it to be-that of a learned and accurate naturalist and philosopher. The Meteorological Reports of Dr. Lebby are quite valuable in a much neglected department of observation; and the account which Mr. T. W. Glover gives of the indigo culture and mode of preparation among us, is no less interesting as a history than instructive as a lesson. Acknowledgments are due also to Professor Shepard, for his analyses of marls from the vicinity of Charleston; and to Dr. J. L. Smith, (now bestowing some of the lights of chemical science on the empire of the Sultan,) for a like analysis of the soils of the cotton-growing regions. These are highly useful experiments, to the scientific agriculturist, and are properly embodied in the volume of Mr. Tuomey. We commend this report, without reserve, to our readers, as an addition not less valuable to science than to our domestic history. Every State should be in possession of a knowledge of its own facts and resources. This volume supplies a large desideratum in ours, besides affording new motives to fresh studies in a department of science which has been quite too much disregarded among

us.

Mr. Tuomey has toiled with equal modesty and industry; and so judiciously as to leave no labor without its fruits. He merits all our thanks for the knowledge which he has brought to bear upon the resources of our people, and the honorable contribution which he has made to the publications of our State. R. W. G.

Columbia, S. C.

ART. IX.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ALABAMA. Address of a Committee of Citizens of Mobile, Alabama, upon the subject of Banking Institutions. April, 1849.

Letter of Mr. Pratt, of Autauga, upon Currency. April, 1849.

Speech of Mr. Porter, in the Legislature of Alabama, on the Tennessee and Coosa Railway. 1848.

THE State of Alabama was admitted into the Union in the year 1819. It was a portion of the country known as

the Mississippi Territory, and, from extreme fertility of soil, excited at an early period the attention of emigrants. Alabama occupies, at this moment, a position strikingly different from that held by her during the first twenty years of her existence as a member of the confederacy. She has undergone, within that period, two transitions. She is now passing through a third. The first was from the utmost degree of assumed prosperity to the most pressing point of actual adversity. The last, it is to be hoped, may settle the elements of her existence and produce a state of calm and dignified independence. In other words, we wish to see her condition the very opposite to that of her imagined wealth in 1836. We desire that her people should learn that the welfare of a State does not consist in the abundance of her products merely, but in her indepencence of the products and manufactures of other communities-that, to be prosperous, she must not only compel the soil to do its duty, according to its various and full susceptibilities, but, as far as this is possible, she should work up the raw material of her production to the full extent of her capacity for manufactures.

If we open the map of Alabama we shall be struck with the fact that, with a very small portion of seaboard, she possesses an extraordinary number of water courses. Two very large and deep streams, the Alabama and Tombeckbee, empty into Mobile Bay--the former rising beyond the extreme north-eastern corner of the State; the latter entering it just below its north-western junction with Mississippi. Flowing into these main trunks, are innumerable lesser streams, some quite capable of navigation, all of them contributing to the irrigation and fertility of the lands through which they pass.

The Tombeckbee is navigable, during a large portion of the year, beyond the town of Columbus, Mississippi, which lies some distance to the west of the north portion of the State of Alabama. At Demopolis, a town in Marengo county, between the thirty-second and thirty-third degree. of latitude, the main stream takes an abrupt origin from two smaller rivers,-one, the smaller Tombeck bee, arising in the country west of the north-western limits of Alabama; the other the Black Warrior, which springs up in the valley south of the bend of the Tennessee, at Gunter's landing. This last brauch is navigable as far as the town

of Tuscaloosa for steamboats, and, when the falls are crossed, for flat boats to a much higher point into the interior. At Fort Stoddard, fifty miles from Mobile, the Alabama joins the Tombeckbee. It flows, from its highest navigable point for steamboats, Wetumpka, in a western and southern direction, and forms the boldest and most generally navigable stream in the State. At Wetumpka lie the lower obstructions, known as the lower falls. These, at low water, impede the passage of flat boats, which, at other times, safely traverse the stream as far as Rome, in Georgia, some one hundred and fifty miles from Wetumpka. The river between the latter and former is called the Coosa, but early records inform us that this name, a corruption of Cooza, distinguished the entire stream, from the connection of the Etowah and Oostanaula, which make it, to Mobile; and was the name of a powerful tribe of Indians, which inhabited the strip of country watered by this extensive river. Writers who have attempted, from a wish to indulge antiquarian curiosity, rather than any interest in the soil of Alabama, to trace the footsteps of De Soto, through this region, have followed him, as they have supposed, along this valley to the country of the Tuskaloosians, on the Alabama river. A careful examination of the geography of the State, and of the period of his journey, and a comparison of descriptions of his route with antiquities lately exhibited, will show that De Soto travelled much farther west than he is thought to have gone, and that the Tuscaloosians, described by his accompanying historian, held dominion over that very section of country now traversed by the Black Warrior, which has handed down, in the Indian name, Tasga-loosa, the title of the chief of this tribe. In De Kalb, Cherokee, Benton, and as far west as Tuscaloosa, there exist many monuments of his march; and the great object of it, the pursuit of the precious metals-excavations in the sides of mountains, remains of furnaces, silver crosses, shields, such as were used by the Spanish soldiery; and, what is the more remarkable, fortifications of curious and wonderfully impregnable construction. In De Kalb county, on Little river, where the soil and rocky formation supposed to promise most mineral wealth, is found fully displayed, there yet remains to attest this assertion a remarkably ingenious example of military architecture. From the stream, traversing a deep ravine,

