lock paid a visit to California, whence he was hurried home by the announcement that the legislature was to meet in December. He returned; surveyed the political field; found that he was in imminent danger of being complicated and possibly impeached, and went North and resigned. Shortly after, Kimball disappeared from Atlanta and from his Southern field of operations, and the bubble burst.

The state railroad, running from Atlanta northward to Chattanooga, had been leased under Bullock's administration. The Democrats, who now came into power, charged that the governor was guilty of gross official misconduct in leasing the road, although it was done in obedience to an act of the legislature, and they proceeded to prosecute every one who had been connected with the management of it under the Bullock régime. They based their charge against the governor upon the theory that he was personally and pecuniarily interested in the road, as Kimball was one of the lessees, and the governor was alleged to be Kimball's partner. This, however, the governor expressly denies, showing that the road, which, for the twenty years from its building up to 1868, had been an expense to the sta. e, and a fruitful source of political corruption, was made profitable under the lease system. The prosecutions by the Democratic party were characterized by a great deal of acerbity, and in one case the Supreme Court decided that much injustice was inflicted upon a prosecuted party. The democratic legislative committee appointed to investigate the official conduct of the late governor was in session seven months, and confined its final report mainly to denunciations of the governor's course on the supposition that he was Kimball's partner. They took complete control of the state government, gloried in the repudiation of the various bonds issued from 1869 to 1871, and maintained that the reconstruction acts of Congress were unconstitutional, revolutionary, null, and void."

FOUNTAIN IN FORSYTH PARK, SAVANNAH, GA.

Certainly reconstruction is null and void in Georgia. It has been a complete failure there. That there have been glaring injustices practiced on both sides, no fair-minded man can for an instant doubt. The Republican The Republican administration lasted scarcely three years; and the legitimate results of the war were not maintained so long as that after 1868. Out of the 90,000 colored voters in the state, scarcely thirty thousand vote to-day: free schools are almost unknown outside the large cities and towns; and there has not been a Republican inspector of elections since the Democrats assumed power. To judge from the testimony of native Georgians, who are Republicans, and who have never been suspected of any dishonesty or untruth, the negroes are very grossly intimidated; and the Ku-Klux faction still exists as a kind of invisible empire. This is naturally to be expected after the occurrences in Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama: it is the revulsion from tyrannical ignorance and carpet-baggery; and may prove as baneful in its results as has its degraded and disrepu

table opposite. The democrat of Georgia talks with all the more emphasis of a white man's government in his commonwealth, because he feels that there is a black man's government in a neighboring state; if he has ever had any exaggerated fears as to a too free assumption of civil rights by his ex-slave, those fears are accented ten-fold since he has seen the real injustice practiced by negroes where they have attained supreme, unrestricted power.

Both the whites and blacks in the state have large and effective military organizations, and drill constantly, as if dumbly preparing for some possible future strife. The battalions of the white race still cling to the Confederate gray, in some cases; the negro militiaman blossoms into a variety of gorgeous uniforms. I saw a company of blacks assembling in Atlanta; they were good-looking, stalwart men, and went about their work with the utmost nonchalance, while here and there a white muttered between his teeth something unmistakably like "d-n niggers." There is a very large negro population in Atlanta and the surrounding country.

But few traces of the war are now left in Atlanta. The residence streets have a smart new air; many fine houses have been recently built, and their Northern architecture and trim gardens afford a pleasant surprise after the tumble-down, unpainted towns of which one sees so many in the South. The banks, the theaters, the public business blocks, the immense Kimball House, all have the same canny airseem to be boasting of their tidy looks and prosperity to the countrymen who come into town to market. I strolled into the Capitol (the quondam Opera House, which Kimball sold the Legislature). In the office of the State Treasurer I encountered some gentlemen who seemed inclined to believe that the State would not suffer if all debts contracted under the Bullock régime were

repudiated. One said that he could not inform me how much the State debt, as construed by the reconstructionists, was; he reckoned no one knew; the scoundrels who contracted the debt had run away; if they could lay hands on Bullock they would put him in the penitentiary. I found, everywhere I went in the Capitol, a spirit of extreme bitterness prevailing against the departed carpet-baggers; and all complained that the State affairs had been left in a wretched condition.

