to the favourable weather, but to the activity of buyers and speculators, and the necessity, rather than the interest, of the planters ; for under the heavy fall of prices, generally attri- buted here to the war in Europe, and scarce at all to th'^ ^■"" ly expansion of the crop, the planter might be tempted, with the stock of American at Liverpool still low, and the return of peace probably not distant, to hold back in expectation of better prices. But the growers of cotton, though restoring rapidly their planta- tions and their stock of implements, are, for the most part, still poor in purse, and have to draw heavy advances on the growing crop. Paying from 2 to 2h per cent, for money per month, with storage and insurance charges to boot, the planter finds that to hold is a costly business, and that it is better to sell at once than to extend his borrowings and charges in the expectation of an advance of two or three cents per lb. The crop, save in so far as it may be interrupted by the action of middlemen and specu- lators, is therefore rolled from the field, over hundreds of miles of railway and thousands of miles of ocean, to the great markets with marvellous despatch. Though insurance in the South was swept away during the war, yet it is growing up again with great rapidity ; and statesmen and generals, whose names were famous in the war, preside over local companies or act as agents of New York or British corporations. 04 AUGUSTA. [ch. x. A great revolution in agriculture is going forward in this district, and indeed throughout the whole of Georgia. The most lively discussion is kept up on such points as the preparation of land for crops, the selection of cotton seed, the use of fertilisers, the ini]iroveiuent and increase of live stock, and a more careful and varied cultivation than has hitherto been followed. There appears to be a strong feeling of the necessity of bringing intelli- gence and an active spirit of improvement to bear on the management of plantations, which, in ante-war times, were allowed to drag along with slave labour and overseers, as they had done for generations. Agricultural Societies have been formed in all parts of the State, and have been consolidated into a general institution, which holds two conventions every year for the discussion of agricultural questions, and for making arrange- ments for the holding of annual fairs or exhibitions of industry. Numerous periodicals are published here, and tliroughout the State, which are cliiefly devoted to the land interest, and discuss practical farming in all its liranches with much vigour and intel- ligence. Farmers and landholders constantly interchange their views and experience in these organs, and the actunl results obtained from the use of phosphate and other manures, or from Dickson's and other classes of cotton seed, and the advantages of various kinds of implements, or the payment of labour by wages or shares in the crops, are chronicled with business-like detail. The consequence is tliat the production of cotton per acre has been sensibly increased on the middle quality of land in Georgia, the soil of which in general has hitherto borne but an mr " "::• reputation. Half a bale per acre is becoming more of an average than it once was; two bales to the three acres is deemed a super-excellent result on the best land with guano or phos- phates, and a bale to the acre is said to be attainable when land, seed, manure, season, and mode of cultivation are all favourable, though I rather think there are very few instances of such a rate of production in Georgia. Of the vital importance of good selected seed there can be no doubt, and much of the inferior crop seen throughout the Atlantic States is probably to be ascribed to carelessness in this particular. Mr. Dickson's seed and its offspring are now exten- sively propagated throughout this and neighbouring States. But the best seed will rapidly deteriorate without careful and annual selection, and probably the greatest service rendered by Mr. Dickson and other agitators of this cardinal point is seen in the increased care which planters bestow on the quality of the seed annually set a])art from their own crops. One could pur- chase here two thousand bushels of a seed that appears to be peculiar in species, and is certainly remarkable in its fruitful- ness. The branches of the plant grow up more straight from the CH. X.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 65 stem, and tlms cover less room in the drill than most other cotton, while the number of bolls produced is much above the average. On one branch I have counted ninety bolls, the great majority not only mature but picked of cotton. The grower began by purchasing as much seed as planted ten acres, the pro- duct of which gave him seed next year for the whole plantation. But, in order to keep up the quality, he carefully selects his seed each year by setting two trusty negroes to pick only from the stems bearing the greatest number of full, sound, and ripe bolls. In INIiddle Georgia, as w^ell as in South Carolina, much cotton is now groWn by white labour. This occurs chiefly on small farms, the proprietors of which were formerly unable to compete with the large combinations of slave labour, but are now raising a considerable amount of cotton. There are now also many small patches of cotton in the neighbourhood of towns and villages, where fruits and vegetables cannot be so well preserved from depredation by vagrant or destitute negroes as in former times. It is the outcome of cotton from these and other unusual quarters that has probably caused the estimates of crops since the war so habitually to fall short of actual results. Speculators, looking only at the diminution of negro labour, and at the state of the large plantations, the disorganization and diminished pro- ductiveness of which are very apparent, have formed erroneous conclusions. The large planters, who cannot command labour or capital to cultivate more than a section of their former cotton area, endeavour to sell or to farm out portions of their planta- tions; but this process can only be developed slowly in a country where there is so much land in this state and so few people. Yet some land is farmed out at a crop-rent of one-fourth the produce ; while a good many strangers come into this part of the State, buy land, and settle down to its cultivation. Estates bring from five to fifty dollars per acre, according to the quality of the land and the degree of improvement. The average purchase-money of an improved farm is from fifteen to twenty dollars per acre. The field negroes command from eight j to twelve and a half dollars a month, with rations, houses, and i fire ; women, from five to eight dollars. But the share system of paying labour prevails more than that of wages, at the rate of one-third of the crop with rations, or one-half without rations. "The negroes," says a very competent authority to me, "are worldng better and stealing less every year, and would be w^ell enough if the political agitators woiild only let them alone." The agitators complained of are " the carpet-baggers," who come into the South with very light equipment, for the sole purpose of getting themselves elected Eepresentatives by the negro vote, and of working themselves into some oface in v/hich they may F 66 AUGUSTA. [cii. x. make rich, by not the most honest means, at the pn"'^'''' /expense. The tactics of these trading politicians are "^ pe some- times of the most wild and desperate description, it is said the negroes have been told from the stump that their former masters owe them wages from the date of INIr. Lincoln's proclamation, and that anything stolen from them now is but in fair liquida- tion of the account ! There is a prosperous cotton factory in Augusta, of no mean extent, which produces sheetings and shirtings, and other plain domestic fabrics. The hands are all white people, male and female, and differ little from factory operatives in the smaller towns of England or Scotland. The capital of the company is 600,000 dollars, on which a profit of 5 per cent, a quarter, or 20 per cent, per annum, has for some time been regularly realized and paid. The factory has ])oth steam and water power, and has established a basis of skilled labour that is not likely in a town of such considerable population to fail in the future. But the large profit made by this manufacturing concern of late years probably requires that the facts should be stated, that in its early history it was unfortunate to the share- holders, that it M^as sold to a new company at much less than it had cost, that it remained in undisturbed operation during the war, when the simplest domestic manufactures were in the highest request, and that the factory thus obtained a vantage ground which it has hitherto held with happy success. In such considerable towns as Augusta a large amount of labour, other- wise idle and unprofitable, may be utilised without impairing in any degree the main interest of agriculture, and this cotton factory proves with what advantage various manufactures may be prosecuted in the Southern States. The Legislature of Georgia has passed an Act to carry out the system. of free public schools, which has become, with certain local modifications, a fundamental law of the United States. Much attention is paid to the Act, and to the steps necessary to bring it into operation. Augusta passes on the Sabbath Day into as profound a tran- quillity as any town in England, or even in Scotland. The (jeorgian newspapers have adopted a plan of publication which can only have been suggested by a determination to observe wuth Hebrew precision a rest from labour during the day of twenty-four hours as defined throughout all the European and "Western worlds. They are issued on Sunday mornings as on other days of the week, because the labour essential to their production, though not to their distribution, can be completed by twelve o'clock on Saturday night. It has not occnrred to the Georgian newspaper people, that while the_ Western day begins and ends at twelve at midnight, the Hebrew and Eastern day / CH. X.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 67 begins and ends at six p.m. The consequence is that they give to the people their mass of secular print on Sabbath morning when they would rather not have it, and withhold it from them on Monday morning when it would be acceptable to all. I walked out on Sunday afternoon towards the country. Not a beer saloon or even a candy shop was open, scarcely a person walking about, and only a street car at long intervals passing along. At length I met a grave-looking man with a lively little girl in his hand, whom I congratulated on the delightful weather, to which he cheerfully responded. Was Augusta advancing rapidly ? lie did not think it was. I then ventured to ask him whether the churches in Augusta had an evening service, to which he replied that he really did not know ; that the onl}'- thing he knew was there was no Universalist Church, morning or evening, in Augusta. It was easy to perceive that my friend was himself a Universalist ; and that in a community of Pres- byterians, Episcoj)alians, Baptists, and IMethodists, he did not think it worth his while to know whether there were any even- ing diets of worship in Augusta, because there was not a Universalist Church ! Eeligious sects may be more numerous in the United States than in any other part of the Christian world, but there is nothing essentially distinctive in this little incident, the like of which might befall anywhere. F 2 CHAPTER XL The country from Antrnsta to Sayannah.- — Alleged poorness of the Soil. — Population of the State. — Competition betwixt the Cotton Lands of Georgia and the Mississippi '' Bottom." — Probable effects of Good Farming. — "Want of Stock and Grass. — The Central Eailroad Company. [Savannah, Ga.— Nov. 20-23.] The distance from Augusta to Savamiali, the great seaport of Georgia, is 132 miles by rail, and is travelled, with freqnent stoppages for freight, in eight to nine hours. The aspect of the country gives an impression of a rather poor soil. There is the same wliite sandy surface as strikes one all the way down the Atlantic States. The crops of corn and cotton are not heavy, though often wonderfully fruity ; and the woods, which abound, are of lighter timber than in many other parts of the South. Pine prevails almost without a rival, and an extensive lumber trade is done in all the counties east and west of this line of railway. Burke County, on one side, is a large and compara- tively rich county, with its agriculture well developed ; and Emmanuel County, on the other, produces large quantities of good timber^ and has a social hfe more rude than is probably characteristic of the vast rural sj)aces of Georgia. The name attracted my attention to this county, which I thought must necessarily be the home of piety, virtue, and every Christian felicity. But these are fruits not the first to bloom in the American wilds. Yet Emmanuel County has an ideal in its name which in due time, with the spread of culture and popu- lation, it may approach. The old pine of the primeval forest serves so many purposes that it must be pronounced a most useful tree. But it is also, when prepared and polished, a very beautiful wood. Some of the finest panellings I have seen in the houses and railway cars are of pine. Though the forests still occupy an inordinate space in Georgia, yet in the most woody parts many fine tracts have been opened out, and many garden spots appear, in the course of a day's travel, where the wilder- ness really blossoms like the rose. The Georgian woods withal have often a very old-country aspect that startles one from the .recurring revcxies produced by a foreign land Their light and CH. XI.] STATE OF GEORGIA. C9 varied character, the birds' nests of a departed summer hanging loosely among the rapidly disrobing branches, the wood-pigeons flying swiftly about, and the buzzards poising themselves far above the tojjmost boughs, under the mild autumnal sky, are very similar to what one may have seen among the copse-woods of England and Scotland ; and the squire's mansion, with its park and trees, its dovecot