coal could be brought to their furnaces cheaper than charcoal. The coal field of Northern Georgia covers more than one hundred and fifty thousand acres, and lands can be purchased upon it for from $2 to $3 per acre. They are said to be no whit inferior to those lands in Pennsylvania which now command two thousand dollars per acre. For very many years both blooms from the forges and pig-iron from the furnaces have been shipped to Pittsburg, Philadelphia and New York, from the furnace on the Cumberland River in Tennessee, and from those of North-western Georgia, at from $5 to $7 per ton profit over the northern iron. The northern portion of Georgia certainly offers splendid inducements to manufacturers. There are also scattered throughout the mountains many mineral springs, some of which are already visited by large numbers of health and pleasure-seekers annually. The iron region of Northern Alabama, perhaps the most remarkable of all in the vicinity of Chattanooga, will contribute directly to the growth of that city. The Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad runs parallel with the Great Warrior coalfield," which extends over an immense tract in Northern Alabama; and the North and South road runs through both the Cahaba and Warrior fields, giving outlets for the products of those sections at Montgomery and at Decatur. The Blue Ridge sinks down into wavy and low knolls, and finally, in this section of the State, into rolling ground. The mineral lands extend about one hundred and sixty miles in a south-western direction, with an average width of eighty miles. The coal fields cover four thousand square miles, and all about them are extensive beds of limestone, sandstone and iron ore. Interspersed lie fertile valleys, where wheat, corn and cotton can be grown. State to which they belong.* The Alabama ores are said to compare favorably with the finest from Cumberland or the north of Spain. The mountain region of South Carolina contains some of the most exquisite scenery in the South. The new Air-Line railway route, leaving the forests of Northern Georgia, and crossing the Tugaloo river, traverses a lovely, although as yet untamed country, and touches at Greenville and Spartanburg, two well-built and prosperous towns. As in most of the Southern States where there are widely separated sections possessed of different climates, the character of the inhabitant of the uplands is quite dissimilar to that of the lowlander. There was more activity and less embarrassment, on account of the political situation, throughout the mountain counties, than we found anywhere south of Columbia, the State capital. The negroes were far less ignorant than their fellows of the coast and the central counties, and were disposed to be more reasonable in their political views. It is true, that, after the war the Ku-Klux organization committed abominable outrages throughout York, Union, Spartanburg, Laurens and Chester counties. It was shown, at the time of the exposure consequent on the military arrests, that two thousand male citizens of a single county belonged to the Ku-Klux, and actively participated in the coercive measures which it had foolishly adopted. But the mountaineers have learned the folly of such attempts, and there are no longer any reports of whippings and midnight massacres. The railroad and the advent of Northern men here and there, as well as the impetus which the universal use of the new fertilizers has given to the production of cotton upon lands where, before the war, it would not have been deemed wise to plant it-all have aided in building up new feeling, and in banishing most of the old bitterness. Had it not been for the supreme rascality of the hybrid State government, the citizens of this upland region might have possessed even more railroad facilities than they at present enjoy. The It is said that in laying down the rails, brought all the way from England or from Pennsylvania to Alabama, the railroad workmen dug up and removed ore which actually contained twenty per cent. more iron than did that from which the English rail was made. The Alabamians claim" Blue Ridge route" was intended as a railthat they can produce iron at sixteen dollars per ton, while in Ohio and in Pittsburg it costs nearly thirty. The growth of Birmingham, Ala., and the development of the mineral region in its vicinity, are almost phenomenal. We will consider them in a future paper in their relations to the road into Kentucky and Tennessee, running across the southern end of the Blue Ridge, in South Carolina, which latter State and the city of Charleston owned nearly all the * In the paper on Alabama a full description of the superb mineral resources of the State will be given. stock in the road, up to 1871. After about three millions of dollars had