The attempt to establish free common schools throughout Georgia has thus far resulted in failure. Prior to the war there was but little effort made at the education of the masses. A small sum was appropriated as the "indigent school fund," but the majority of the poorer classes in the back country remained in dense ignorance. In the present State School Commissioner's office I was informed that there had been no common school open outside the large cities for some time. It was alleged that the school fund had been diverted to unlawful purposes during the "previous administration," and that the State had been much embarrassed by a debt of $300,000, incurred in prematurely putting schools into operation. There seems no doubt of a sincere desire on the part of the Georgia Conservatives to maintain free schools; and it is, by the way, noteworthy that three

A VIEW IN FORSYTH PARK, SAVANNAH.

of the Southern States that are Conservative in politics are leading all the others in education. Local taxation is the principal bugbear. The farmer dislikes to be taxed for schools; he still has various absurd prejudices; thinks the common school a pauper institution, and gets angry if there is any talk of compulsory education. The school population of the State is about 370,000, and the annual school revenue, derived from interest on bonds, from the poll tax, from taxes on shows, and from dividends on railroad stock,-amounts to $280,000. This is, of course, ridiculously small, and, now that Georgia has arrived once more at some degree of material prosperity, will, doubtless, be increased, and amends will be made for the shameful negligence which allowed the whole school machinery to stop and rest for a year. A praiseworthy but fruitless effort has recently been made in the Legislature to follow in the steps of Tennessee, by favoring local taxation, a limit to the amount of which is to be fixed, to guard against the creation of excessive taxes by negro votes; and the Peabody fund is employed in aiding the proselyters who preach the cause of common school education in the back counties. The illiteracy in Georgia previous to 1860 was alarming; the most moderate estimates showed that eighteen per cent. of the adult native white population could not even read; and, in 1860, when the State had a scholastic population of 236,454, only 94,687 attended school. Prejudice is strong, but the free school will establish itself in Georgia, as everywhere South, in due time. I think that the mass of Georgians respect an educated negro, but are determined to make him do the work of

educating himself. The negro needs a good general edauction, mainly because it will strengthen his character, and make him more independent. He is at present very easily intimidated with regard to his voting, and readily falls into corrupt practices in election time, because he does not know enough to consider the evil effects.

The manufactures of Atlanta are not extensive; there are some large rolling mills, and a good deal of iron is brought down from the country to the northward, and worked over there. Of course there is a large cotton movement through the town; and, in the late autumn, a journey along the railroad to Chattanooga discloses hundreds of teams toiling over the rough roads, bringing goodly stores of cotton bales to

the stations. Journalism in Atlanta is vivacious and enterprising, and the "New Era" and the "Herald" are newspapers of metropolitan dimensions. The Governor's residence is a pretty building, on an ambitious avenue, where stand many handsome mansions; the City Hall is quite imposing. Atlanta is the home of General John B. Gordon, one of the present United States senators, and a noted Confederate general. On the road from Atlanta to Augusta, and but fifteen miles from the Capital, is the remarkable "Stone Moun| tain," a peak of solitary rock, three thousand feet in height, and several miles in circumference. Near its top are the remains of an ancient fortification; and along the sides there are little patches of soil, but from a distance the great pyramid stands out seemingly naked before the sky, its dark gray looming up angrily against the crystal vault.

Northward, twenty miles from Atlanta, at the base of the Kenesaw mountain, lies the pretty little town of Marietta, once the location of a flourishing military academy, and now a summer resort for the well-to-do of Atlanta's thirty thousand residents. The country between Atlanta and Chattanooga seems as peaceful as if never a soldier had set his foot upon it; yet it needs no stretch of memory to recall those wild days when the giant strategists, Sherman and Johnston, bitterly fought and fortified, and marched and countermarched during long months, from Dalton to the Chattahoochee River, whence Sherman pushed on against Hood, and the desperate Confederate armies, whose command Hood had taken after the Richmond government's fatal error, the removal of Johnston, until the great granary and storehouse of the Confederacy, with Atlanta for its center, was conquered by the Union arms. The "State," or Western and Atlantic road, once the object of so many hostile cavalry raids, does a thriving trade. At all the stations, in harvest time, are groups of jovial and contented agriculturists, white and black, their garments flecked with cotton fleeces. Near Marietta, at Roswell, there are flourishing cotton factories. Allatoona and Resaca, memorable for the scenes of 1864, lie in a broken, picturesque and fertile country; the lands along the creeks are especially rich. Dalton, the junction of the "State," the branch of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia, and the Selma, Rome and

Dalton railroads, is a flourishing grain depot for Atlanta; here and there on the adjacent mountains may be seen fast crumbling remnants of Johnston's fortifications, erected a decade ago. At Cartersville, fifty miles from Atlanta, fine crops of wheat and cotton are raised; and in the vicinity large quarries of slate and marble have been opened, and worked successfully.

