forest, as is the case in all this country. There is very little rise after leaving Atlanta, the highest point is not more than .1,200 feet above the sea. This railway line is very largely advertised as the Great Kenesaw Route,' which takes its name from the Kenesaw Mountain; and on the pictorial advertisements the Kenesaw Mountain is very magnificent indeed; but when I came to see the reality it turned out to be a very moderate hill-perhaps 500 feet above the surrounding country. We crossed several rivers, which now run towards Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico. As we got on, the level of the country became lower, and several of these rivers are navigable, especially for a considerable distance upwards. It is also hoped to make them navigable downwards, so that we are in a much less sloping country than that which drains towards the Atlantic, and there is complaint of want of water-power for saw-mills and other machinery. The culti vation is various; there is a good deal of cotton, but also a good deal of corn and wheat. They say anything will grow here, but no one thing grows so well as it does somewhere else. I went to pay a visit at a farm of Colonel P―'s, near Calhoun, now occupied by his son, Mr. R. P—; and Í was very hospitably entertained by young Mr. P and his wife, a pleasant young lady from Philadelphia. Mr. P himself was at school in England, and they both seem very nice and refined people. As usual, they live in a very simple way, and have not many servants. American ladies, who live in the country, manage to do a great deal themselves without detracting from their dress and demeanour. There is a stock farm here, of which old Colonel P is very proud. There was a Jersey bull, said to be splendid, some rather thin Jersey cows, a good many Merino sheep, and a large flock of Angora goats. They grow tolerable turnips, and Mr. P has a successful field of lucerne. There is a great deal of game about here. I saw many of the small American partridges, sometimes called quails. They sit capitally to dogs, rise in regular coveys like partridges, but fly more like quails. There are also some rabbits about, which looked not unlike English rabbits, running with cocked tails, showing the white. There are many wild turkeys in this country; they are, however, very shy birds, keep in the woods, and are seldom Tame turkeys are very abundant in these Southern States, and poultry in general is abundant and good. Much seen. of it is kept by small farmers, and is a great assistance to them. I drove out a good way into the country, over varied sort of ground-some fertile bottoms, and a good deal of higher land. The lower and richer land is principally given to cereals. It does not do well for cotton. The cotton-plant grows large and strong, but is not productive there; whereas in the higher red lands the plant is small, but is often covered with cotton from top to bottom. The lower lands generally belong to the large proprietors. Wherever there are large proprietors there were slaves, and there are now black labourers. Most of the work in the upper country is done by the whites themselves. I saw some good specimens of people of this class. Most of them own their own land, but some rent, and some go as labourers, getting $8 or $10 a month and rations. I liked the look of these people. They are decidedly fair with no tinge of swarthiness. Many of them have Scotch names-Campbell, McIntyre, Macinroy, and so on; but they did not know their origin. They came up from the Carolinas and Virginia, and did not emigrate direct to this part of the country. Most of them live in miserable houses, but some of the houses are quite good. Even some considerable proprietors live in poor log-houses. It is said that some of these people hold on to too much land when they had better sell; and if a purchaser comes they ask too much. Some of the smaller tenants live in places unfit for an Irishman, with no windows, and showing much daylight between the logs. I never saw such poor places, except Irish turf huts. I asked one man about it. Yes,' he said, laughing; you cannot call it a house, but as we have so much air inside we do not catch cold when we go out.' This man was a poor labourer, and he had half-a-dozen nice-looking children in his wretched one-roomed hut. The children, however, looked very well. These people seemed altogether a fair-spoken and quite laborious population. From the higher parts of the ground that I visited, I saw a high range of hills standing out very distinct to the northeast. It seems as if the main Alleghanies come to a sudden end near this. We met many farmers with bullock-waggons coming down from the upper country. They do not grow cotton there, and scarcely ever had any negroes. They grow better corn and wheat than in the lower land, and much better apples; and would get on well enough if it were not for the United States whisky-blockade, of which they much complain, as interfering with their industry in that article. In the lower grounds I came upon a few negro farmers, but they were only renters; none of them owned land. One man had got some uncleared woodland on a three years' lease, the arrangement being that he should pay nothing for that time, but after that should pay a rent. There is much good timber in all this country. It is a limestone country about here, but the hills above are sandstone. Mr. P thinks that the small farmers make a living without working so hard for it as the English labourer. Even during the civil war, though cut off from all external commerce, they got on pretty well, raising their own necessaries, and being independent of all outside. They themselves admit that the smaller farmers still get on well enough, so far as living is concerned. They raise enough for themselves, and their women weave their clothes; they have few wants beyond these. People here complain that the pretended free-schools are a farce. They are very poor schools, and not enough of them. In any case, the parents are obliged to pay at least half of the cost. I asked if the preachers came expensive, and was told that some take a salary, some do not. One Baptist minister. runs a fine farm and preaches for nothing. 