and rookeries, the squire himself with, his attendants and goodly villages with their ancient churclies and hostelries, are expected every moment to appear, thougli they never do. I do not think the railway from Augusta to Savannah,, while stopping often at depots and little stations in the woods, touches a single place of such considerable size as to form a small town or village. The landholders and farmers enjoy much s]iort when so inclined ; but they are lost in the woods, and probably do not consider the railway tracks the best ground for game. As for poachers, though the name is hardly known here, the field for them is boundless. One party stepped out from the train, rough and unkempt, wdtli guns and dogs, and blankets rolled in sail-cloth for nightly bivouac, who appeared to me marvellously like persons of this class. I should have been glad to daguerreotype them on the spot, so like were they and yet so unlike what I have seen elsewhere. But amidst all this wildness and solitude, aod apparent poorness of soil, it is cheering to see, wherever there are houses and close cultivation, how luxuriant the cotton-fields become, and what varied abundance is revealed. There are tine peach-orchards with rows of cotton-plants betwixt the trees, and vast fields of 60 to 100 acres of cotton and Indian corn, dis- playing much strength and fertility of soil and sun, and exciting but one regret, that so much cotton should be unpicked, and so little work going on, in these late and precious hours of one of the finest falls ever known even in this propitious clime. >^^ The soil of Georgia, save on the bottoms of the Savannah and other great rivers, is relatively poor ; but it has been made poorer by a superficial system of culture, that has left the subsoils untouched, and, after a few years of incessant cropping, has con- signed it to waste and barrenness in favour of newer clearings. The Georgian planters and farmers have hopped about from one part of their extensive territory to another, without settling down with a firm gTasp upon any ; and, while making inroads on the wilderness on one hand, have allowed it to grow up afresh on the other. The ease with which once ploughed land in Georgia becomes a pine barren is commensurate with the ditticulty with ■which it was originally torn from the forest. With this picture constantly before their eyes, and only just beginning to vanish before a larger intelligence and deeper agricultural ideas, people hereabouts wonder that men should wear out their days on such poor soil when there is so much better and richer to be got in 70 SAVANNAH. [cii. xi. otlier parts of tlic American continent; and many in CleorfTjia and along llic Atlantic wlopc arc; nowise loth to act upon this view of life. I have obsei'vcd trains of bullock vvatigons carrying farmers and their families i'rom Georgia and South Carolina west- ward to Texas and Arkansas ; and this movement is said to be much more extensive than could be su})])osed from cursory obser- vation. 80 tlial, whil(! tlu! cry of the Atlantic States is for more peoj)U\ lliey ai'e losing many of those they have got, and ])rogres3 is thus made slow and uphill — every step i'orward being but too likely to be followed by one backward. The population of Georgia, which in 18G0 was 1,055,000, is now returned at 1,200,000; but this increase, if real, must be almost wholly confin(;d to the towns. 'I'lu; tluKuy of ])oor soil, when followed out, raises the ([uestion whether the cultivation of cotton in such States as (leorgia niay not be doonu'd to disappear bef(jr(! the more pro- ductive iields of the Mississii)pi bottom and the South-West, and it has, no doubt, a severe competition to undergo from that vast region. It isdillicult for less than half a bale to the acre to stand against a bale to the acre, or even two bales to the three acres, raised with much less labour and expiuisc. ]^ut one can hardly believe that the great Southern districts on the Atlantic seaboard can quickly succund). They liave advantages of health, of proxi- mity to the great cotton markets both of America and Europe, and of greater convenience of settlement to people of capital, which must hel]) to sustain them. Nor can it be admitted that the soil of Georgia is poor in any but a relative sense. A line sandy-clay soil, of great depth, extremely friable and easily wrought, cannot be called poor. It is soil liberally responsive to the plough and to manure. Any a])proach, not to "high," but to moderately good farming, would be extremely ])rofitable ; and with deep ploughing, were the application of licpiid manure possible, which, it cannot well be for a long period, the results would be astonishing. When the ( Jeorgian agriculturists learn, as they are fast learning, to s])rcad their labour less about, and to devote themselves on enlightened principles to the steady develop- ment of manageable holdings, a meagre cultivation may not be extended over so large a superficies, but a better and more enduring impression will be made upon the land, of which enough has already been cleared for iifty or a hundred years to come. There is one sad defect that forces itself on attention everywhere. Very little live stock is seen on the plantations or about the farmhouses, while there is also a too apparent difficulty of grass. Only few cattle are visible, save the sturdy animals in yoke i>ulling patiently tlieir loads of tind)er and olher produce; and the i^is^i that do appear are generally in poor condition, with rough coats covering an anatomy of en. xi.J STATE OF lil'lOROlA. 71 bones. The hogs roaming llirougli the woods are mostly lean, and, from tlie swiftness with which they run from one feeding-gronnd to another, seem to have to go through a heavy day's work for tlieir necessary rej)ast of acorns. The Southern .Stiites have not yet surmounted the indiffei'cmce to live stock tliat prevailed under the system of cultun; by slave labour. It is also to be remembered tliat nearly all the live stock on the ])lantations was consumed l)y the war, that many of the planters were left without a cow or an ox, with scarce a hog or even a chicken, and that since the war tljey have had to buy, breed; and recover every useful animal on their lands. It is the forgetl'uhiess of tliis fact that has led to an exaggerated estimate in Europe of the Ibrtunes made in cotton-planting from tlie high prices realized since the close of the war. The I)lanters had to resume operations with their farms in ruin, with fences to rebuild, with labour scarce, scattered, and disorganized, with everything to buy at prices three times higher than before the wai', and no money to buy with ; and it is certain that but for the high price of cotton two-thirds of the planta- tions could not have continued in cultivation after the iirst attempt in 186G. A curi(nis agricultural question might be raised as to whether the deficiency of live stock is the result of the proverbial difficulty of growing grass, or this itself is a natural con- seciuence of that. Of course, a planter who has little or no stock is not apt to ti'ouljle himself much about pasture or fodder. Nothing, at all events, is more striking in Georgia and other Atlantic States than the want of herbage. The heights and much of the level land are covered with woods, and at this season withered leaves are sti-ewn over the all but bare earth. On the cultivated sjjaces the Indian corn-stalks stand in solitary state out of long lines of white sand; while the tracts over which the plough has ceased to go are covered with pine shoots and weedy herbage, or browned like moor and heather by a brittle and "sticky" vegetation, which a forcing sun draws up from weak and frivolous roots into rank and grim luxuriance. Is all this inseparable from the soil and climate? — or is it a mere phase of Nature left to her own wiM caprice? Is the green grass, close and tender, always browsed Ijy cattle with avidity, and ever beautiful to human eye, the final polish, the last touch of perennial richness, which cultivation im- parts to the soil ? In some parts of Georgia what is called " wire-grass" 8]>rings up in the woods. The farmers burn it down in winter, and it comes out in spring, sweet and noui'ish- ing, and is much liked by cattle ; but the heat of summer makes it wiry and unchewable, and fit only for the burn- ing process of the winter. The "impossibility" of grass in 72 SAVANNAH. [en. xi. Georgia is somewhat an enigma. One occasionally sees ver- dant i)atclies of clover, and in many parts the cotton rows, which the planter has innch to do to protect from grass all snunner, are covered in the fall with a long white fibre, that on being examined is found to be nothing less than the best kind of hay. The influence of soil and climate on any particular growth is not to be disputed; but when live stock on the Georgian farms has had time to increase and improve, and the farmers have begun to experience what an essential element it is of agricultural wealth and prosperity, grass in some form or other will probably be found to grow in Georgia. The Central Railroad, on which I have passed from Augusta to Savannah, was all but totally destroyed in the war by General Sherman during his famous plunge into the interior of Georgia, so far away from his base of operations as to astonish and alarm his friends. The feat was accomplished by organizing an inmiense force of cavalry, which, passing Augusta on the left, spread themselves over the centre of the State in such strong and numerous parties as to render effective resistance impossible. In the bewilderment of the Confederates that ensued, the cavalry fell upon the Central Eaih'oad, tore up the rails, and, gathering innnense piles of sleepers and timber from the woods, burnt, melted, and twisted them in the flames so as to render them useless. During the war Georgia had been a great source of supply to the Confederate armies, but Sherman's command of the railway from Atlanta to Chattanooga, and this destruction of the Central Eoad, cut ofl' the State like a dead branch from the Confederation, and contributed materially to the surrender that soon followed. The Centnd Company had been wise enough to reserve from their earnings a large fund, placed in London, and as soon as the war ended, they relaid their lines with English rails, and resumed a traflic that has been always large and profitable. This company is a banking as well as a railway company, and has just received from the Legislature a renewal of its banking privileges for a term of thirty years. Such conjunction of two very diflerent functions may seem anomalous in countries where abundance of capital has enabled the division of labour to be minutely developed, but no one who has marked on the spot the scarcity of money and exchange, not only in the interior, but in the great seaports of the Southern States, can wonder at the readiness of banking functions to gather round any solid interest or corporation, or doubt that the banking department of the Central Eailroad Company of Georgia has done good service to the State. All the older lines of railway in Georgia have been remarkably successful, iuid have paid larger dividends than most of the CH. XI.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 73 leading British and Eurojiean railways. Since the war, the railway system in Georgia has been mvich extended, and new lines and connections are still being devised, and receive the State's endorsement of their bonds with an enterprise which is approaching, if it have not already passed, the limits of discretion. CHAPTER XII. The " Forest City." — Abundant demand for Labour. — Great increase of Cotton Exports. — Small proportion of Imports. — Disadvantages to Savannah of indirect Trade. — Eate of Wages. — Relative purchasing power of Money in England and the United States. — Conclusions of the British Consul. — State of Public Health. — Mortality of the Negroes. — Banking iu Savannah. — Sylvan features of the City. [Savannah, Ga. — Nov. 25.] The " Forest City" lias made progress since the close of tlie war, not only in trade and population, but also in healtbfulness and general improvement. Buried among trees — that give a novel and striking beauty to the city — and situated on a low delta of the Savannah Eiver, marshy in many places and liable to inva- sions of yellow fever, Savannah might be expected to be more than usually fatal to human life, and to present more than usual obstacles to the material and social prosperity which depends so essentially on the health, vigour, and increase of the population. But the force and elasticity of rapidly-expanding trade are carrying Savannah successfully over all impediments. /The liberation of the negroes, while thinning the number of field hands on the plantations, has thrown an ampler supply of labour into thriving towns and cities in the South than could have been obtained under the slave system. Savaunah has had no dithculty, of late years, in absorbing all the labour that has come to it, while stopping up with energy, at the same time, the sources of crime and disease. |^he Corporation has bought land beyond the municipal boundaries, the cultivation of rice has been pushed back into the interior, and a system of dry culture has been introduced all round the city. Though Savannah was occupied by Union troops after the surrender of the Confederate armies, yet the large number of independent commercial men in the city were resolved not to allow their municipal government to pass into the hands of political adventurers, and the Federal Government was wise enough to let them manage matters in their own way. The consequence is that confidence and con- tentment prevail in the community. A superior white police has been organized — quiet, intelligent, officer-like men, all of CH. xn.