visited by throngs of citizens, descending the steps, dipping up the water, or catching it as it gushes from the spout, and fill ing their pails and casks, forms an interesting feature of the place.

In the northern part of Alabama there are beautiful and fertile valleys adapted to the culture of both cotton and grain. On the other hand, there are hills unfit for cultivation. Between these two extremes there are upland tracts of moderate fertility, capable of producing a third or a quarter of a bale to the acre. This is the region of small farms and few negroes.

The climate throughout the elevated portions of the State is healthy and delightful. On the low river bottoms there is much suffering from fevers and mosquitoes.

The common-school system of Alabama is very imperfect. The wealthy planters send their children to private schools, and object to taxation for the education of the children of the poor. The poor, on the other hand, take no interest in schools, to which they will not send their children as long as money is to be paid for tuition, or as long as there is cotton to pick and wood to cut at home. The isolation of the inhabitants on plantations, or in widely scattered log-cabins, and the presence of an uneducated race forming nearly one half the population, have been great obstacles in the way of popular education.

Alabama has a common-school fund, derived principally from lands, comprising the sixteenth section in each township, given for educational purposes by the United States. This fund has never been consolidated, but each township enjoys the income, by sale or rent, of its own allotted portion. The system works badly. The sixteenth section is valueless in many of the townships where both the land and the inhabitants are poor, and where there is consequently most need of educational assistance; while in townships occupied by planters who have grown rich on the richness of the soil, and who need no such assistance, it has generally proved very valuable. Mr. Taylor, the State Superintendent of Schools, told me that in one of these wealthier townships, in Montgomery County, there was for some years but a single child to whose education

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the sixteenth-section fund could be properly applied. She was a girl; and the independent planters performed their duty faithfully in her case. They sent her to a boarding-school, where she received a fashionable education; and, when she came to marry, furnished her wedding-outfit, and presented her with a piano.

Alabama is comparatively a new State. Admitted into the Union in 1819, her rise in importance has kept pace steadily with the progress of modern cotton cultivation. It sounds strange to hear planters still young refer to their experiences in the early days of cotton in regions which are now celebrated for its production. "I came to Montgomery County in 1834," said one. "I raised my first cotton crop in 1836. I had nine negroes, and I made a bale to the hand. They did n't know how to pick it. So I hired thirty Indian handsome young creatures as ever you saw. Cotton was then eighteen cents a pound. The Indian war disturbed us some; but I and a dozen more settlers went out and killed more Indians than all Scott's army. I have now two large plantations; this year I work a hundred and ten hands, and fiftyfive mules and horses, on thirteen hundred acres of cotton and five hundred of corn; and I intend to make more money than ever before."

girls to pick, -as

The principal railroads of the State were all in running condition; although the rolling stock was generally shabby and scarce. The Montgomery and West Point Road, which Wilson's raiders damaged to the amount of several millions, had been temporarily repaired. Depots were never plenty in the South, and where our forces had passed, not one was left; --a great inconvenience, especially to single gentlemen, going to take the train at two or three o'clock in the morning, finding the cars locked and guarded until the ladies should all be seated, and compelled to wait perhaps an hour, in the cold, for them to be opened.

CHAPTER LXIII.

IN AND ABOUT ATLANTA.

THE railroad runs eastward from Montgomery, forks at Opelika, and enters Georgia by two divergent routes, — the south branch crossing the Chattahoochee at Columbus, and the north branch at West Point.

Wilson, the Raider, paid his respects to both these roads. The main body of his troops proceeded to Columbus, (one of the principal towns of Georgia,) which they carried by assault, with a loss of but thirty men, capturing fifteen hundred prisoners, twenty-four pieces of artillery, and immense military stores. At the same time Lagrange's Brigade took West Point. These were the closing battles of the great war of the rebellion. Pushing on towards Macon, Wilson's advance was met, not by bloody opposition, but by a flag of truce announcing the surrender of Lee and the armistice between Sherman and Johnston.