been expended in the construction of a portion of the road, and the State had guaranteed $4,000,000 of bonds, in support of further construction, upon certain conditions intended to protect its own interests, a gigantic fraud was consummated. The "sinking fund commission," composed of the State officers, self-appointed, passed the railroad into the hands of a corporation, robbing the State of its interest in the work, and then secured a legislative enactment annulling the conditions on which depended the issue of the four millions in bonds. In addition to this, the Legislature authorized a further issue of "Blue Ridge scrip" to the amount of $1,800,000, and made it available by declaring it receivable for taxes. This afforded operators" all the chance they desired for plundering the State treasury; and meantime the Blue Ridge Railroad remains unfinished. It was late in autumn when we reached Greenville, but the weather was warm and delightful. The small planters from all the country round, were crowding the roads with their mule carts, laden with one, two, or three bales of cotton. The agents for the sale of fertilizers were busy in the town, looking after their interests, for many a planter had given them a lien upon his crop, and they wished to claim their money when the crop was brought to market. There was a variety of testimony as to the profit made by the cotton raisers who only planted two or three acres each; "DOWN IN A COAL MINE." some insisted that they made handsome profits, others, that after they had paid for their fertilizers, and their own support during the year, they usually had nothing left. The "lien" which the seller of phosphates takes, when he delivers a ton of the coveted stimulating substance to the farmer, is a formidable document. It engages not only the growing crop, but in many cases the household goods, if the crop fails, and sometimes the unlucky wight who has a poor crop on his few acres, finds himself in danger of a practical eviction. But a good crop puts money and prosperity into the section where the people are altogether better off than in the low-lands. They have every facility for enriching themselves, as soon as they can and will diversify the culture of their farms; and I notice with pleasure the introduction of the "Agricultural Fair" as a means of creating ambition in the direction of thorough farm culture. Greenville held its first fair of the kind during our stay there. All along the highways leading into Greenville cotton whitened the fields; although it was late in November, there were immense fields yet to pick; and I was told that the whole crop is not often all picked before the advent of the spring months. The bareheaded negroes were lazily pulling at the white fleeces, wherever we passed, but seemed animated by no desire for results; it was easy to see why the crop was not all gathered before spring. Emigrants from other states would find every chance for enriching themselves in these charming uplands, where the climate is so delicious; where the streams and the hills are so beautiful, and where the soil is so fertile. Greenville lies at the base of the Saluda, near the Paris mountain, and is delightfully situated on a range of breezy hills. Summer visitors from the lowlands crowd its hotels and private mansions; it has, like its neighbor, Spartanburg, a number of excellent schools and colleges, and a university. It is near the source of the Reedy River, and the approaches to it from Columbia are along the banks of that lovely stream, the Saluda. Το the eastward, daintily enshrined in a nook in the Blue Ridge, near the North Carolina frontier, lies Walhalla, a German settlement, TUCCOA FALLS. where the vine is cultivated with rare success; the county of Pickens is rich in mountain outlooks, aud noble waterfalls; and not more than twenty miles from Greenville, that superb monarch of the glens, Table Mountain, with its attendant ledges, each a thousand feet high, rises in rocky grandeur to the height of 4,300 feet above sea-level. North-westward the Air Line railroad conducts one through wild and, as yet, uncultivated lands, to Spartanburg, and, passing near "King's Mountain," to Charlotte, in North Carolina. From the Greenville post-office the stage-coach will speedily convey one into the heart of the Swannanoa and French Broad valleys. The road to Asheville, the chief town of the western North Carolina mountain region, leads through Saluda Gap, and past the beautiful summer resort, once the refuge of so many wealthy lowlanders, "Flat Rock." This was a species of Saratoga for the South Carolinians, and in the sweet valley, surrounded by noble mountains, there are still some noble mansions, like those of the Draytons and Memmingers, surrounded by gardens filled with the rarest and