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 75 those I have noticed — who not only exercise a wholesome moral influence on the people, but enforce with great care the removal of nuisances and the observance of cleanliness and order. The business of tlie port has made a remarkable advance since the close of the war, and the increase of shipments this year has exceeded all former precedent. The receipts of cotton at Savannah in the season of 1869 amounted to 361,285 bales, of which 351,005 were Upland, and 10,280 Sea Island cotton. In the season of 1870 the receipts have been 490,085 bales, of which 473,722 have been Upland, and 16,363 Sea Island — the increase in one year being thus 128,800 bales. Taking the total American crop at 3,150,000 bales, one-seventh of it has passed through the port of Savannah. Of the shipments of cotton the past season at this port — Uplajid. Sea Island. Great Britain . . .took 20(1,284 bales. 4,286 bales. France „ 41,;3r)3 „ 2,243 „ • Other Foreign ports ' . „ 17,265 „ — „ The Northern States . „ 214,188 „ 9,606 „ The money value of exports from Savannah during the past year is estimated at 30,221,576 dollars, of which 17 millions were taken by foreign, chiefly British, vessels. The total imports are valued at not more than 1,115,821 dols. gold. This immense 'disparity of imports and exports shows how little pro- gress has been made since the Avar in direct trade betwixt Europe and the Southern States. The tariff operates materially to shut out Britisli goods, and to move such foreign trade as is permitted to N^w York, whence goods are carried to the South more and more by railway, and less and less by American coast- ing vessels^/ This is one cause of that decline of the mercantile marine of tlie United States to which the citizens of the seaports are becoming so sensitively alive. The restriction of foreign trade by the tariff, and the domination acquired by New York over the whole American trade in imports, are attended with depressing effects on the Southern States. Their chief cities have but half a chance of prosperity. The great power of Savannah in drawing cotton to her wharves would be equally effective in drawing- foreign products in exchange, and distributing them over the same wide area as she drains of cotton ; but her service in this direction is excluded, while the service she does render is placed under disability. Only few vessels comparatively can come to her port save in ballast. Yet when the cotton season opens, the great demand for tonnage then known to arise brings a forest of masts to the river, and shipmasters crowd the brokers' offices seeking cargo at rates which will pay the expenses of their vessels both ways. The lines of railway traversing the interior from east to west are affected in much the same manner. Trains come 76 SA FAKNJH. [cii. xii. to the seaport laden with cotton, but return over their long dis- tances with little or nothing. Were free and direct importation open, the railways would have traffic on both trips, would be more profitable, and coidd be more successfully extended. At pre- sent, of course, their rates are heavier than they would other- wise be, so that much of the cotton crop is carried to market alike by sea and by land under a disability. How many planters in this season of low price for their staple may feel the pinch of this narrow and distorted shoe ! All goods, both foreign and domestic, moreover, are much enhanced in price as well as deteriorated in quality to the Southern consumers, who are in this way made to bear a burden to which the whole State and Federal taxation, heavy as it now may be, is light in comparison. The large increase of receipts of cotton at Savannah during the past season is attributed partly to larger production per acre in Georgia through the use of fertilisers, but still more to the supplies received from other States, and in particular from Alabama, for which latter result the port is indebted to extended railway communications. A large amount of cotton that formerly went to Mobile, and some to New Orleans, now finds its way to Savannah. The prices realized at this port by planters compare favourably with those paid at Mobile and New Orleans. Wliile the Savannah cotton commands about the same rates abroad, the distance of ocean transport is so much shorter that a saving is effected in freight, interest, and insurance. Though the Sea Islands have reverted in many cases to their former owners, and are still held for cotton culture, yet it is gene- rally thought that the cultivation of the long staple will gradually diminish, owing to the low prices it has commanded of late years relatively to " upland." Egyptian cotton has taken the place of Sea Island to a great extent in Europe. The present season has been unusually propitious for the island crop, and the quality of the staple is better than last year. There have been no caterpillars, and everything has worked well for the plant. But the quantity of land planted has been considerably less, and consequently the crop is estimated to be from 2,000 to 3,000 bales under that of last year. It has so far been sent but slowly to market. It is generally admitted that the negroes have worked more steadily this year than in any previous year of free labour, and planters have declared to me that they could not do without the " darkies " in the field, so sup enor _j)a:^j_Ji]iaj^c. Jt) any w Jute. labour that has yet been tried^ PuMic opinion is well re- conciled to free negro labour, and the main caust3 of dissatisfac- tion with the coloured ]iopulation is the too ready ear they lend to political agitators, and the blind persistency with which they en. XII.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 77 ftre said to enable siicli persons to acquire predominance m tlj^"" •State Governments against the will of the white citizens.^rhe rate of wages in Savannah for unskilled labour, including such classes as waggoners, is Ih dollars a day of ten hours; and for skilled labour, such as that of printers, tinsmiths, and carpenters, from two to five dollars a day, according to skill and merit. This nominal high value of labour, however, is largely accounted for by dearness of goods ; or, in other words, the little way a ■dollar goes in purchasing the necessaries and comforts of life^j An impression has been growing on me since my inquiries began that the American currency dollar is little more than equal in purchasing power to the shilling in England. Yet the American currency in all transactions of exchange with foreign countries is only 11 to 13 per cent, less value than gold. This state of things presses wnth extraordinary severity upon all classes in the United States who produce anything for export, and, if prolonged, must tend to shut American products out of the markets of the world. My impression of the relative purchasing power of money in England and money in the United States was probably based on too narrow a deduction ; but the British Consul here, by enter- ing into a minute analysis as regards such goods and necessaries only as artisans and Labourers require, has arrived at the con- clusion that the relative purchasing power of money here and in England is in the proportion of 45 to 100. Our Consuls in America, by the way, have had this question brought home rather sharply to themselves. Paid salaries of so many hundred pounds sterling per annum, for each of which they got seven or •eight dollars some years ago, they find that their pound sterling does not now bring them more than five dollars, while the dollar has not risen in practical value here in anything like the same proportion. But the hardsliip this entails on foreign residents falls equally, or rather doubly and trebly, on the producers of the great American staples, who pay for labour, goods, and materials on the. inflated scale of prices, and get back their returns on the strict standard of monetary exchange, thus lite- rally buying in the dearest and selling in the cheapest market. It might be some consolation for this anomaly if it could be shown that any class of people is really the better of it. Take, on the Consul's figures, as an example of prices, articles which all would expect to be superlatively cheap in the United States. Thus, beef of the country, lean and leathery, is in Savannah Id. per lb. ; Northern beef, prepared for such large cities as New York and Baltimore, and tolerably good, is Is. 2>d. per lb. ; mutton, 1(1. per lb. ; bacon. Is. 1(/. to Is. 3d per lb. ; coffee, llrf. ; tea, 4s. Id. ; salt butter, Is. \0d. ; potatoes, 7s. Qd. per bushel ; and the three-quarter pound loaf, id. Among the drawbacks of life and labour in Savannah and 78 S A FAN N AH. " [en. xii. other "delta towns in similar latitudes must be placed the effects of climate, which great sanitary care can only mitigate, and which are hardly consistent with continuous toil. The average heat in summer, from 12 to 3 p.m., is about 90 degrees in the shade, and though the health of the town itself shows great im- provement of recent years, yet the suburbs and country are malarial, and in August, September, and October, malarial fevers abound, and are often fatal. The health statistics of the city are undoubtedly reassuring. The population is returned this year in round numbers at 29,000, of whom 19,000 are white and 10,000 coloured people. The number of deaths among the whites in 1869 was 423, or 1 in 47-28, which is a low rate of mortality. The number of deaths among the negroes in the same year was 429, or 1 in 23*3, being, as in Charleston, fully double the rate of mortality among the white people. The dis- eases that cut off the negroes in greatest number were mias- matic, tubercular, nervous, and respiratory. The chief causes of the white mortality were the three first of these classes of disorders. The rate of infantile mortality in Savannah, on an average estimated over a period of sixteen years, is one-fourth of the total deaths, while in England it is as high as one-third. All these results, with the exception of the high rate of mortality among the negroes, are very satisfactory, and are the more remark- able inasmuch as the health of Savannah did not use to stand so welL In 1854, when the white population was only 12,468, the number of white deaths was 1,221, or 1 in 10'2, among which were 625 fatal cases of yellow fever. The blacks escaped that terrible scourge. Since 1858 there have been few cases of yellow fever in Savannah. In some subsequent years the mor- tality was also great, though in most cases the excess was due to exceptional causes. In 1864 and the following year (the last of the war), 845 deaths occurred in the military hospitals. But 1866 and the subsequent years till now have shown a steady progress towards the excellent health-condition that has been described, and that is largely to be attributed to the prosperity and good government of the city, and to the care and vigilance of the authorities in proscribing and extirpating the more flagrant causes of disease. Interments are extra-mural, and one of the ceme- teries is as beautiful as any institution of the kind can be. The supply of water is abundant and wholesome, one of the greatest blessings, since the supply of liquors is of questionable quality. The negroes in the Southern cities and towns, I fear, are falling into the habit of drinking inordinate quantities of bad whisky. The American people generally it must in fairness be ob- served, are a sober race. But while temperance is ever praise- worthy, and one of the greatest virtues of a free people, a little experience of American "drinks" somewhat- detracts from en. XII.] STATS OF GEORGIA. 79 the merit of sobriety in this country. The distillers and liquor merchants, by a short-sighted policy in drugging and poisoning what they produce and sell, have rendered total abstinence almost a necessity of life. The banking capital of Savannah, which had grown up to eleven or twelve millions, was mostly lost during the war. The Central Eailroad Bank alone withstood the melting power of that seven-times heated furnace. The banking capital is now about three millions, quite inadequate to the expanded business of the city, but is being gradually increased. One or two new banks are just being established, one by Northern men who have come down for the purpose, and a very good speculation it seems to be as banking is conducted in the United States, espe- cially in the South. A banking company invests its capital in Federal bonds, deposits these at Wasliington under receipt of the Treasury, receives 90 per cent, of their value in national currency, and, while paid regidarly the full interest on its bonds, proceeds as a thoroughly authorized National Bank to lend its currency on mortgage, bills of lading, and other secure collaterals, at from 15 to 18 per cent. It would be well if all Northern speculations in the South turned out as profitably as National Banks on these terms are sure to do. Several Northern firms commenced busi- ness in Savannah after the war as cotton merchants and brokers, but they have all " burst up," as the saying is when a firm either commits a bad bankruptcy and runs away, or honourably with- draws from business when disappointed in its hopes of profit. Cotton-broking is competed so keenly in Savannah as to astonish the older merchants. The growing commerce and well-being of the " Forest City " are, on' the whole, pretty solidly assured. Savannah appears, indeed, destined to become one of the great marts and centres of ]ife and activity in the South. Its common school system has already made satisfactory progress — the negroes and the Eoman Catholics being equally furnished with schools of their own, though under the same general superintendence as the schools of the other parts of the population. If the sylvan character of the town be consistent with public health, I can vouch for its charming and picturesque effect. It is very pleasant to saunter along Bull Street from end to end, passing from shops and stores to squares, churches, theatres, and elegant private mansions, the forest shadows deepening as the architecture becomes more choice ; to look on either side down the long wooded streets, two, three, four rows deep in trees, according to their importance in the general intersection ; to dwell for a little in admiration of a fine monument, glistening white as snow amidst tlie many colours of the autumn forest, erected in honour of Pulaski, who fell for the rights of Georgia in the War of Independence ; to stand with 80 SAVANNAH. [ch. xii. curiosity before tropical plants that adorn the fronts of the houses, prominent among them the banana, covering the windows to the second floor with its great leaves, and suggesting ideas of some mammoth vegetable world ; and again to pass on, with new sources of attraction at every step, till the avenue debouclies on a small Bois de Boulogne, where an elaborate fountain plays, pointing the way to shady walks, in which the ladies prome- nade with their babies and nurses, and lovers meet to exchange vows of eternal devotion. The spot is cool and sequestered. One can imagine the delight of it when a hot and scorching sun drives people in terror from the open sky. The street-ways betwixt the trees are several inches deep in a blackish sand that muffles every sound of hoof or wheel. Savannah looks as if 30,000 people had gone out from town into a bowery forest glade, and, without disturbing its silence or its beauty, made summer-houses amidst its flowers and plants, and under the shade of its spreading trees. CHAPTEE XIII. The Eailway System of Georgia. — Convenience of the Oars. — The " Captains " or Conductors. — Safety of Single-rail Lines. — Greater fertility of the SoU in the Interior. — Want of facilities of Branch Traffic. — Dilatory Cotton-picking. — General characteristics of the various Divisions of Georgia. [MiLLEN, Ga.