and Selma.

They are the most important towns in the Alabama cotton belt, and will grow as the region around them prospers. The strip of country extending between the cotton and mineral regions, and running from the north-east to the middle and eastern part of the State, is admirably adapted both to agriculture and manufactures. Opelika, Wetumpka, Centerville, Tuscaloosa, Scottsville, Prattsville, Tallassee, Autaugaville, and other flourishing towns are located in it. It is traversed by the Selma and Rome, the Montgomery and West Point, the South and North, and the Alabama and Chattanooga, railroads. Lying directly on the high road between New York and New Orleans, and traversed by rivers flowing from the mountains, over many rocky barriers towards the lowlands, -thus forming innumerable falls suitable for manufacturing power,-it has already attracted much attention, and many factories are established within its limits. A goodly number of prosperous factories were destroyed during the war; but the extensive cotton mills at Tallassee, on the Tallapoosa river, the Granite factory in Coosa county, the mills in Prattville, and the Bell factory near Huntsville, all demonstrate the success which might attend similar new enterprises.

It is observed that, in spite of the cheapness of labor in England, Alabama manufacturers will soon be able to take cotton from adjacent plantations, spin it into yarn, and sell it in England at a greater profit than the English manufacturer, who buys American cotton in Liverpool and makes it into yarn in England, can ever reach.* The advantage of the water power in such States as Alabama over the steam power necessarily employed in Great Britain, is also very large in point of expense. The crying need of the State is capital; she is like so many of her neighbors, completely broken by the revolution, and unable to take the initiative in the measures essential to her full development. With capital operating beneficently, Alabama could bring her cheap cotton, cheap coal, cheap iron, and cheap living, to bear upon the question of manufactures in such a manner that there would be no denying her a position in the front ranks.

There are now a dozen prosperous cotton factories in Alabama, in its middle and northern portions. The Tallassee mills have 18,000 spindles; two at Prattville have 4,000 each; and others, averaging about the same, at Huntsville, Florence, Tuscaloosa, Autaugaville, and in Pickens county, are prosperous. These mills regularly pay large dividends; it is not uncommon for cotton mills in the South

to pay twenty per cent.. and twelve to fifteen is the average. White labor exclusively is employed.

North of the manufacturing region, and extending from north-east one hundred and sixty miles to the south-west, is the mineral region of the State. Railroads traverse it in all directions; the South and North binds it to Montgomery, and gives it an outlet towards Nashville and Louisville, via Decatur: the Alabama and Chattanooga gives it easy access to the rolling mills of Chattanooga; the Selma, Rome and Dalton cuts through it to connect with the Kenesaw route to New York. It is as yet in many respects a wild country, sparsely populated, and rough in appearance; in one day's journey along the line of the North and South railroad, I saw hardly any town of considerable size; in the forest clearings there were assemblages of rough board houses, and brawny men and scrawny women looked from the doors; now and then we passed a coal shoot, and now long piles of iron ore. There was little of interest save the material fact of the abundant riches of this favored section. The mountains were nowhere imposing; they were humpbacked and overgrown; but they held, it was easy to see, mighty secrets.

There are three distinct coal fields in the carboniferous formation, which, with the silurian, shares all but the southeast corner of this mineral region.

The most extensive is the Warrior-field, which has an area of three thousand square miles of a bituminous soft coal, lying in horizontal beds from one to four feet thick. It covers that portion of the State drained by the Black Warrior river and its tributaries, and extends quite into the north-eastern corner, between Lookout Mountain and the Tennessee river. The field along the Cahawba river has an area of beds from one to eight feet thick, extending over an area of seven hundred square miles. square miles. The Tennessee field, north of the Tennessee river, has large stores of bituminous coal, and the three together cover four thousand square miles. Close beside them run beds of red and brown hematite iron, from north-east to southwest, and limestone and sandstone are near at hand. The South and North railroad runs through the Warrior coal field for more than fifty miles. It is incredible that, with such superb facilities for transportation, more has not been done towards the development of this section. Grand highways run in all the principal directions across iron beds; it will only be necessary

to build branch tracks to cover every square mile with a network of communication.