costliest of shrubbery and flowers. Another route from Greenville leads to "Cæsar's Head," a lofty mountain, like the "Whiteside," and a trysting place for hundreds of merry pilgrims during summer months. Along the road between Greenville and Asheville, and the rugged yet delightful routes which lead from Asheville to Charlotte, lies one of the great pleasure regions of the future. The falls of Slicking, at the base of the Table Mountain, the banks of that prince among mountain streams, the wonderful Keowee, the sweet vale of Jocasse, and the adjacent Whitewater cataracts, vie with Mount Yonah, Tallulah, Toccoa, and Nacoochee, their Georgian neighbors, in variety and surprising beauty. From Charlotte to Centreville the scenery is sublimely beautiful. By this route one passes through the Hickory Nut Gap, a grand gorge in the Blue Ridge, through which a creek flows until its waters are merged in those of the rocky Broad River. Where the latter stream forces its passage through a spur of the Blue Ridge, its bed is encumbered with myriads of rocks, rooted deeply in the almost unyielding soil; mountain bluffs hem it in; and the scene is one of fearful solitude and grandeur. The Gap is hardly anywhere more than half a mile wide, and, seen from a little distance, it seems but a narrow path cut between gigantic buttresses of stone, which rise twenty-five hundred feet. Midway up the front of the highest bluff, on the south side of the Gap, stands an isolated rock resembling some antique and weather-beaten castle turret. The rains of thousands of years have washed the granite cliffs smooth, and one may fancy them the walls of some huge fortification. Shooting out over the cliff, and falling into some, as yet, undiscovered pool, a spray-stream comes pouring; and near the base of the awful precipice are three violent and capricious cascades, which, by centuries of persistence, have worn wells from forty to fifty feet deep in the hard stone beneath them. When one approaches the Gap, he sees be fore him nothing but the limitless ocean of peaks, pointed sharply, like the apexes of waves, against the crystal vault of the sky. Everywhere Nature seems to have thrown out barriers, and to have determined to prevent one from entering her favorite retreat. Then suddenly you come upon the narrow defile of the "Hickory Nut Gap." Beyond it, penetrating to Rutherfordton, one sees the sublime sentinels of the Blue Ridge range jealously guarding the approaches, and at last reaches a point whence the panorama of the Pinnacle, and Sugar Loaf, and Chimney Rock, and Tryon Mountains all burst at once upon the vision. The road thither winds along a ravine side; steep rocks overhang it, and beneath a rushing torrent screams its warning; by and bye an opening in the forest shows anew the vast expanse of peaks, and in their midst the Monarch, the Cloud-piercer, the somber controller of the whole magic realm, Mitchell's High Peak! Miles away, to the westward, one can dimly discern a silver line on a faintly-defined mountain: a torrent leaping down the almost perpendicular sides of its parent height. Now let us seek the lowlands. ADINA. IN TWO PARTS: PART I. WE had been talking of Sam Scrope round the fire-mindful, such of us, of the rule de mortuis. Our host, however, had said nothing; rather to my surprise, as I knew he had been particularly intimate with our friend. But when our group had dispersed, and I remained alone with him, he brightened the fire, offered me another cigar, puffed his own awhile with a retrospective air, and told me the following tale: Eighteen years ago Scrope and I were together in Rome. It was the beginning of my acquaintance with him, and I had grown fond of him, as a mild, meditative youth often does of an active, irreverent, caustic one. He had in those days the germs of the eccentricities, not to call them by a hard name,-which made him afterwards the most intolerable of the friends we did not absolutely break with; VOL. VIII.-3 he was already, as they say, a crooked stick. He was cynical, perverse; conceited, obstinate, brilliantly clever. But he was young, and youth, happily, makes many of our vices innocent. Scrope had his merits, or our friendship would not have ripened. He was not an amiable man, but he was an honest one-in spite of the odd caprice I have to relate; and half my kindness for him was based in a feeling that at bottom, in spite of his vanity, he enjoyed his own irritability as little as other people. It was his fancy to pretend that he enjoyed nothing, and that what sentimental travelers call picturesqueness was a weariness to his spirit; but the world was new to him and the charm of fine things often took him by surprise and stole a march on his premature cynicism. He was an observer in spite of himself, and in his