—jSFov. 26.] The Central Eailroad from Savannah, to Macon connects at this point with the Augusta and Savannah road, which is also worked by the Central Company. Various branches and connections have greatly extended the communications of the Central. The Charleston and Savannah, which has again been opened, runs into its main line ; and it has a branch to MilledgeviUe, the former capital of the State, and Eatonton. At Macon it gets into connection with all the lines north, east, and west, and by extensions from Columbus, on the western border line of Georgia, is stretching out its communications to Mobile and Montgomery in Alabama. The business of this old-established company is managed with great ability and prudence ; and the same remark may equally be made of the Georgia Eailway, from Augusta to Atlanta, and its elongation to West Point, on the Alabama border. Both the Georgia and Central Eailroads are now within sight of direct communication across Alabama to Meridian in Mississippi, as well as to Mobile and New Orleans south. Another great system — the Atlantic and Gulf Eailway — is being gradually carried out under the energetic direction of Colonel John Screven, and opening up the southern section of the State, connecting Brunswick, an Atlantic seaport, with Macon north, with Albany and Bainbridge west, and with the Florida Eaih'oad and the Gulf of Mexico south. The Macon and Brunswick is a separate company, though part of the system. The South- Western and Muscogar Eailways run in a forked form from Macon to Colum- bus, and from Macon to Eufala in Alabama. The " Macoii and Western" to Atlanta is an essential link in the railway com- munication of the State north and south ; and the Western and Atlantic, or " State Eoad," as it is called from being the property of the State, carries this trunk system north to Chattanooga in G IIILLEN. [CH. XIII. 80 ^ Eastern Tennessee. These remarks give a skeleton outline of tlie principal established lines of railroad in Georgia in active working condition, but new projects are brought forward in great number, and receive encouragement from the Legislature in the cession of State endorsement of their bonds to the extent of 8,000 to 15,000 dollars per mile. The railways at this season carry on an extensive traffic. In my progress hither from Savannah I met four great cotton trains, twenty trucks at least in each, passing down to the sea- port. The passenger trains seldom contain many people, except when some public gatherings are being held, or when immigrants and other through passengers happen to be numerous. The American cars are well adapted to the long distances over which passengers have usually to travel. The seats are ranged in small pews on either side, holding two persons each, with a free passage between, and at both ends there are doors giving communication with the other cars of the train. The opening and shutting and slamming of the doors, on a cold or wet day, while the train is m motion, form probably the only inconvenience of the arrange- ment ; and though one unaccustomed may feel somewhat dis- concerted on being set down in the same compartment with so many passengers, yet the Americans are by no means noisy when travelling, but for the most part sit as qviiet as at church. There is seldom more than one newspaper editor "on board." Smoking is prohibited in all but the front car, to which the smokers go as it suits them. By this subtle arrangement the railway companies have arrived at a practically dividing line betwixt iirst and second class passengers — negroes and otliers desiring to travel cheap, and smokers who must smoke all the time, being required to take their passage in the smoking car, and not allowed to leave it during the journey. The "ladies' car " is the choice part of the train, and is strictly guarded from male intruders at the principal passenger depots. But the regulation of the " ladies' car " is somewhat anomalous in prac- tice. The rule ^ being to exclude only such male persons as happen to be travelling alone, it often occurs that very gentle- manly people are turned away to an inferior place, while a much rougher set are freely admitted. Yet, when the train gets in motion, the free communication from one car to another soon redresses all inequalities. The railway conductor in America, or " captain," as he is called (just as the train itself and all about it are spoken of in nautical phrase), is a high official, of whom there is no counterpart in the old country. He collects the fares of the passengers ; in many cases apparently he keeps no account but the contents of his dollar bill pocket ; and, having some period of usance in the company's money, he trades a little betwixt the country and the city, and no doubt CH. xiii.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 83 makes a good thing of that. The consequence is that the " captain " is generally an imposing personage, without band or button as a mark of office, but elaborately fixed up in gold jewellery, and not much disposed to give information when asked for it. Many of the stations on the American railways have too small a population, some being merely ends of roads for letting down and taking up country people, to siijjport a ticket office and a station-master ; but the habit of paying fares to the conductors has so grown, that even in the larger towns nearly as many pass into the cars without tickets as with them. The passenger traffic is therefore conducted too free from any effective check over the receipts to be quite satisfactory to the boards of directors. The lines in the south are broad-gauge and single-rail lines, and what with the moderate rate of speed, and the necessity of the going train moving into a side track at appointed stations till the coming one has arrived and passed on, collisions seem to be less frequent, and the traffic to be con- ducted with more security, than on double-rail and more heavily worked lines. One also finds the telegraph in active operation almost everywhere on the American railways. , The country, on the whole, considerably improves in fertility and settlement towards the interior of Georgia. On the road from Millen to Macon farming is carried on with more system ; the crops are generally good, sometimes luxuriant ; and there are marks of care and vigour in the work of cultivation round the farmhouses and in the fields. Cotton is brought down over twenty and thirty miles of country to some of the railway stations on drays, with four mules to eacji, and almost as many negroes, a few bales at a time, on tolerable roads. Common roads in Georgia are easily made, and more easily mended than one might suppose — the receptive sandy soil drying and harden- ing up after moderate rain very soon. The labour required, even with fair roads, in transporting cotton from the plantations to the railways, is enormous, and is often withdrawn from the fields when most needed. Were the railway companies to turn their attention to branch communication, and put on a "road engine" and train of waggons at every principal depot, great advantage would accrue to themselves as well as to the planters and the cotton trade. The backwardness of picking, while negroes and mules are toiling along the country roads with handfuls of cotton, is everywhere observable. Whole fields along this route, even at this date, are white as snow with cotton wool, which only the extraordinary fineness of the season, liable to break up at any moment, has saved from total loss. The frost, which appeared for the first time ten or twelve days ago, has come more or less at intervals since. Though a "kiUiug frost," probably, in the cotton telegrams, it has con- G 2 8-1 MILLEN. [cH. xiii. sisted hitherto of tlio slightest bite of cold imaginahlo, followed hy days of warmth and brightness equal to English siumncr, and with neither wind nor rain (if any accoiuit. The woods begin to show its elfect in diversihed change of hue ; and the cotton plant not only shows it in a browner shade, but no doubt also feels it in a retardation of the latest crop of bolls. But what signifies the lengthening of the crop, if even the first and second sheds of fruit have not been gathered ? Since the M'ar picking has seldom been finished till February, and, besides causing much deterioration of cotton, has cut largely into the time anil labour re([uired to prepare the ensuing crop. Planters fret and worry under this state of things morp, ,of course, than anybody else, but it is an evil that injures all. j/The negroes get up difficulties of wages, and fall into difticulties of debt and liens on their s^hare of the crop. The fall of price is even a difficulty to the negro, for, with the most singular inversion of reason, he argues that when cotton is cheap it is not worth while picking it — as if the only way to get the better of the low price of any crop were not to make the quantity of it as large as possible. The negroes have some very peculiar traits of character, and are more like children than grown people. Served with the stipulated rations for a week, they will some- times eat them up in three days, and fall into debt to their employers and their merchants for more than enough. Yet the prevailing remark is that they are improving. The courts in Georgia punish them for stealing, and as the resources of theft and idleness are closed against them, they begin to feel they must work to live. Such are some of the difficulties of the negroes on the land ; but it must be added that the negroes on the land are not nearly so many as the land recpiires. There is an absolute scarcity of labour for the larger plantations under culture. IVIiddle Georgia and the whole AVestern border from north to south form the finest and richest agricultural region of the State. These districts are comparatively well settled, studded with pro- ductive farms, and have towns of considerable population and nianutiictures. In the south-west there are Albany, Columbus, Thomaston, where cotton and woollen fabrics are manufactured with success ; in the north-west there are Atlanta, Marietta, Eome, Dalton, and other towns which are growing in population and in traffic; while INlacon and Augusta may be said to ])reside over IVIiddle Georgia, and are at once a result and a. source of the superior agricultural value and higher civilization of that section. While the cash value of farms in the various counties of Middle and Western Georgia is estimated by millions, in the other parts of the State it is more commonly estimated in thousands. The uorth-eastern counties of Upper Georgia are mountainous, cii. xiii.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 85 and are imprognated along the river bottoms witli gold deposits, whicli were the cause of a great excitement forty years ago tliat has broken out at intervals ever since. The deposits, after their first discovery, were deemed so rich that the land was surveyed, and distributed by lottery in forty-acre sections to all who had been three years citizens of the State, There were some prizes, but many blanks. Yet gold-digging continues to be prosecuted among the mountains of Georgia. Copper ore has also been extracted in large quantity. The southern counties of Georgia are the poorest and most thinly peopled. The soil is more sandy, and all but wholly covered with pine forests, on which the lumbermen have hitherto made but small impression. Land in this section of the State is so extremely cheap as to be almost incredible. I*urchases have been made at ten cents an acre. Any one ambitious of territorial jjossession might with little money become lord of a county or two, full of wood, and, in the event of the Baltic forests giving out, might be confessed in some generation or other to have made a splendid investment. At the same time it is very dithcult to pronounce in this climiite what is poor and worthless land for agricultural purposes. The very different degrees of value of land seem to depend as much on the tract which settlement and population have taken as on the intrinsic qualities of the soil. I have heard it said that the sandy soil of these poor and sparsely-peopled counties, once cleared, would grow long-staple cotton as good as that of the Sea Islands, the season is so much longer than in more northern cotton States. The best crop of cotton I have met with in Georgia is that of a recent settler, who, on what was deemed poor land, has, by close attention and farmyard manuring, raised nine bales from thirteen acres. The country from Macon to Atlanta, in the north-west of Georgia, is a fine rolling upland, well cleared, with li-inges of light forest tindjer, in which oaks, hickory, and other varieties of tree, as well as the ever-constant pine, are abundant, and where freestone is quarried. The soil assumes a redder colour than at Macon and southward. There is a rich growth of cotton, the picking of which is well up to the mark. Good farming seems well understood in most of this district. The homeliness of the scenery, its gentle hill and dale, its wide sweeps of cultivated land up to the margin of the forest belts, which twine themselves across the heights and skirt the valleys, are peculiarly striking. A more pretty and interesting country than much of it one could hardly deske to sec. CHAPTER XIV. Central position of Macon. — Command of the Railway System. — Great dev^elopment of Railway Enterprise. — Success of the Old Lines. — State Endorsement of Railway Bonds. — Tlie system of Railway Financing. — Does State Endorsement add to the Security of a First-Mortgage Bond ? — Macon Cotton Manufactures. [Macon, Ga.