I made a journey to Birmingham, the four-year-old child of the mineral development, and was surprised to note how solidly it had grown up. The route, from

CUSTOM HOUSE-MOBILE.

Montgomery to within a few miles of Calera, where the Selma, Rome and Dalton road crosses the South and North, lay through forests of yellow pine. We saw few farms, and but little cleared land. A little above Calera, we came into the Coosa river section. That stream runs to the eastward of the railroad, and for many miles offers excellent sites for the establishment of manufactures. In all the country round about lime-kilns are to be seen it is said that one hundred and fifty thousand barrels of lime are annually made at and near Calera. The blue limestone of the Silurian formation, so abundant there, is especially valuable. The road also traverses the zone of the deposits of fibrous brown hematite, extending northeasterly from Tuscaloosa, where it is said to be a hundred feet thick. On this ore belt several prosperous furnaces--the Roup's Valley, the Briarfield, the Shelby, and the Oxford,-are located. An able engineer, Mr. Hiram Haines, of Alabama, says that the cost of the reduction of this iron at these furnaces is about $20 per

ton.

Crossing the Cahawba coal field, and Red Mountain, which forms the western boundary, I came into the valley of Shades

creek, which presents a very advantageous position for the location of iron works. Here are the Red Mountain and Irondale Iron Works, whose furnaces can produce forty tons daily. The vast bed of fossiliferous ore which extends along the northern ridge of Red Mountain, runs from a point a score of miles east of Tuscaloosa to the north-eastern limit of the State. Where the railway crosses it, it is thirty feet in thickness. The "mountain," like its famous compeer in Missouri, hardly merits its name; but is simply an elevated ridge. The ore is everywhere easily accessible; I noted from point to point excavations made close to the railroad-some of which had been very successfully located. The "mountain" is said to be one hundred miles in length, and it is estimated that it bears fifteen millions of tons of iron ore to the mile. The Pennsylvania iron-masters have not allowed this ore to go unnoticed, and the English have made it an especial study. A little beyond the gap which allows the railroad to leave the coal field, the projected route of the Mobile Grand Trunk road crosses the South and North; and, a short distance farther on, at the intersection of the Alabama and Chattanooga with the South and North, the town of Birmingham has sprung into a praiseworthy activity. In eighteen months from the date of the building of the first house there was a permanent population of four thousand people. The town was handsomely laid out in streets lined with imposing brick blocks, and the two finely built railways running through it brought to it crowds of daily visitors. If the development of the South justifies the building of the proposed route from Atlanta, Ga., through Birmingham to connect with the Southern Transcontinental: of the connecting link from Opelika north-westerly through Birmingham to the Tennessee at Pittsburg Landing: of the Grand Trunk road, and the Ashly branch of the Selma, Rome and Dalton road, giving a short line from the coal and iron country to the Gulf-the new mineral capital will be indeed fortunate!

Birmingham is very centrally located in the mineral region, which comprises most of Shelby, Jefferson, Bibb, Walker, Tuscaloosa, Blount, St. Clair, Calhoun, Talladega, Randolph and Cherokee counties. Red Mountain seems to have been pushed up above the unattractive soil in

these rude fields as a beacon, and a temptation to explorers. It looms up in Jones's Valley, the site of Birmingham, as the creator and guardian of the little city's destinies, and presents its treasures readily to the miner, for the iron is covered with but a thin coating of soil. The Red Mountain ores have a usual yield of fifty per cent., and at some furnaces, fifty-eight; and this mountain stretches, a narrow strip, for miles and miles, between two of the most wonderful coal-beds on the continent!

On my arrival at Birmingham, one afternoon, I found the good mayor of the little city in bed, for he, with other citizens, had been engaged all the previous night in quelling a negro riot, caused by the discontent and pressing necessities of the inhabitants of the back country. An armed band of blacks had ridden into the town, and some fires had been started in a low quarter, evidently with the design of diverting attention to the conflagration while the provision stores were robbed. But the citizens succeeded in capturing the wouldbe robbers, and providing them with food and lodging in jail. This incident served to show the really hazardous position in which the negro is placed in some portions of the State. Untoward circumstances and outside financial pressure leave him absolutely without anything to eat; for he depends almost entirely on the outer world for his supplies.