Concerning our loss at West Point I was not able to obtain very exact information. A citizen, who claimed to have been in the fight, said to me, "We had seven men killed, and we just slaughtered over three hundred Yankees." A negro said: "I saw five dead Yankees, and if there was any more nobody knows what was done with 'em." A returned Confederate soldier, who regarded with great contempt the little affair the citizens bragged so much about, said it was no fight at all; the militia gave up the fort almost without a struggle; and there were not over a dozen men killed on both sides. The fort was situated on a high hill; and one old man, who was in it, told me they could not hold it because they could n't use the guns effectively, they "could n't elevate 'em down enough."

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The Yankees had the credit of behaving very well at West Point. "They were going to burn the railroad depot, full of rolling stock; but a lady told 'em that would set her house, so they just run the cars off down the track, over a hundred of 'em, and fired 'em there," -the black ruins remaining to

attest the fact.

Leaving West Point at noon I reached Atlanta at seven o'clock in the evening. It was a foggy night; the streets were not lighted, the hotels were full, and the mud, through which I tramped from one to the other, with a dark guide and a very dark lantern, was ankle deep on the crossings. I was at length fortunate enough to find lodgings, with a clergyman and a cotton-speculator, in an ancient tavern-room, where we were visited all night by troops of rats, scampering across the floor, rattling newspapers, and capering over our beds. In the morning, it was discovered that the irreverent rogues had stolen the clergyman's stockings.

A sun-bright morning did not transmute the town into a place of very great attractiveness. Everywhere were ruins and rubbish, mud and mortar and misery. The burnt streets were rapidly rebuilding; but in the mean while hundreds of the inhabitants, white and black, rendered homeless by the destruction of the city, were living in wretched hovels, which made the suburbs look like a fantastic encampment of gypsies or Indians. Some of the negro huts were covered entirely with ragged fragments of tin-roofing from the burnt government and railroad buildings. Others were constructed partly of these irregular blackened patches, and partly of old boards, with roofs of huge, warped, slouching shreds of tin, kept from blowing away by stones placed on the top. Notwithstanding the ingenuity displayed in piecing these rags together, they formed but a miserable shelter at the best. "In dry weather, it's good as anybody's houses. But they leaks right bad when it rains; then we have to pile our things up to keep 'em dry.' So said a colored mother of six children, whose husband was killed "fighting for de Yankees," and who supported her family of little ones by washing. "Sometimes I gits along toler

able; sometimes right slim; but dat 's de way wid everybody; -times is powerful hard right now."

Every business block in Atlanta was burned, except one. The railroad machine-shops, the founderies, the immense rolling-mill, the tent, pistol, gun-carriage, shot-and-shell factories, and storehouses, of the late Confederacy, disappeared in flames and explosions. Half a mile of the principal street was destroyed. Private residences remained, with a few exceptions. The wooden houses of the suburbs had been already torn down, and their materials used to construct quarters for Sherman's men. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, and viewed by them with as much pride and satisfaction as the Jews felt in the contemplation of the great Temple at Jerusalem, was also demolished by our soldiers, at the instigation, it is said, of a white citizen living near, who thought the negro's religious shoutings a nuisance.

"When I came back in May," said a refugee, "the city was nothing but piles of brick and ruins. It did n't seem it could ever be cleared. But in six weeks new blocks began to spring up, till now you see more stores actually in operation than we ever had before."

The new business blocks were mostly one-story structures, with cheap temporary roofs, designed to be rebuilt and raised in more prosperous times. Nine stores of this description had just been put up by a Connecticut man; each costing three thousand dollars, and renting for twenty-five hundred. "He run a rolling-mill for the Confederate Government during the war; sold out when Sherman was coming; called himself a good Union man ; — a mighty shrewd fellow!" said one who knew him.

Here and there, between the new buildings, were rows of shanties used as stores, and gaps containing broken walls and heaps of rubbish.

Rents were enormous.

Fifteen and twenty dollars a month were charged for huts which a respectable farmer would hardly consider good enough for his swine. One man had crowded