— Nov. 27-28.] The position of Macon, in the heart of Middle Georgia, where all the railways — north, south, east, and west — converge as to a common centre, renders it probably the most important and most promising inland town of this lively and enterprising State. It receives from 90,000 to 100,000 bales of cotton annually, and the drafts of planters in the surrounding country are honoured eagerly by merchants and warehousemen to the extent of their resources, with the view of fostering and increasing the importance of the town as a mart for cotton. The railway lines which meet and radiate from Macon would alone be sufficient to give a powerful and permanent impulse to its trade and industry. Extensive railway workshops have been esta- blished, and have gathered round them a numerous body of mechanics. A number of the railway directors and capitalists, who are the life and brain of the great system of communication throughout the State, reside in Macon, and act together with much energy and judgment. The various depots, filled with goods and produce in transit, give an air of business and traffic to the to\sTi beyond what one would expect from its general development. Macon is not so compact or so well built as Augusta, but, with a shrewd head on its shoulders, it has also its fingers on a vast network of communication from all parts of the interior and extremities of the State, that will tend every year to increase its means of wealth and employment. The railway interest, next to the agricultural interest, which is the foundation of all, is at present by much the largest and most prominent interest of Georgia. It is the one interest throughout all the South which, though gi-eatly worn and wrecked by the war, stood erect and vital amidst the general ruin, and that seemed not only able to take care of itself, but to give a CH. XIV.] STJTE OF GEORGIA. 87 lielpiug-liand to the general recuperation of the various States. Hence the great development of railway enterprise in tlie South since the close of the war. Georgia has probably done more to restore and extend the connections of its old lines, and to build up new railways, than any of the other Southern States. The success which had attended its railways in the ante-war times, and the strength which tliey displayed amidst universal weakness when the war had ended, is no doubt one reason of the almost passionate activity of the State in this direction during the last four or five years. The Georgians had come to believe in railways at a crisis when faith in any other material interest had almost departed. The Georgia Eailroad from Augusta to Atlanta had before the war repaid in dividends its whole capital and 50 per cent, more, and remained a clear and going road to its subscribers when the war had passed away. This company has taken powers to increase its capital stock to five million dollars, to rebuild depots and shops, and replace rolling stock and rails. The Atlanta and West Point, which was an extension of the Georgia from Atlanta to the Alabama border, paid 7 per cent, interest from the day when the money w\as paid till the line was opened for traffic, after which it paid 8 per cent. ; and in a few years the reserve had accumulated so much that a bonus of 100 per cent, was declared to the stockholders in the form of new stock in that proportion — in other words, every 100 dollars of stock became 200 ; and yet on the capital, as thus doubled, a dividend of 8 per cent, has been paid from year to year, and no less from all appearance is ever likely to be paid notwithstanding the com- petition to which the road has been or may be subjected. The Central Eailroad has regularly paid large dividends to its sub- scribers — never less, I believe, than 8 to 10 per cent. The State Eoad from Atlanta to Chattanooga has also a large, steady, and prosperous traffic, which was wont to replenish the treasury of the State, and has only ceased to be profitable under the exoteric and transitionary rule of recent years. The management of the " State Eoad " is a constant topic of attack and defence, and of banter not always of the pleasant sort, betwixt the local Conservatives and the party sustained in power by the " Eeconstruction " policy of the North. The Governor and the Legislature, acknowledging the justice of the complaints made against this department of the administration, have this year passed an Act to authorize a lease of the railway to any competent private company for a term of twenty years. The lessees are required to pay not less than 25,000 dollars a month into the State treasury, taking over the road and its appurtenances as they stand, and returning them in like condition at the end of the period of lease. There would appear from the terms of this Act to be no decrease of confidence in the substantial resources of the " State Eoad," and its pros- 88 MACON. [cH. xiy. pects of remuneration to the revenue of the State, at the expense of which it has been built and maintained. This confidence I hear echoed on all sides. The railway antecedents of Georgia have thus been peculiarly favourable. Wliether under the great movement of railway extension in progress its future experience will be equally favourable, depends on many conditions and considerations not easy at present to resolve. The old Georgian lines of railroad were urgently needed ; they had a traffic ready for them ; they tapped, as it were, the virgin soil of communica- tion in the State ; and they were made, step by step, when labour and commodities were cheap, with cash subscribed, and ready for every outlay on the neatest ready-money terms. The results were, economy in the cost of construction, an abounding traffic as soon as they w^ere constructed, and ample dividends on the capital of the companies when brought into operation. The new railway era in this and other States of the South cannot be sup- posed to present the same advantageous conditions. Since it was impossible to raise within the State itself the money necessary to make new railways, the expedient adopted has been not only to give large borrowing powers by Act of the Legislature to any projector or company of projectors wdio have proposed to make a railroad, but also to give the State's endorsement of the bonds on which the money is bor- rowed. The State generally endorses bonds to the amount of 15,000 dollars per mile. The cost of building a railroad in Georgia, I am informed on competent authority, is from 18,000 to 30,000 dollars a mile, so that on most lines there would appear to be a considerable margin beyond the amount of State endorsement, which must be covered by the capital of the stock- holders. Still, the money borrowed on the State security bears an mordiuate proportion to the capital invested b}'" the com- panies, and many do net hesitate to say that in some instances the roads are made almost wholly from the proceeds of the mortgage bonds. The Legislature of Georgia has passed an Act which prohibits the Governor or any other officer of State from endorsing the bonds of any railroad " imtil an amount equal to the amount of bonds for which the guarantee of the State is applied for has in good faith been first invested, and actually paid in and expended, by the owners or stockholders of the road." In the plain meaning of words, the Act imposes a con- dition that the money borrowed under the State guarantee for railway purposes shall never exceed the paid-up capital of the companies ; wdiich, if strictly observed, would be alike good for the State, the bondholders, and the ultimate profit of the rail- road projectors and companies tliemselves. If it should have the effect of delaying some of the less urgent projects, and spreading the construction over a longer period of time, nothing CH. XIV.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 89 woiild be lost, and probably much advantage be ultimately gained. The number of railways projected in Georgia is so great as to remind one of periods of railway mania elsewhere of unfortunate memory. The Legislature this year has authorized the endorsement of the bonds of no fewer than thirty-two railroad companies. The endorsement is to be to the amount in some cases of 12,000 dollars and in others of 15,000 dollars a mile. Many of the projects, of course, are only branches or elongations of existing lines from one Georgian town to another ; but some are extensive schemes, such as the Atlanta and Blue Eidge, which aims at being a great competing through-line to the North. One wonders where all the money is to come from to carry out so many public works at once, and the expectation that the profits on the plantations wdl seek investment in rail- ways does not seem to be well founded as an immediate resource, when one considers how much the planters have to do in stock- ing, fencing, and improving their farms, and getting their affairs into such a train as to enable them to make any profit at all. But there can be no doubt of the immense utility of railways to the agricultural population in the absence of good common roads to market, or of the sacrifices the people are prepared to make in order to attain a railway system reaching and penetrating almost every county in the State. The most ambitious " air- line " through to the great railroads running North and West is always so contrived as to open up new districts within the State itself, and to give an impulse to internal improvement. The State only follows the general bent in helping forward the formation of railways by all legitimate means : and the repre- sentatives, as they pass bill after bill, pledging, under conditions, the security of the State, may probably think that to authorize endorsation is one thing and to endorse is another, and that by a natural process of selection a few only of the many projects will be pushed forward for the present. Southern railway bonds bearing interest of 8 per cent, per annum have already been taken up to a large amount, and, under proper conditions, should be as solid a security as this or any country can offer. But they do not sell very favourably when issued, and they do not sustain well their original price. There is something faulty in the whole system of finance pur- sued. The guarantee of the State has a large sound ; but it is doubtful whether, in present circumstances, it contributes essen- tially to the value of the bonds. The State debt of Georgia, as well as other Southern States, was inconsiderable at the close of the war, but it has been rapidly increased since, for other pur- poses as well as railways, and, with its natural result of increased taxation, forms a constant theme of bitter political discussion betwixt the Eadical-Negro Governments and the white people 90 MACON. [cH. XIV. of the States. A curious incident has just occurred here, which serves to illustrate the feud that prevails in regard to the State finances. Governor Bullock proceeded to New York some days ago, with the view of negotiating the sale of some amount of State bonds, and was immediately followed by the son of the Treasurer of the State, who reported to the New York banking houses that the bonds which the Governor wished to sell were informal and illegal, that they had not been registered in the terms of the Act, and that no transactions upon them would be binding on the State of Georgia. The Governor has written a note to Atlanta, to the effect that the Treasurer's son has been injuring the credit of the State, and the inference is that his financial mission to the North will be rendered of no avail. Such disclosures as these, commented upon with the utmost asperity by the local press, increase the suspicion of the Southern people as to the integrity with which their affairs are adminis- tered, and one of the first steps of the Conservative- Democrat Government, for which the elections are gradually paving the way, will probably be to institute a strict inquiry into the financial proceedings of their predecessors in office. It is un- desirable that such a substantial commercial interest as railroads should be embroiled in suspicions and investigations of this description, and the State guarantee, wdiatever its advantages to the issuers and the holders of the bonds, has obviously, its dis- advantages also. Its disadvantages, indeed, are more apparent than its advantages. The State engages, in the event of failure on the part of the stockholders, to pay the interest and principal of the bonds. When called upon to fulfil this engagement, the State will proceed to sell, lease, or work the road, and charge itself with the liability to the bondholders. But this is only what the bondholders would have immediate power to do them- selves were there no State guarantee or intervention in the matter. The main security of railway bondholders is that the road be one well devised for traffic and for developing traffic, and that it be conducted under the control of the substantial business people of the country through which it operates, who, in virtue of their subscribed capital and commercial interests, have the strongest motive to provide for its economical construc- tion and successful management. Where these conditions are found — and where may they not be found in these great arid rising States ? — the first mortgage railway bond issued here is as good a security as it can well be made. There are supposable cases in which the superadded State guarantee might save the bondholders trouble ; but there are equally supposable cases, on the other hand, in which it might give them a little of that com- modity too. English rails are in favour in Georgia, aud^ notwithstanding CH. XIV.