happy moods, thanks to his capital memory and ample information, an excellent critic and most profitable companion. He was a punctilious classical scholar. My boyish journal, kept in those days, is stuffed with learned allusions; they are all Scrope's. I brought to the service of my Roman experience much more loose sentiment than rigid science. It was indeed a jocular bargain between us that in our wanderings, picturesque and archæological, I should undertake. the sentimental business-the raptures, the reflections, the sketching, the quoting from Byron. He considered me. absurdly Byronic, and when, in the manner of tourists at that period, I breathed poetic sighs over the subjection of Italy to the foreign foe, he used to swear that Italy had got no more than she deserved, that she was a land of vagabonds and declaimers, and that he had yet to see an Italian whom he would call a man. I quoted to him from Alfieri that the "human plant" grew stronger in Italy than anywhere else, and he retorted, that nothing grew strong there but lying and cheating, laziness, beggary and vermin. Of course we each said more than we believed. 'If we met a shepherd on the Campagna, leaning on his crook and gazing at us darkly from under the shadow of his matted locks, I would proclaim that he was the handsomest fellow in the world, and demand of Scrope to stop and let me sketch him. Scrope would confound him for a filthy scare-crow and me for a drivelling albumpoet. When I stopped in the street to stare up at some mouldering palazzo with a patched petticoat hanging to dry from the drawing-room window, and assured him that its haunted disrepair was dearer to my soul than the neat barred front of my Aunt Esther's model mansion in Mount Vernon street, he would seize me by the arm and march me off, pinching me till I shook myself free, and whelming me, my soul and my palazzo in a ludicrous torrent of abuse. The truth was that the picturesque of Italy, both in man and in nature, fretted him, depressed him, strangely. He was consciously a harsh note in the midst of so many mellow harmonies; every thing seemed to say to him-" Don't you wish you were as easy, as loveable, as carelessly beautiful as we ?" In the bottom of his heart he did wish it. To appreciate the bitterness of this dumb disrelish of the Italian atmosphere, you must remember how very ugly the poor fellow was. He was uglier at twenty than at forty, for as he grew older it became the fashion to say that his crooked features were "distinguished." But twenty years ago, in the infancy of modern æsthetics, he could not have passed for even a bizarre form of ornament. In a single word, poor Scrope looked common: that was where the shoe pinched. Now you know that in Italy almost everything, has, to the outer sense, what artists call style. In spite of our clashing theories, our friendship did ripen, and we spent together many hours, deeply seasoned with the sense of youth and freedom The best of these, perhaps, were those we passed on horseback, on the Campagna; you remember such hours; you remember those days of early winter, when the sun is as strong as that of a New England June, and the bare, purple-drawn slopes and hollows lie bathed in the yellow light of Italy. On such a day, Scrope and I mounted our horses in the grassy terrace before St. John Lateran, and rode away across the broad meadows over which the Claudian Aqueduct drags its slow length-stumbling and lapsing here and there, as it goes, beneath the burden of the centuries. We rode a long distance-well towards Albano, and at last stopped near a low fragment of ruin, which seemed to be all that was left of an ancient tower. Was it indeed ancient, or was it a relic of one of the numerous mediæval fortresses, with which the grassy desert of the Campagna is studded? This was one of the questions which Scrope, as a competent classicist, liked to ponder; though when I called his attention to the picturesque effect of the fringe of wild plants which crowned the ruin, and detached their clear filaments in the deep blue air, he shrugged his shoulders, and said they only helped the brick-work to crumble. We tethered our horses to a wild fig tree hard by, and strolled around the tower. Suddenly, on the sunny side of it, we came upon a figure asleep on the grass. A young man lay there, all unconscious, with his head upon a pile of weed-smothered stones. A rusty gun was on the ground beside him, and an empty gamebag, lying near it, told of his being an unlucky sportsman. His heavy sleep seemed to point to a long morning's fruitless tramp. And yet he must have been either very unskilled, or very little in earnest, for the Campagna is alive with small game every month in the year or was, at least, twenty years ago. It was no more than I owed to my repu |