The transition from the brisk air and reddish uplands of Northern Georgia, to the

LOOKING DOWN THE BLUFF-SAVANNAH.

sluggish atmosphere and somber voluptuousness of the lowlands of the coast, is startling. One seems to have come upon another country, to have passed beyond seas, so great is the difference. The Savannah River, up which you sail returning from Florida some radiant morning, seems to you to have no affinity with the Savannah which, far among the Northern mountains, you saw born of the frolicsome or riotous streamlets, for ever leaping and roaring in

the passes or over mighty falls. Here it is broad, and deep, and strong, and near the bluff, on which the city stands, it is freighted with ships from European ports, and from the Northern cities of our own coast. The moss-hung oaks, the magnolias, the orange trees, the bays, the palmettoes, the olives, the stately shrubs of arbor vitæ, the Cape myrtles, the oleanders, the pomegranites, the lovely japonicas, astonish the eyes which have learned to consider a more Northern foliage as Georgian. Very grand in their way were the forests of pine, with their somber aisles, and the mournful whispers of the breeze stealing through them; but here is the charm of the odorous tropical South, which no one can explain. Yet it is not here that one must look for the greatest wealth of the State; for middle Georgia is, perhaps, the richest agricultural region in the commonwealth, and the hundreds of farms along the western boundary are notable instances of thorough and profitable culture.

But here at Savannah began the existence of Georgia; here it was that Oglethorpe planted his tiny colony, hardly a century and a half ago; here on the pinecrowned bluff, where an Indian tribe dwelt in a village called Yamacraw, he disembarked the adventurers who had come with him from England, under the sanction of the charter accorded by George the Second, and in due time established a group of tents defended by a battery of cannon. From this humble beginning, Savannah soon grew to the proportions of a town, and was laid out into squares. As the colonists had first landed on the shore of South Carolina, and been very kindly received by the Carolinians, they named the streets of the new settlement after their benefactors-Bull, Drayton, Whitaker, St. Julian and Bryan, and some of them still bear those names. Savannah in 1734 was a little assemblage of squares in a clearing in the pine forest. The inhabitants locked themselves into their cabins at night, because the alligators strolled through the town, seeking whom they might devour; and the Indians, who now and then threatened to "dig up the hatchet" when the colonists encroached, kept all in constant alarm. Two years later, the distinguished founder of Methodism, John Wesley, preached his first sermon in America in Savannah. An English gentleman who visited the colony in this same year tells us that "the houses are built at

a pretty large distance from one another, for fear of fire; the streets are very wide, and there are great squares left at proper spaces for markets and other conveniences." To this fortunate early arrangement the town owes its beauty to-day. No other American city has such wealth of

the rest of the settlers, grew and flourished until John Reynolds came out from England as governor in 1754, the trustees having resigned. The colonists welcomed him joyously at first, but afterwards regretted it, for he was not specially interested in them. He allowed the town to fall into

foliage, such charming seclusion, such sylvan perfection, so united with all the convenience and compactness of a large commercial center. The trustees of the colony, appointed under the royal charter, made a strict agrarian law, which divided the original town into two hundred and forty "freeholds;" the town land covered twenty-four square miles, every forty houses, (each house being located on tracts of land of exactly the same size,) making a ward; each ward had a constable, and under him were four tithing-men. Every ten houses made a tithing; and to each tithing there was a mile square, 'divided into twelve lots, besides roads." Every freeholder of the tithing had a lot or farm of forty-five acres there, and two lots were reserved by the trustees. Great efforts were used to make Georgia, as the new colony was called, after the English king who had granted the charter, "a silk and wine growing country;" but after protracted trials the colonists gave up their dreams of speedily realizing immense fortune and set to work at more practical schemes.

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decay, and, notwithstanding the fact that the general assembly of Georgia had met at Savannah in 1750, even considered the question of the removal of the capital. This was not effected; a new governor was sent over, but the people were rapidly becoming independent, and the "Stamp Act" put the same fever into their blood that stirred the pulses of their cousins in Massachusetts. It is curious to note, in view of later events, that Savannah sent to the Old Bay State much of the powder used in the defence of Bunker Hill.

Among the early excitements of Savannah was the trouble with the Spaniards in Florida, which finally culminated in open war. Spain, with her wonted arrogance, had firmly bidden the Georgians quit their newly established homes; but Spanish bravado did not frighten them. AngloGeorgian and Hispano-Floridian fortified one against the other; the same Spanish intrigue, which was at work among the thousands of negroes in South Carolina, was active among the Indians in Georgia. When at last England and Spain went to war, Oglethorpe and his colonists played an important part in 1740, and penetrated to the very walls of St. Augustine in Florida, though they did not succeed in taking it.

Although last settled of the old thirteen states of the Union, neither Georgia nor her chief city were backward in accepting the issues of the revolution. A Georgia schooner was the first commissioned American vessel, and made the first capture of the war-sixteen thousand pounds of powder. Savannah revolted against its royal governor early in 1776, and imprisoned him; and the next year the convention which formed the State constitution met in the city. Towards the close of 1778, the British, after a savagely disputed battle, captured the city; a brutal soldiery