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 91 the high tariff duty, are sometimes bought to a large amount on a gold basis, delivered at Savannah. The old lines, I believe, will now re-lay their roads, as required, with the best steel rails. Macon, like Augusta, has a cotton factory, that has long been a successful element in the industry of the town. The goods manufactured are 36-inch shirtings, one lb, to the three yards, and 30-irich shirtings, four ounces to the yard. The former bring 12-| and the latter 10^ cents per yard. I found the factory working cotton at 12^ to 13 cents per lb. The capital of the company is 128,000 dollars, on which the divi- dend usually paid is 10 per cent., though sometimes as much as 21 per cent, has been divided ; and a surplus fund of 50,000 dollars has been accumulated. This factory has only 5,240 spindles, and works at less advantage than the Augusta factory, which has more extensive and newer machinery. The number of hands employed in the Macon factory is 120. They are all whites. The wages paid to women are 24 to 25 dollars a month, and to boys 13 dollars a month. Another cotton factory is about to be opened in an extensive building that was erected during the war for a Confederate arsenal. It is to have 15,000 spindles, and a 350-horse-power engine. A very general desire is evinced in all parts of the country for the establishment of cotton factories, but the Southern people seem to fall into a series of mistakes on this point. Their ideas of manufacturing run in too narrow a groove. The small factory in Macon has to beat up a good deal for a market for its goods, and the difference in price of cotton here and in New York — two to three cents per lb. — may soon be more than lost in the difficulty and ex- pense of selling the goods when manufactured. There are many branches of manufacture which, both in the towms and country parts of the South, might be prosecuted with probably greater advantage tlian simple cotton fabrics. Variety of enterprise is eminently desirable. The cotton factories at Columbus are pro- ducing cotton blankets, which are a novelty, are well spoken of by those wdio have used them, and may be capable of introduc- tion into distant markets ; but the manufacture of sheetings and shirtings may soon be greatly overdone. It is the North which the South has always in view when it sighs for more and more cotton factories. The people say. Why should we pay Massa- chusetts a protected and monopoly price for cotton goods, when we grow the raw material and may make them for ourselves ? The South, as Mr. Gladstone once allowed himself to say, is thus, after all, a distinct nation in the United States^ but the North has to thank, not Mr. Jeff. Davis, but itself, for this dis- tinction, in sacrificing the interests of the great mass of the population in other sections of the Union to a fatly protected 92 MACON. [en. xiv, class of Northern manufacturers. Disaffection is fostered South and West hy this hliud and licartless policy. The best paid chiss of Avorking people in IVIacon are mechanics, who receive from 4| to 6 dollars a day ; but it is one of the dra-svbacks on the supposed high wages of labour in America that a mechanic, with a wife and family, has to pay as much as 25 dollars a month for a house or cabin of four rooms. INIaeon is finely situated on the side of a sandy hill, broken into wide and sloping hollows that stretch out in many tine avenues to be, and are overlooked by eminences that have already become the sites of spacious and elegant private resi- dences. The country round is hilly and densely wooded. CHAPTER XV. Extraordinary rise of Atlanta from the ashes of the War. — The H. I. Kiriiljull House. — Interview with a " Drummer" of the latest Patents. — The "Asses' Bridge." — The Hotel System. — Population of Atlanta. — Removal of tlie State Capital. — Orifrin of the Kimball House Specula- tion. — New Executive Mansion. — An Education Meeting. — Costume. — Peaches. — The Granite Mountain. — Round Cartersville. — Need of a Geological Survey of Northern Georgia. [Atlanta, Ga. — Nov. 29-30 ; Cartersville— Dec. 1.] I AitPJVED in Atlanta under a shower of rain, the first I had seen in a sojourn of nearly two months in tlie Soutliern States. It was really a downfall worth speaking of, enough to make a Mark Tapley feel jolly. " It never rains but it pours" in Atlanta. Sherman poured such a shower of fire upon it as almost swept it from the face of the surrounding wilderness. It is now rising up a grander, fairer, and more ambitious town than before. But an architectural chaos reigns in the meanwhile over all its centre and circumference. The railway from Macon, after gliding through a sulmrb of cabins and passing a military bari'acks, begins to toll its bell and perform a sort of funereal procession amidst the debris of newly-built houses and the ruins of old ones, jjieces of streets to which there is no visible entrance, and deepening files of cars and trucks from which there is no imaginable exit, finally drawing up more apparently from the impossibility of moving backward or forward than from the fact of having arrived anywhere. The various rail- roads wl)ich meet at tliis crowded point do not go to the town; the town is gatliering in thick and hot haste about the railways. A general depot is being built, but, like every- thing else in Atlanta, it is unfinished ; and on the arrival of a train under rain the passengers are put down in the mud, to be there screamed at Ijy steam-engines and high-pressure negroes, scared by the tolling of bells, and barricaded on every side by trains of cars, bales of cotton, boxes of merchandise, gable-ends of houses, and all sorts of building materials. " Is there any hotel in this city of Babel ? " I cried out, and was immediately told Atlanta had the biggest tiling of the kind in creation. 94 ATLANTA. [en. xv. "Where is it?" "There, sare; I take you" — said a darkey, who had already marked me for his own — " there it is," pointing to a really magnificent edifice, which on the side next, us seemed to have everything but windows — an edifice forming nearly two streets of Atlanta— so large, indeed, that it seemed impossible to judge where the entrance might be. " The H. I. Kimball House, sir. Have you nary heerd of the H. I. ? " said a short, thick man, all beard and no whiskers. I confessed that the Atlanta hiero- glyphics were unknown to me, whereupon he put into my hand a printed paper, which, as I was now scaling a heavy intrench- ment of brick and mortar, flanked by Avet ditches of no mean account, I put into my pocket to cull some particulars from by and by. The inhabited front of the " H. I." was carried without loss of any kind, but not without difficulties that evoked sus- picions and objurgations of a serio-comic kind, wherein how much I was deceived will appear from a fact or two. The hall or vestibule of the Kimball House is as big as a church, and prayer-meetings of a certain kind, I believe, are held in it sometimes. This hall is open almost to the roof of the build- ing, with tier upon tier of galleries communicating with the various floors of the hotel, and affording the guests an oppor- tunity of looking down on all that passes below. A gaselier drops from the higher stories over the hall, of such magni- tude and brightness as might grace any opera-house in the largest cities of the world. The whole hotel is brilliantly lighted with gas. I was hoisted to my room in a steam-power elevator, surpassing in lubricity of motion the creaky and occasionally foot-crushing machine of the great " Continental " in Phila- delphia, so dear to all the " commercials " of the Northern States. The bigger the hotels of America become, the greater nuisance they are generally found to be, but the Kimball House at Atlanta, to whomsoever it may prove a mistake, will be no mistake to any traveller in the upper regions of Georgia who may choose to make it his abode. The rain having passed away, the first thought that occurred was to walk round what had now for the time become '' my hotel ; " but this I was never able to do. I found myself, in various attempts, always going away from it and always coming back to it. Parts of it seemed everywhere, and other objects began to distract my attention from its probable lines of circum- vallation. Atlanta has several great business houses in the dry goods, hardware, grocery, and confectionery lines, with fine shops on the street for retail business, and upper floors for wholesale trade. One receives at every step a lively impression of the great powder residing somewhere in the United States of filling the most distant and unpromising places with wares and traffickers of all kinds. Stores full of " Northern notions," CH. XV.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 9') New York oyster saloons, and " drummers " of the latest patents out at Washington, are seen on both sides (when they have two sides) of the streets of Atlanta. One man showed me a more perfect kerosene oil or spirit lamp than I had seen or imagined. He lighted three or four of them, and flinging them heedlessly on the floor to burn at leisure in various corners of the store, instantly pulled out a patent washing-machine which is to drive everything else out of the market. He was about to show me a marvellous pot-hook with cradle appendages for weighing babies, when, notwithstanding my deeply awakened interest, I was ol^liged to come away. The streets of Atlanta are not yet lighted with gas, but the patentee came with me to the door, and sprung an immense spirit torch which threw a blaze of light into the gloom, revealmg, in the distance, of course, a wing of the Great Hotel. It is difficult for a guest of the H. I. to lose himself in Atlanta, but it is easy for any one to be abruptly stopped by some impassable barrier, or danger- ously inveigled in the network of railway tracks. The railways pass along a narrow defile, and cut Atlanta for the present in two. I found myself standing on one occasion at this Asses' Bridge, beside a grave, elderly man, who was waiting, like myself, for an opening betwixt the long trains that blocked the way. As one moved on, another close behind was sure to give a snort and jolt along too ; and when the down track was a little clear, the tolling bell of a train on the up track gave note of warning to adventurous citizens. I ventured to remark to my patient friend that it was strange the people of Atlanta could bear such an obstruction in the heart of the town. "What would you have them do ? " he asked me. " Petition, of course ; oppose the railway bills, overturn a Governor or two, if necessary ; and insist on right of way." " Friend, you are a stranger — I guess the railways were here before the people of Atlanta," was his reply ; and what he told me I recognized at once to be true. The rail- ways were the beginning and the end of Atlanta in the old times, and the new city rising up around the place where it was ere- while convenient for the railway engine to be fed with wood and water has not yet had time to adjust all its relations. One of the difficulties of the present chaotic stage of Atlanta is that few people in it know anybody else. I had an introduction to a gentleman of some fame, whom I casually met in Macon just as he was going to the train for Atlanta. He had only time to say, " Be sure to hunt mc iip when you come to Atlanta." I did not take up the whole meaning of the phrase at the time, but I learned it afterwards. Yet when all ordinary means of hunt- ing up people in Atlanta fail, there is one resource which, if you are a. guest of the H. I., may be reverted to with some confidence. Begin and end your inquiries at the hotel, and ten to one you 96 ATLANTA. [ch. xv. find that yaii have been breakfasting, dining, and supping with the people you want all the time. The secret of the " big hotels " in America is that they are designed in a very subordinate degree for travellers, and that they place their main chance on town boarders, to whose convenience they conform all their arrangements. The system of boarding in hotels prevails largely in the cities of the North, and I am sorry to note its rapid in- troduction into the Southern States. The ladies, I think, when the first reluctance has been conquered, rather like the relief from domestic cares and the mock splendour of living in a grand hotel. Yet an American wife follows Paterfamilias into the public dining-room with a subdued sort of air ; and more melan- choly still, at least to me, are the children who close up the train with pale faces and precocious eyes, sit down at table among a crowd of sharp people, and are served by troops of obsequious waiters. The system may have its origin in Eepub- lican ideas carried to an anti-social and burlesque extreme ; but it is not the mould of life in which Eepublics are made or may best be preserved, and one cannot but reflect with some misgiving what a country America may be when a generation has arisen to whom the sweetest and most potent word in the English language, " home," has neither present meaning nor past association. Atlanta is already quite a large place. Its population is given, in the usual round numbers of the census enumerators, at 28,000 to 29,000. The vague results of the present decennial census in the United States are somewhat perplexing, but they have more excuse in a town like Atlanta than in many other places ; for if a census, instead of being taken in a night, be spread over the greater part of a year, how is it possible to state with precision the population of a city to which a hundred is added to-day, and probably half a thousand may be added to-morrow ? I am in- formed, on the best authority, that of the 28,000 to 29,000 souls in Atlanta, the whites are in the proportion of 15 to 13 coloured. That the coloured people should be so numerous in a practically new town proves the large flux of negroes from country to town since the w^ar. The marvel is how so large a population, white or black, has been gathered here in so short a time. " Northern capital " is the general explanation given ; and tlie Great Hotel is constantly referred to as a sample of the grand effects which " Northern capital " is destined to achieve in the Southern States. The number of Northern firms established in Atlanta, and the commercial prospecters flocking down from as far as Boston and New York, attest the mark which Atlanta and the " H. I." together have already made in Northern imagination. But the town is mainly indebted for all the progress yet made to political influ- ences. The capital of Georgia has been removed from Milledge- ville, situated, like other State capitals tlu'oughout the Union, en. XV.