Birmingham lies in a charming valley,

A SCENE IN THE PARK AT MOBILE.

about ten miles wide, and extending about forty miles either way from the "city." It lies, perhaps, six hundred feet above the sea level, and the valley is supposed to be the result of a vast upheaval of the Silurian rocks, which upheaval or convulsion was evidently instrumental in dividing what was one huge coal-field into several. Another result of the rupture is a range of hills running down the center of the valley, and containing deposits of brown. hematite ore. Along the slope of the Red Mountain there is a notable outcrop of variegated marble and sulphate of barytes, and lead ores are scattered throughout the neighborhood. The hematite ores, on the north-eastern slope of the Red Mountain, are exposed for a thickness of from fifteen to twenty-five feet; and many believe that a complete examination will show deposits one hundred feet thick. Here is a supply of iron for centuries to come; but Birmingham does not depend on the Red Mountain alone. To the west, the north-west, and the north there are fine deposits of iron ore, situated close to coal unsurpassed in quality for the manufacture of iron. The Elyton Land Company, which owned extensive tracts in Jones's Valley, took the initiative in building Birmingham, and succeeded so well that the little town is expected to have a cotton factory and extensive car shops, as well as to be girdled by a ring of iron furnaces. In the vicinity there are numer

ous furnaces. Pennsylvania ironmasters are developing Irondale; the Red Mountain Iron Works are undergoing revival, after a long sleep since the war; and the largest Southern and English firms interested in iron manufacture are investigating the resources of Alabama iron tracts, which they pronounce superb. The coal interests are receiving equal attention, and shafts have been sunk in the Warrior and Cahawba fields in a hundred places. The Irondale and Ironton furnaces are undoubtedly the most extensive on Red Mountain; the two together produce about forty tons of pig-iron daily, and the Alabama Iron Company, located seventeen miles above Birmingham, is yearly sending North great quantities of crude ore. All the way from Jefferson county, through St. Clair, until it loses itself in the Lookout range, the Red Mountain carries the

most abundant stores of iron. In Cherokee, Calhoun and Talladega counties, within easy reach of the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad, there are furnaces in active opera

tion.

CHRIST CHURCH-MOBILE.

The Shelby Iron Works, in Shelby county, has an extensive foundry for working up the famous "brown ore." The Briarfield Iron Works, in Bibb county, are also famous, and in Clay county it is believed that there are sufficient indications of magnetic ore to justify the establishment of furnaces. It is evident that at some central point in this rich region a large town is to arise, and Birmingham seems to have secured the precedence.

The stores of copper and marl in Alabama are quite remarkable. In Randolph, Clay and Coosa counties, copper has been mined successfully, and lead has been found in Baker county. In eastern Alabama gold has been mined from time to time since 1843, being found in small quantities in numerous counties; there are silver shafts said to have been sunk by De Soto. The marble, granite and slate quarries of the State are rich, and will furnish cheap material for future cities, when the iron interest shall begin to build them. Of tin, plumbago, fire clay, and kaolin and lime, there are abundant stores. The marls of Alabama are expected, in due time, to furnish a very important branch of industry. They contain properties of the highest fertilizing character when applied to worn-out lands, and offer the sections of the State which have been unduly stimulated under

the old planting system, a chance of renewal.

It is certain that large manufacturing communities are to spring up within the next few years, in the mineral region of northern and north-eastern Alabama. The facility with which iron, coal and limestone can be reached, mined, and sent to furnaces or to market; the cheapness of labor and land, and the facilities for intercommunication, both by rail and water, are great recommendations to the attention of the foreign and Northern capitalist. The iron ores are so rich, and such fine steel can be readily made from them, that they are certain to tempt capitalists to unearth them. The manufactured iron can be produced at about the same price as that of the cheapest regions in England.

