them narrow-gauge lines and to enable counties and corporations to subscribe to such railways. There is a curious game law to prohibit the exportation of partridges or quails, dead or alive, from counties near railways, on the ground that they are useful for the destruction of insects. There is very much game in this part of the country; large bags of partridges are got. Some of the lands are posted,' that is preserved; others are practically free to sportsmen. There is another Act, supplementary to a former one, for the protection of deer in certain localities.

I have talked about this legislation with a lawyer who seems to be of the Conservative persuasion. He says that there is a great deal too much legislation-that localities and individuals get too much done in this way, and that there is too much meddling. Acts of this kind are settled out of the Legislature by bargaining and give and take, and the more general Acts are settled by party caucus before being brought into the Legislature. After they are brought in all Bills are referred to committees, and after being dealt with by them are generally carried in the Assembly without much debate. The clôture, or as they call it, the previous question,' is much used. The limitation of the session to sixty days is a recent change-it used to be longer. The legislation is, he says, very loose. The Revised Code was very loosely passed, and both that and many of the subsequent Acts give much trouble to the lawyers. He seems rather a pessimist upon the subject. I have not been able quite to understand the difference between the public and private Acts, except that the latter are of a minor character, e.g., to incorporate small towns and villages and Masonic Lodges and other institutions. One is to establish a Camping Ground' as a corporation; apparently these camping grounds are kept for religious meetings. A good many of these Acts are about toll and ferry dues.

I spent the Sunday here. In the morning I went to a black church, but was not very fortunate, as there had been some division among the congregation, and the place was thinly attended. In the evening I found a better congregation at another church. The preacher was very loud, emphatic, and earnest, but there was not very much cohesion in what he said; the singing was good. I went out with Mr. B to see a large vineyard that he has started. He makes

very fair wine, but only the native American vines succeedthe French vines have quite failed-blight greatly affects them and other fruit trees. This does not seem to be much of a fruit country. Talking about cotton, I am told that it is a very hardy plant, and does not suffer from occasional droughts. They say that not only has the cultivation of cotton in these parts increased in area, but that it is also much better cultivated than it was before the war. They now get here crops which before the war were only got in the Mississippi Valley. In the case of rented farms it is a matter of bargain who is to supply the manure. There are no leases and no tenant-rights-but unfortunately the manures of commerce do not last much more than one year. says the black people are very good and moderate in their way of living. They do not eat too much meat—more affect a vegetable diet, and are healthy in consequence; but they are very careless in cases of sickness, and wanting in kindness to one another when they are ill. In the Municipality of Raleigh there are eleven whites and six blacks. The black councillors do very well, says Mr. B—. He himself is in the Council, and having had occasion to differ from some of his colleagues had the support of the blacks.

Mr. B

I am surprised to see how little excitement there is in regard to the contested election which is to take place the day after to-morrow. There are no placards, and few signs of a struggle going on.

Next day I started for Salisbury, a place in this State considerably to the west. The country is still undulating, with a mixture of wood and cultivation. We came to the district where tobacco is largely grown, and stopped some time at Durhams, the centre of the tobacco manufacture. I had an opportunity of going over one of the factories-in fact, one of the largest manufactories of smoking tobacco in the United States. They also manufacture what is called snuff, but it is not really taken as snuff; it is chewed. They tell me that a fine quality of this snuff is very much used by American ladies, who put it in their mouths on the pretext of its being good for the teeth, but they really chew it, and so consume large quantities. I never could get anyone to admit this practice, but so said the manufacturers. Here also almost all the work is done by blacks, but certain departmentsnamely, the weighing and finishing off the packages—are ex

clusively in the hands of white men. Employers never can trust the blacks with anything which requires careful attention and accuracy.

Travelling along I noticed both black and white men in the fields and cottages, but apparently the blacks are in the majority. They seemed to be the main labouring population. The country seems very raviney, and if the land is not cared for it is apt to run out into ravines, as frequently happens in the hands of careless tenants. I gather that it frequently happens that when land has been over-cropped it is abandoned to wood for a time-in all this country wherever it is let alone wood springs up.