's After completing a very pleasant visit to Mr. Pfarm, I started in the morning to go on to Dalton, in the northwest part of Georgia, towards Tennessee, where the watershed changes towards the Mississippi. I saw much timbertrade going on upon the rivers and the railways. There were some very fine walnut logs, much white oak, and also pine and other wood. It is feared that the good timber near the railway will soon be exhausted, but there is plenty of it a little farther off. There are no signs of anything like a mountain pass; the road runs through an easy country. There is, in fact, a great gap between the hills. At Dalton I had a beautiful day, and utilised it by taking a long walk into the country, where I saw much of the southern white people, visiting a good many of their farms. I also came across some blacks. The whites seemed to be a pleasant-looking people, though they had still the appearance of being poor. Most of them own land, but some rent, and some go out as labourers. A few of them hire one or two blacks as labourers. They say the blacks are not so good workers as the whites, and they will only take them at cheaper rates. These blacks work very well when they are sharply looked after, but they will waste time whenever they get the chance. I looked over the log-cabin of a small white farmer, and it was about the lowest thing of the kind I have seen. On account of the want of water-power and the scarcity of saw-mills, most of the cabins here are built of very rough logs, and very imperfectly boarded within. This one had no window, but very many casual openings in the wall, and even in the roof. It consisted of one room, with a light shed attached to it behind, which was used for cooking, etc. The farmer was away, but I found his wife, a very nice-locking young woman, with a baby and a boy of twelve, an orphan whom they seem to have adopted. He could read print, he said, but not write. The woman did not seem to realise that the house was particularly bad. Her husband is only a renter, but he built this hut himself two years ago. She had a loom, and was weaving. She says she makes her husband's and her own every-day clothes, but they have to buy Sunday clothes and some other things. There was also a spinning-wheel, as is generally the case here. She says she spins some thread when it is wanted, but they buy most of the thread. I was inclined to pity her primitive innocence and ignorance, and tried to draw her out by asking her questions on subjects in respect to which I was not very much at home. At last she burst out with a smile, 'Whoy, it seems that you do'ant know nothink.' I felt that she had the best of it on her own subjects. Within reach of the railway there are a good many blacks, but I understand that the few there were in the higher parts of the country have left it. I talked to an old black man who occupied one of a cluster of very poor huts. He said that his former mistress had given some of her exslaves five acres each of woodland, to clear and hold rent-free for life. It certainly seems that, in these older States at any rate, the relations between the former masters and the blacks are often not unkindly, and the masters sometimes do things of this kind. My old friend says he got on well enough when he could work, but now he is past work, and seems rather doubtful of the advantages of freedom. However, he and the others seem to form a sort of little community in the woods. The able-bodied men cultivate, the women raise chickens and take in washing; and one way and another they manage to get along. On the road I met a very intelligent and plucky-looking black bringing in his produce to market in his waggon-principally peas. His family were with him. He has two mules, and seems well-to-do. He rents land on a four years' clearing lease, and when that is up he hopes to buy land for himself. 'Don't you think that is best? he says. These blacks seem to talk and put questions in a more simple way than the whites. This man says he found the main fences, but himself put up his house and the cross fences. He will get no compensation for his improvements when he goes; he must leave all those behind. is, perhaps, the reason why the huts are so bad. are growing up and marrying, and have farms of their own. He himself has re-inarried with a widow with four children. As he pleasantly remarks, his sons are going off into the world, and he must have some one to work for. This His sons In the afternoon I went up a hill to see the country. There is evidently a complete break in the hills here. A flat tract stretches over into the valley of the Tennessee River. The Alleghanies proper terminate to the east, but a fresh set of hills, not so high, commence again on the west, and one of them is 'look-out mountain' over Chattanooga, where the famous battle was fought. The hilly ridge, I understand, runs westward, through Northern Alabama. At Dalton I saw a party of very tidy, well-set-up-looking blacks playing base-ball, in a very vigorous way, with one or two whites mixed with them. The bowler, at any rate, was, to all appearance, a white man, as were several of those sitting and looking on. Altogether at this place I thought I saw more of fraternisation between blacks and whites than in most places. Chattanooga is not far off in Tennessee. I got a Chattanooga paper, and have been reading it with reference to Tennessee politics. It seems that in Chattanooga the Republicans. have a majority, but the town politics appear more to depend upon local and personal questions. At Memphis it seems that an Independent was elected district attorney. He has appointed a coloured man as his deputy. This has created a great sensation, and the orthodox Democrats point to it as showing that the Independents are nothing but traitors in dis |