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 97 as nearly as possible in tlie centre of the State, to tbis Nortbern town. The convts of justice, the annual sessions of the Legisla- ture, and the constant residence of the Governor and other officers of State, give to Atlanta both traffic and ^dat, and may- render it more and more a place of general concourse from all other parts of the State. Poor Milledgeville has been left in widowhood and desolation, and the State buildings, as well as much pi'ivate property, been rendered of no account, while Atlanta is expected to grow into a great city. Two brothers Kimball came down from Boston at the close of the war in a humble and unassuming character, but probably with ulterior ideas in their heads. They are types of a class of aspiring Northern men who have rushed to the South since the war, some to run plantations, some to open mines of coal and iron, some to build railroads, others to establish great hotels, and all to give a grand impulse to Southern progress, and show the " old fogies " in the South how to do it. Many of these enterprising men have already come to grief and left the country, while others are in full career to Fortune, or — her eldest daughter — Miss Fortune. The brothers Kimball appear to have seen the tide in the affairs of Atlanta sooner than almost anybody else, and seized it with remarkable success. They saw that Atlanta had an opera-house which was never likely to be finished, and could yield no return to anybody even though it were. They bought this building, it is said, for 85,000 dollars, and they sold it immediately to the "reconstructed" State at 350,000 dollars for a State House, to serve in room of the deserted building at Milledgeville. After this brilliant " spec," Mr. H. I. Kimball con- ceived the design of a grand hotel " to beat all creation," and in eight or nine months has reared a splendid structure, at an estimated cost of 600,000 dollars, to accommodate " some 1,000 guests, and an unlimited number of boarders." ^ The main front is 210 feet, and the sides 163 feet each. The dining-room is 75 by 40 feet, and the grand hall or ball-room is 103 by 46 feet, and 23 feet high. Besides the hotel proper, there are twenty-one stores and warehouses in the building. Two thousand labourers and mechanics have been thumping away in this mammoth caravansera since March last, and are still thumping. The esti- mated cost may very likely fall much short of the actual cost, but the peculiarity of the hotel as a speculation seems to be that the going expenses must for a long period swell the capital outlay. There is a French cook at 250 dollars a month. The gas bill alone would open half a dozen coal mines. Any one who desires to live well and handsomely could pray for no better caterer than " mine host " of the H. I. Mr. Kimball has naturally become a man of great intluence in Atlanta. He is a ^ Atlanta Ncv) Era. H 98 ATI A XT A. [ch. xv. munificent patron of State fairs, horse-races, and every good work. His political intluence is even thought, with probably a little dash of popular superstition, to be supreme in the State. A common saying in Georgia is that Blodgett, senator, controls the Governor, but that ]\Ir. H. I. Kimball controls Blodgett. The old native citizens look with some distrust on the general brisk- ness of trade and speculation in Atlanta. While willing to see " progress " in it all, they doubt whether robbery may not be going on. By an Act of Legislature passed this year, the Governor is authorized to receive from J. H. James a warranty title to " a city lot " for an executive mansion, and to pay the said James 100,000 dollars in 7 per cent. State bonds. The taxpayers are shaking their heads, sometimes gnashing their teeth. The narrow base on which the universal negro suft'rage, "carpet-bag" quali- fication, and white proscription under the Ueconstruction Act of Congress, have placed political power, tends everywhere to destroj'' confidence in the financial operations of the State autho- rities. There is a decided rumbling in the sub-political world, and a great election to take place in Georgia towards the end of December may decide whether taxation and representation — the issue of State bonds and the property and substance pledged to pay them — are to be brought into more satisfactory and inter- dependent relationship. The present position of Georgia in the Union is a little anoma- lous. The State started very fair for reconstruction and admis- sion to the Union after the war, but the Legislature made a false step by ejecting two negro Deputies after allowing them to sit, vote, and take part in the proceedings of the session, and there has l3een some difticulty or delay since in getting the reconstruc- tion properly " fixed up." But there is no doubt that the status of Georgia as a member of the Ignited States Avill soon be com- pletely arranged. I was glad to find the Education Act of this }'ear under practical consideration in Atlanta, where in the present turmoil some of the higher matters of the law are but too apt to be neglected ; and 1 attended a public meeting of the citizens, the object of which was to urge the authorities to put the Act into operation. The meeting was not numerous, but intelligent and earnest as to the business on hand. There was strong advocacy of a system of free public schools for tlie })eople at large, the chief argument being one the force of which has been equally felt in the large towns of England and Scotland — viz., that private education is attainable only by the rich, and is too expensive for the working classes. One of the speakers, a mechanic, said that he and others would leave the town and seek a home in the AVest unless their children could be better and more cheaply educated, and he called upon the owners of property to consider cii. XV.] STATK OF GEORGIA. ii!) what liope there wouhl Ije of attracting artizans to Atlanta to build up the trade and wealth of the town if this privilege were denied tlieiri. A small party of opposition insisted on the financial dillicnlty, one of tlie numljer reminding the meeting tliat the city Ijonds liad fallen to 72 cents per dollar, and assert- ing that they would fall to 50 if more bonds were issued. The whole assessment, he said, would barely pay the interest of the city debt. But a quieter spoken and l^etter informed gentleman denied this assertion, and stated witli authority that the annual income of the town was 200,000 dollars, and the interest of the debt only 50,000. Tlie resolutions in favour of the oljject of the meeting were at length passed unanimously. The Education Act of (jreorgia does not contain any compulsory provision, but it constitutes a State Board of Education, consisting of the Governor, the Attorney-General, the .Secretary of State, the Comptroller- General, and a State School Commissioner to be nominated by the Governor and coniirmed by the Senate, on which Board the central authority and responsibility rest; it provides for the organizfition of County Boards ; the division of each county into sub-districts of not fewer than thirty pupils, and the intro- duction of ambulatory scliools into thinly peopled parts ; and it enacts that the funds shall be levied by a tax on the " taxable property " and on "the labour of the qualified voters" of each district. The State Board prescribes the text-books, but it is provided " that the Bible shall not be excluded from the public schools of the State." There are to be separate schools for white and coloured children. The ladies of Georgia affect a Highland style of costume, wear tartan plaids, tartan ribbons, and brightly striped mantles, and, not to llatter them, are as gay and handsome as any other section of the fashionable sisterhood. The gentlemen also seem very fond of grey plaids, which they place in smooth fold round their shoulders, losing one-half the comfoit and all the picturesqueness of that Highland garment. One of these grey plaids costs from 13 to 15 dollars. A lady's shepherd taitan plaid — 72 by 144 — sells in the shops at 8^ dollars. The American manufacturer's price, I believe, is 5*75 dollars, leaving the draper a profit of 50 per cent. One element of the high price of goods in the Southern States is no doubt the ample scale of retail profits. The shopkeeper expects a return of 50 per cent, on the staples of his stock, while on minor and niiscellaneous articles his profit is almost anything he likes. Foreign goods in this region are not abundant. Yet English earthenware and cutlery, and fine cloths of England and France, are sold in Savannah, Alacon, Atlanta, and other towns, and a much larger direct trade with Europe might probably be done, were anybody to take it up, notwith- standing the heavy duties. H 2 1(H) CARTimsnilE. |cn. XV. The Atlantiau who is I'oiul of fu'hl sport, niul clioosos to koop a (h\tj and gun, has abuiulant liborty of pastime. Pavtviilgos, turkeys, and sometiiu(>s ileer, ww, shot iVeely in the wiUls and woods round the town. One gentleman, on Avlioni I eaUed, had just returned {\\m\ a day's hunting, and was abh^ to slunv me his spoik>^, among which was a botth? of home-matle peaeh brandy that had been juvsimteil to him at a larmlumse, antl j)roved a much sounder kind i>t' whisky than three-fourths that issue from the public distilleries of the United States, reaches are super- abundant in G(Hn'gia and all through the South. The people scarcely know what to do with them. They dry them, pickle them, inrserve them, and distil them ; and after all, the hogs, I daresay, eat a great many. There is seem from tlie upper windows of the Kimball House at Atlanta the most striking geological curiosit}' of (»eorgia. This is the Granite JMountain, rising sheer out of the plain to a height of near a thousand feet, ami about seven miles in circum- ference. The primary rocks, though known to occupy a con- siderable area above the lowest fdls of the rivers tlowing to the Athvntic, are but rarely disclosed in the Southern States. An uprising of the Silurian formation appears in some places to have' tilted the coal measures and the carboniferous strata to a considerable elevation, and to have given an anti-clinal deflection to what remains of the same deposits in the demuled valleys. But the primary rock seldom pii>rces the great mass of lime- stones which forms the eonnnon lloor of hill and hollow. The Stone Mountain of Georgia is, therefore, a very singular pheno- menon, and must be deeply interesting to geologists. It is a solid pyramid of grey granite, its massive walls smoothed by the washing rains, the huge boulders resting on its sides no more disturbing its pyramidal outline than if they were so many ]H'l>bles, and the tall forest trees growing at its base looking like shrubbery under its mighty sluulow. The Stone ^[ountain, itself au abnormal development, may be said to mark the entrance from the south to a country of very dillerent physical cha- racteristics from the rest of Georgia, traversed by ranges of mountain, and impregnated with mineral treasures. Gartersville is tifty miles ncn-th of Atlanta. By a convenient arrangement of the American railways a j^assenger on a through ticket can stay at intermediate })laces, and pass on at liis con- venience. I stopped at Cartersville. A brancli railway is being made to Van Wert, twenty-two miles from Cartersville, and is about half opened. At Van Wert extensive slate (piarries have been opened o\\ the face of the hill — a fine dark-blue slate, which has hitherto been hauled in wagi^'ons to the railway at heavy cost, but will by and by. when the means of transport are completed, come into great favour for roofing. The branch cri. IV.] STATIC OF (il'lOROU. 101 lijiG passes tliron;.'