From Meridian, in Mississippi, through Livingston, Eutaw, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, stretches the Alabama and Chattanooga railroad, consolidated from several lines, and purchased by a number of Boston capitalists. It runs through the beautiful Wills' Valley, near Chattanooga, and will, doubtless, draw much of the mineral interest of the Alabama district toward Chattanooga, the natural center of the vast coal and iron country, whose southern terminus is where the Alleghanies gradually sink to sleep on the swelling Alabama prairies..

There is much of quiet beauty in Northern Alabama, much also that is bold, rugged, even grand. The Tennessee Valley seems to combine the loveliest characteristics of a Northern, with all the fragrant luxuriance and voluptuousness of a Southern, climate. Here and there arise grand mountains; one encounters rapids and noisy waterfalls; vast stretches of forest; huge areas covered by ill-kept and almost ruined plantations, where the victims of the revolution are struggling with the mysteries of the labor question, and the changing influences of the times. The Memphis and Charleston railway, which runs through this valley from Chattanooga, and which is the connecting link in the great through route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean, has done much in developing the country, but does not seem to have brought population to any large degree. There are some handsome and thriving towns along its line; pretty Huntsville, Decatur, Tuscumbia with its miraculous spring, and Florence, Tuscumbia's near neighbor, at the present head of naviga

tion on the Tennessee, with its cotton factory, are all indications of the beauty and vivacity which this section will boast, when population comes in. At Stevenson, whither the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad comes in its search for a passage through the apparently impassable mountains, the beauty of the great ranges is indescribable. The red loam of the Valley will produce the best of cotton and corn, rye and barley, and small farmers, in this favorable climate, and with some little capital to start upon, could once more give this section its old name of "the garden of the South." The large plantations are much neglected, in many cases ruined; the planters are discouraged, and the negroes perplexed and somewhat demoralized by the great changes of the past few years. There has undoubtedly been a large falling off in the amount of cotton production in this section of Alabama, since the close of the war; and as the trail of the armies through it was marked with blood and fire, it is, perhaps, not very astonishing that the delay in restoration has been

so great. If any portion of the South needs a total renewal of its population, it is this one: and an influx of Northern or foreign farmers would build it up in a

*In a succeeding paper, the reader will find the labor question, and the relations of planters to laborers, and of both to merchants and the outer world, as concerns the Valley of the Tennessee, and other sections of the South, fully, and, it is hoped, fairly discussed.

short time. Inasmuch as the Tennessee river passes through the entire breadth of North Alabama from east to west, the State is as much interested as Tennessee in the opening of navigation at Muscle Shoals, feeling convinced that the manufacturing interests at Florence would be revivified, that the valley would thus secure a cheap transportation route to market, and that the carrying of minerals, especially coal, would be made one of the great businesses of the section. Huntsville has the honor of being the county seat of the richest agricultural county in the Tennessee Valley, and is noted as the location of the convention that formed the State constitution, as the seat of the first legislature of the commonwealth, and the place at which the first Alabama newspaper was issued. The city, which has some five thousand inhabitants, sits upon a low hill, from whose base gushes out a limestone spring, ample enough to supply the population with water. Through this country the weight of war was felt heavily; the people of Huntsville suffered much, and the devastation in the country, caused by both armies, was very great. Huntsville has some fine schools for young ladies; the Greene Academy, a resort of great numbers of the young men of Tennessee, was destroyed during the war by the Union troops.

Decatur was nearly submerged when I saw it, so that I can hardly attempt a description. Rain poured heavily down: the Tennessee, on whose south bank the town lies, was rampant, and the railroad seemed running through a lake. From Decatur towards Nashville, Tennessee, the railway route leads through a wild, hilly country, where the land is not especially good. Tuscumbia, and its tributary country also suffered greatly in war time. It is noted. for a spring, like Huntsville, but that of Tuscumbia is of pure freestone water, and springing from the plain in which the town is built, discharges 17,000 cubic feet of water every minute. Florence is connected with Tuscumbia by a branch of the Memphis and Charleston road, and was once a formidable commercial rival to Nashville. It was hindered by the war from completing the fine manufacturing enterprises which it was inaugurating, but is now making renewed efforts to centralize cotton spinning there. The Wesleyan University and the Synodical Institute, flourishing institutions, are located at Florence. Farmers, and real farming,-not a loose