almost inaccessible by the perpendicular rocky sides which bound it, rises a solid mass of rock to an immense height, over which the river falls. Near the top of this mass is to be found a cave of vast dimensions. At the entrance of it stands a pillar, around which nature or art has formed a way into and from the cave, capable of admitting one person at a time. A slight thrust would precipitate a man from this terrace into the awful abyss below, and thus a few men within the cave might withstand and destroy thousands. From the cave, inaccessible to any but those inhabiting it, have been constructed steps in the rock, leading to the water below-and here, doubtless, while searching for the object of their toils, gold and silver, De Soto and his followers secured themselves from the hostile Indians who lived in these regions. The nature of the work, the Spanish memorials found in adjacent neighborhoods, all forbid the idea that the labor of Indians produced this fortification. For that matter there can be little doubt that the red men of America urge no claim to the antiquities of the country. We must look beyond them.

Surface, and character of its productions naturally divide Alabama into three parts. From Mobile to Greene county the country is comparatively flat, and in Wilcox, Perry, Greene, Dallas, Lowndes, Sumter, Marengo, Montgomery, Chambers and Russell, it is distinguished for soils of extraordinary richness. North of these, rising on the eastern limits of Perry, a range of hills extends in an easterly direction to the Georgia line, gradually becoming bolder until they form the Talladega mountains. Between these and another range of mountain tracts presently to be noticed, lies a valley stretching from Pickens county on the west, to Cherokee on the east, and embracing Tuscaloosa, Fayette, Walker, Marion, Jefferson, Shelby, Bibb and St. Clair. Bolder mountain ridges rise on the borders of Marion, and in the vales of the Black Warrior; and, traversing the country by a north-eastern route, form the parallel eminences known as the Raccoon and Lookout mountains, which, gradually becoming more lofty, pierce the atmosphere hanging over the regions of Georgia and Tennessee. These ranges separate Middle Alabama from the Tennessee valley, and within this section are the counties of Limestone, Lawrence, Franklin, Madison, Jackson, Marshall, Lauderdale and Morgan. As one rises to the highest VOL. XVI.-No. 31.

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point of this dividing range the valley of the Tennessee appears spread out before him. It was the earliest settled for farming purposes in the State, and is covered with a population from Tennessee. In the early period of its culture it was one of the most extensive cotton regions of the south-west; but since the forests have been cleared and better opinions have prevailed, it is more devoted to the production of grain and to the raising of stock. Large forests of noble trees, exciting painful regrets at their destruction, once held the place of fields, which now, for miles, lie open at the feet of the beholder. Early settlers delight to describe the beautiful scenes which this region displayed. On one hand might be seen vast glades, a few noble oaks, here and there, breaking the monotony with an extensive carpet of luxuriant grasses, bending in various shades to the gentle winds. On the other, long avenues of lofty trees of mingled foliage, no entangled underwood to obstruct the view, within whose shade herds of deer gambolled in security. But now a less romantic but more useful prospect salutes the eye: cultivated fields, each with its elegant, though not luxurious, homestead, grace the valley. Nestling at the foot of the mountains, they seem like gardens, in which art and nature contend for mastery. The homes of the Tennessee valley farmers are abodes of comfort and plenty. Without the extremes of refinement, they are the habitations of open, frank hospitality. The men are eager to greet you, with an off-hand display of welcome, which, if rough, is at the same time sincere; and one cannot enter, without feeling that the matron has not lost the hereditary faculty of the Tennessee housewife, in the ease and abundance with which she ministers to your comfort. Enormously fat hogs, horses and cattle of noble brood, overflowing barns and rich dairies, attest the better policy which has changed the culture of the country,-from that which exhausted the soil, to that which fertilizes it and makes its abodes permanent.

The existence of the mountain range of which we have written, has interfered with the intercourse of the people of this valley with those of South and Middle Alabama; and we are sorry to add, that, in consequence, a spirit of conflict has occasionally been exhibited, not only unworthy of members of the same society, but interfering greatly with their common interests. Had wise counsels prevailed in