I stopped at the Haw River to see the cotton mills there. They carry out the whole process of manufacture, from cleaning the cotton as it comes loose from the fields to the manufacture of the cloth and the dyeing of it, in the same not very large establishment. The mills are worked by water power, as is always the case in this part of the country. All the Atlantic States have the advantage of an unlimited water power, the country sloping from the Alleghanies to the sea with many running streams, and being in this respect a great contrast to most of the country west of the Alleghanies. In the mills all the labour is white-there are no blacks employed; they are said not to be sufficiently careful. At any rate it is not the habit to employ them. Colonel H, the manager of the mill which I visited, first said that the labour was excellent, but coming to details he found a good many faults with his people, and said that he had just turned off several families for irregular attendance by way of example. I was surprised to hear that the working hours are twelve hours a day. That system is fully enforced. The people work from seven in the morning to half-past seven in the evening, with only half-an-hour for dinner. This really seems too much, and I gather that it is very doubtful whether more is done in twelve hours than by those who work only ten hours. This Southern master seemed to me to be more severe with his work people than an English master could be. Perhaps he is too much of a military man. The women earn about fifty cents a day, the men from seventy-five cents to a dollar. The Southern mills seem to have taken, in relation to those of the North, much the same position which the Indian mills do to those of Lancashire. They manufacture

only the coarser qualities of goods, leaving the finer qualities to the Northern mills. They claim that they have a better climate in the South, with less extremes of heat and cold, fewer short days, and less need of fuel and lights; and they have great advantage, they say, not only in the saving in the carriage of cotton, but also in that they are saved the serious expense of packing it. Their labour, too, is cheaper than that in the North.

Here I went out to see the farm of Mr. B, a New Jersey man, who has lately established a farm of six hundred acres, principally with the object of breeding horses. The road, as usual, I find detestable, but Mr. B- says the New Jersey roads are good-they have a good gravel soil there. Pasture and cattle-breeding have been somewhat neglected in these Southern States, and he hopes to show them the way to improve. He has a very high opinion of the black peoplelikes them as labourers, and thinks they only need to be treated fairly and civilly to get good work out of them; in fact, they work as well as white men, and better and the only complaints against them come from those who do not treat them fairly nor pay them regularly. He, too, says that there is great irregularity in the payment of wages. His only doubt is about the rising generation. He thinks the old ex-slaves who were accustomed to work do very well, but the children are not sufficiently under the control of their parents, and are growing up with an indisposition to work. He is strong on the excellence of the climate here about 800 feet above the sea. It is never so hot in summer, he says, as in the Northern Atlantic States. The thermometer does not usually rise above 80 degrees, and the winters are mild and good. There seems to be no doubt that there is a great change in the winter climate as one passes South through Virginia into the Carolinas and Georgia.

I had met in the train an old Scotchman, Mr. M, who has been upwards of forty years settled in this State. He is a builder by trade, and has done much work of that kind, but has now acquired land and settled down. He took me to dine with a friend, Mr. H, who keeps a store at Haw River, and who is married to a New England wife. This lady gave us a very nicely-cooked meal, very neatly served. Throughout the States it does seem that the New England people are in many respects superior. Mr. M-very kindly insisted on

taking me to his house at Salisbury, where I was most comfortably accommodated. In the morning we walked about the town, which seemed a nice rural place. Mr. M's wife is also a New Englander, but they are all now thoroughly Southern in feeling, both as to the war and as to the question of slavery. According to Mr. M- the Northerners were the first slave-holders, and when they found that slaves were not a profitable property in the North they sold them South, and went in for abolition. In the war the North Carolinian people did not go heartily with the South till their feelings got embittered by the great destruction of property and other illusages to which they were subjected by the Northern armies. A sister of his own was burnt out by the Federal soldiers and died from exposure. He and his son-in-law, who is also a contractor for public works, told me a good deal about the blacks, whom they have much employed. They decidedly like them as labourers. In the North the white men get higher wages and do more work. There they will not allow the competition of the negro; especially the foreigners-Irishmen being most prominent-will not; but the Southern climate is too hot for the Irish-they do not care to come South; while the Southern whites not being anxious to work as hired labourers, do not object to the negroes performing that function. Thus the blacks are not bull-dosed on labour questions, and altogether get on very well. Wages in the South are certainly a good deal lower than in the North, and the negroes can live on much cheaper and poorer food than the Northern whites. Most of the Southern whites have land more or less, and many of them employ, or hope to employ, negroes. They are always glad to hire them when they can afford to do so. The better and more moderate of the Southern whites certainly wish to conciliate and utilise the negroes.

Mr. M, while speaking so well of the negroes in other respects, dwelt very much on that which I had before heard, their want of family affection and kindness to one another in sickness. He tells the story of a son whom he nursed through small-pox, and who was then set to nurse his own father who had taken the disease, but deserted the father and left him to die. There seems to be a general concurrence of assertion, that in slave times it was necessary for the white masters and mistresses to see that the black children were looked after and that the sick were nursed. Now these things are much neglected.