}! n wiivy lovely valley, well settled, and yield- ing grain, cotton, and luniljer in altiindance. "J'lie soil all roiinrl Cartersville is a red clayey loam, deej; and fertile, with ahundance of" limestone. The aspect of the country an English or Scotch farmer would at once recognize as that of a fine wheat-gi-owing country, and lic^avy crops of wln-at as well as cotton it does yield. There are numerous lime-kilns about, which ]>roduce the finest while lime, capable of being made an article of extensive cojinnerce. Among the slate quarries, deposits have been dis- covered of a character somewhat betv/eeri sandstone and soap- stone, which are cut out quite soft from the bed, fashioned into bricks, and become very hard on exjjosure to the air. They take a fine, smooth surface, are cream-like in colour, and so far as yet known will prove most durable. The bricks, when dried, are very heavy. Tliis seeins superior material for dressings round doors and windows, and cornicing. Maible quarries are wrought in Pickens County adjoining, and in a marble-yard at Cai-tersville I saw tine marble columns, almost ymi'e white as well as varicgat(id, and pedestals the scaly grain of which revealed a hard but ordinaiy limestone. The marbles of this section are cari'ied chielly to Marietta, a station on the State railway, and a considerable traffic is carried on in them to all the various towns — some being even sent to the North, There is abundance of rock in this district for mill and grinding stones, IJut no coal, so far as I have learned, has yet been discovered, though iron ore has been wrought to a considerable extent, and ]>ig is carried laboriously from the furnaces in waggons to " the State Koad," twelve miles and more. No geological survey has, unfortunately, yet been made of Northern Georgia. The appointment of a qualified State geologist would be a measure of great public utility. The whole of this noiihern section of the State is evi- dently rich in materials of scientific observation and commercial inlferest. The little town of Cartersville, rising up on either side of the railway — on both sides of which I lived long enough to find that there is a lively jealousy betwixt East and West, and the Big and Little-endians of the corporation — presented a quietly busy scene all day long. There was a crowd of waggons in the place, drawn some by oxen and some by mules, cairying their load of cotton or other produce to the depot, and taking up at the stores tlieir necessary supplies from the outside world, I stepped into the upper hall of a town house, which was being built in the front centre of the Big End, and found a bevy of young ladies and gentlemen whirling on "parlour skates" in a style which on ice would have made a great reputation, A young man " from the North " was presiding over a large assort- ment of the " parlour skates " for sale ! The Americans are a 102 CARTERSni.LK. [cii. xv. most inf,'enimis peoiilci in small tilings. Lot aAvant, or semblance nf it want, 1)0 felt Llii'ouj^lioul, tho ciixiiimU'rcnoi! of the Union, and "a y<>iins had a. distinct recollection where it was the previous week ; l»ut the whereabouts ol' tlu! ])ostmastor Tor the day heing undiseoveraJtle, 1 was drawn at len<^ih to the (!ount,y building' as the last intrenchment of ollicial lite, whither a spry, active little man, above middle age, in long light-blue coat and top-boots, driving a covered wfiggoii with two mules, came at the same moment in si-arch of "the Ordinary," a legal fiinetionary, and one of much highei- rank than the postmaster. We were alike nnsueeossl'ul in our ohje(;t — iudeed, there was nobody at all in the county building — and we dropped at once into the fellow-feeling "wondrous kind." lie had sailed i'rom Liverpool thirty years ago, and had now "hold of a watcr-])ower and factory" thirty-live milcis from Cartersville or the railroad, "llovv many hands in the factory?" "Seven." "How long doi\s it take you to go honui ?" "A day and three or four hours." " Then you camp out at night ?" "Of course." This I'jiglish- inan of thirty years' American citizenship, with his " hold on a water-power" thirty-iive miles from any centre of habitation, and no " Ordinary " to be found, sooniod to nie a deeply interest- ing study, and I looked a long time after him as he briskly jogged on with his mules. 1 1 is gi'cat expect atiou was tbat t In* rail- way would soon 1h> extended from IMai'ietta to Lickens county, wh(U'(! his wat(U-power and tho marble ({uarries are. Yet the reins of authority are by no means loosely held in Cartersville. The Mayor had issued an edict in writing that barbers opening their shops on Sunday M'ould he jjunished with the ntujost rigour of law. Tho severity of this ])roclaniation may hardly he ostimatcid unless one rcMuondHU's that few American citizens can really shave their own beards, anil that " tho barber" is as great an insti- tution in this country as he was in Spain four hundred years ago. The observance of the day of rest is marked all through (Jeorgia. One sees many I'uritan-looking countenances; and sturdy yeo- men, with straight hair and earnest aspect, come and go on ambling pallVi'ys and in splashed boots in such a place as (^irters\ille from sunrise to sundown. Tho state of society, the kiiul of trallie, tho country roads, and all the surroundings here, probably dill'er very little from many a rural district of England in the (lays of tho Koumlheads and Cavaliers. CHAPTER XVI. Progress of (Jliattaiioofja. — Ascont of Lookout Moiintait). — fJootrraplucal ami Geolof^ical Foatiuos. — Traces of Uio War.- Tlic Jiolliii;^ Mills.— JJaiiks' Puddling A[ti);iratu8. — ("ost of producing (*oal and Iron Ore. — Visit to Mineral Pro])orti('H. — Agricnltiira,! f|Ualiti('H of the Land. '^''' "' Emigrants ut Chattanooga. Navigation of the Tennessee. Stream of [Cjiattanoooa, Tknn. — Dec. 2—5.] Chattanoo(;a is situated on the extreme verge ol" ,soutli-eiist(!ni Tennes,s(;(3, Ijiit, in ])oiiit of local attributes, i^ more closely allied to deoi'gia and Alabama tlian to the State of which it forms part. It acc^uired world-wide notoriety during the war as the centre of impoi-tant mililaiy m(jv(;ments, and has since been rendering itself famous in a more usc^ful and enduring sense. The |)Oi)ulation, now 8,()()(), has hugely increased (hiring the last two years. Tlu; constructifin of the Alabaiha and ('liattanooga llailroad, the new life given to the Itolling Mills by an enter- prising and successful comjtany, and the inci-eased importance attached to the mineral resources of the district, have all tended to enhance the value of ])i'0])erty and give great briskness to trade; and labour. From a litthi iKist of shanties, Chaltaiiooga is struggling forwai'd rajtidly into str(;ets of brick, with hoUHs, stores, and public l)uildings. The railways of Noi'th and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee have here a common point of connection, and "vid Chattanooga" figures all over the Noith-Eastern States as the index of a gr(;at route for passengers and emigrants to the South and to the vast tracts of 'i'exas and Arkansas west of the Mississip|ji. ('liattanociga is cradled amidst mountains, the gi'(!at Cundttirland chain spr(!ading its spurs into Georgia and Alabama on all sides of it ; and it may be said to sleep and wake to the sound of the waters of the Tennessee, which here yjursues a most serpentine course, and in scfjoping out its bed amidst the sand and limestone I'ock appears at various points to have miss(!d by a hairsbreadth a much shorter cut to the sea. Though built on one of the loops of the river, and environed by rock and hill, Chattanooga has ample space for expansion valley ward. In the immediate vicinity the Lookout range of hills terminates in the bold and striking peak 104 CHATTANOOGA. [ch. x7I. kno^\^l as Lookout Mountain, which, as the country was inviting, I resolved to ascend. Though near mid-winter, the day was bright, sunny, and warm as summer in England. A short canter across the plain brings one to the base of the mountain, striking it about the middle, where a winding road has been cut to the summit. On ascend- ing, the hill appears as if built up of huge boulders bedded in red sandy clay, which, but for the boulders, one imagines would make a good crop-bearing soil. Great blocks of stone lie on the surface, worn by the weather into all shapes and forms. Solid masses, square or oblong, rise out of what seems a deep earth, as if they had a foundation far down, and were either still an integral part of the everlasting hill, or had been built in and carved by the hand of man. Pines, whose roots had struck the rock, and spread in strong ribs along its surface, and wound their tenderest fibres through its crevices, have shared the fate of storm or landslip, which has wrenched great masses of stone from their foundations, and placed them topsy-turvy on the mountain-side. The abundance of soil gives root all way up to a great variety of trees and shrubs. AYooden shanties peep out from the trees like nests along the mountain-side, and the con- stant tinkle of the cow-bell gives notice that many poor families nourish themselves in this wilderness. The mountain is pretty steep from its base, .but near the summit the sandstone rises up in a massive perpendicular wall, somewhat like the top ridge of the Salisbury Crags at Edinl)ui'gh, but three or four times as high, reckoning from the point where it rests visibly above the " millstone grit," limestone, and Silurian rocks which probably form the nether foundations of the mountain. This crest of free- stone, with its fringe of pines and other trees atop, when looked at from a distance, while the sun is wearing down to the west, bristles up and spreads over the horizon like the comb of a cock. The road at length approaches the Sunnnit House, frequented by New Orleans and other Southern people in summer, and by invalids from the Far West in winter. The glass in the house stood at 60 degrees between 11 and 12 o'clock. In summer the heat is seldom more than 85 degrees. Pushing forward, over the finest white sand, and through older and more umbrageous timber than appeared on the mountain-side, to the very edge of the cliffs in which the mountain abruptly terminates at a height of 1,800 feet, and at the base of which the Tennessee is forced by the massive resistance to make one of its sudden but graceful windings, scenes of surpassing loveliness burst on the view. The houses of Chattanooga seem sprinkled about like snuff-boxes on the plain. The majestic river, sweeping out from well-threaded mazes to the north. Hows in a smooth and gentle current west- ward, as if in mere kindness to Chattanooga, which otherwise it en. XTi.] STATE OF GEORGIA. 106 might overflow, and, passing behind a great ridge in that direc- tion, emerges again in a broad and placid south-eastern curve round another side of the town, till, meeting this formidable wall of rock, it bends once more and flows in a western course past the base of the cliffs, and is finally lost to view amidst wooded mountains and gorges, almost as far north as the point at which it first comes into sight. The Tennessee, in describing this series of syplion-like movements, albeit rockbound, seems never to lose its sovereignty of action, or to wander anywhere save according to its own sweet will. The process of denudation by the deluge of waters that must have rolled over these parts, splitting broad mountains in two, and washing down their dis- integrated materials into a slowly and far-receding ocean, leaving only this perennial watercourse, amid deposits of " drift," and sand and clay, and minerals, and mountain sections thickly powdered with its alluvium, as its final representative in all this present equilibrium of land and water, is written on valley and mountain-top in characters so plain that "he who runs may read." Broad vales stretch away southward on either side of the mountain. Sandy ])ine-covered hills, which look formidable on the plain, appear like little mounds over which the plough might pass. Towards the east, tier after tier of woody heights lift the eye step by step to the towering Cumberlands on the verge of the horizon. Southward the view is bounded by the hills of Georgia, and westward towards Alabama by a series of mountain ranges, thickly wooded, and bearing on their crown the same perpendicular wall of rock and comb of trees as the Lookout range. The outfliers, the tasselled rocky standards, of half a dozen great States, may be seen from Lookout Mountain. And here, on the topmost cliffs, the sandstone lies in great slabs, horizontal, vertical, and angular, forming pulpits and streets of rock ; and topes of trees umbrella-like have grown up to give shade and shelter; — the scene erewhile of terrible commotions of Nature, followed by long ages of rest, and growth, and the silent spring and fall of vegetation. The plateau of the mountain is of considerable breadth, though it is evident, from the depth of the adjoining valleys, that the denudation has been here extremely powerful, and has cut more deeply than on many of the other ranges. The only traces of the war visible are the sites of two or three batteries on the edge of the cliffs, and an earthwork in the centre of the plateau. Seven or eight thousand Confederates are said to have occupied this natuj'al and impregnable fortress, but were surprised one morning by the Federals under Eosencranz, who stole in the night along the western base of the mountain, and, passing under the peak to the slopes on tlie eastern side, gained easy possession. Somewhile previous the Federals had struck the 106 CHATTANOOGA. [en. xvi. railway at Bridport, and the defence at Lookout had lost its importance. The evacuation of Chattanooga by the Confede- rates was followed by the great battles on Missionary Kidge, where the Federals encountered severe resistance, and Rosen- cranz lost his command. Tlie llolling JNIills at Cliattanooga, which liad done good service to the Confederates during the war, fell into the hands of the Federal Government, and have now entered on a new and pro- mising career under an energetic and capable private company. General Wilder, whose campaigns had revealed to him the mineral resources of this section of country, is the active spirit of this enterprise. He has joined with lum a partnership of capitalists, and is displaying a natural sagacity and aptitude in mining coal and iron, as well as in the mechanical operations of the lioUing Mills, that are likely to be attended with the most successful results. Tlie company bought the old mill and 145 acres of land from the Government for 225,000 dollars, and are selling oif the land in buikling lots at prices which will leave the actual cost of tlie mill and 30 acres of ground not more than 12,000 dollars. They have built a new mill in line with the old one, and are fitting up the necessary power and machinery, including twelve of l)anks' patent puddling apparatus — a new invention, of which confident hopes are entertained. This is the first mill in which it is to be put to actual working test, and if it prove successful the saving will be about nine dollars per ton. The process of puddling is effected by steam-power turning a double circular cliaraber, in one section of which is the furnace, and in the other the bloom. One puddler will be able to attend two of these machines. A charge of from GOO lbs. to 800 lbs. of pig is put in, the chamber revolves, and the bloom, when perfect, is carried direct to the squeezer, thence to a furnace, and finally to the rollers.^ It is computed that, when all the new appliances are in operation, the mills will be able to make 150 tons of rails a day. The company mine their own coal and iron ore on a pro- perty fifteen miles long farther up the Temiessee, on which they bring down the pig and coal in small steamboats, drawing from two to three feet of water, to the Eolling Mills. There is a fur- 1 While tliese sheets have been passing through the press, Mr. Banks has appeared at the autumn meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute at Dudley (Aug. 30), and subniitte