spire of the Independent Presbyterian Church, or St. John's, or the Ionic proportions of Christ Church, in the parish over which John Wesley was once rector; and may look down into parks where flashing fountains scatter their spray-jets upon lovely beds of flowers. Forsyth Park contains a massive fountain, around which, as in continental cities, troops of children and their nurses are always straying. In Monument Square rises a handsome shaft to the memory of Greene and Pulaski. Monument Square is one of the principal centers in Savannah, and around it are grouped the hotels and the State Bank edifice; the Bank itself exists no longer. The Pulaski monument, a beautiful marble shaft, surrounded by a figure of the Goddess of Liberty, ornaments still another square. Wandering up Bull, or Drayton, or along Broad streets, one sees shop, theater, public hall, market, luxurious private dwellings, many-balconied and cool, and fountain and monument; yet feels around him the tranquility and beauty of the southern forest. Each one of the thirty thousand inhabitants of Savannah should daily have a benediction in his or her heart for the planters of the colony, who gave Savannah such scope for gardens and parks, for fountains and shaded av enues. The municipal control of the town thus pleasantly situated is very nearly perfect. The police corps is a military organization, clothed in Confederate gray, subject to strict discipline, armed with rifles, revolvers and sabers, and occupying a handsome garrison barracks in a central location. It is one of the prides of the city, and Gen. Anderson, an ex-United States and Confederate officer, keeps it in perfect discip-30 line. Only now and then, in the troublesome days or d reconstruction, did it come into collision with the fac-s tions at election time. One k policeman wanders over each ward every night. There is but little violation of law, save in the brawls incidental to a seaport, and the larcenies arising from the freedman's undeveloped moral consciousness. The negroes no longer have any voice whatever in political matters, and are not represented in the city government. city government. The registration law in the city, which was in force at the outset of reconstruction, has been abolished. There are only four hundred negro voters registered in the city. The banking capital of Savannah was decreased from twelve to three millions by the war, but the city owes comparatively little money, has a valuation of sixteen millions, and manages to do much business on small capital. Education in the city and in the thickly settled county of Chatham surrounding it is making far better progress than in the back country. In 1866 the Board of Education in Savannah was made a corporate body, and a most excellent system of schools for white children was gurated, to which have now been added A COUPLE OF CRACKERS." several schools for the colored children. The Peabody Fund does its good work there, as elsewhere. Twenty-five hundred white children attend the sessions, but only four or five hundred out of the three thousand negro children in Savannah have been accorded facilities. There is a good deal of absurd prejudice in Savannah against the colored man yet, and, although the Board seems inclined to do its duty, the citizens do not urge any elaborate effort to raise Sambo out of ignorance. Savannah is quite rich in private, educational, charitable and literary institutions, prominent among which are the Union Society and the Female Asylum for Orphans, the former on the site of the Orphan House which Whitfield established in 1740. The Georgia Historical and Medical Societies are flourishing, and of excellent reputation. The "Empire State of the South' needs manufactures, more especially of articles in daily use by farmers and their families in the agricultural regions. It is not without some little bitterness that a Georgia journalist recently wrote: "A Georgia farmer uses a Northern axe-helve and axe to cut up the hickory growing within sight of his door, plows his fields with a Northern plow, chops out his cotton with a New England hoe, gins his cotton upon a Boston gin, hoops it with Pennsylvania iron, hauls it to market in a Con cord wagon, while the little grain that he raises is cut and prepared for sale with Yankee implements. We find the Georgia housewife cooking with an Albany stove, and even the food, especially the luxuries, are imported from the North. Georgia's fair daughters are clothed in Yankee muslins, and decked in Massachusetts ribbons and Rhode Island jewelry." Yea, verily! Throughout the cotton States this statement holds true. In the interior cotton districts of Georgia there is often a great deal of pecuniary distress, because the condition of the market or the failure of the crop presses sorely on those who have given no care to raise anything for self-support, and who have staked their all on cotton. Diversified industry would make of Georgia in twenty years a second New York; for even in her present illorganized condition she actually makes great progress. The creation of manufacturing centers like Columbus, Macon, Albany, Thomaston, Augusta, Atlanta, Marietta, Athens, and Dalton is encouraging, but much remains to be done. Only about five millions of dollars are invested in the manufacture of cotton and woolen goods in the State as yet, and the grand water power of the Chattahoochee still remains but little employed. Agriculture must, therefore, be the main stay of the commonwealth, and the prospect is, on the whole, encour aging. The present cash value of the farms in Georgia is considerably more than $100,000,000, and might be doubled by something like systematic and thorough cultivation. The number of small farms is steadily increasing, and the negroes have acquired a good deal of land, which, in the cotton sections, they recklessly devote entirely to the staple, with an improvidence and carelessness of the future which is bewildering to the foresighted observer. They are fond of the same pleasures which their late masters give themselves so freely-hunting, fishing, and lounging; pastimes which the superb forests, the noble streams, the charming climate minister to very strongly. In the lower part of the State, in the piney woods and swamps, the inhabitants are indolent, uneducated, complaining and shiftless. They are all of the GEN. OGLETHORPE, THE FOUNDER OF SAVANNAH. (FROM ENGRAVING IN POSSESSION OF GEORGE W. JONES, ESQ.) same stamp as the old woman who explained to a hungry and thirsty traveler that they couldn't give him any milk, "because the dog was dead!" Applying his perceptive powers to this singular remark, he discovered that the defunct dog had been wont to drive up the cows to be milked at eventide, and that since his death it had not occurred to any of the family to go themselves in search of the kine. People who have plenty of cattle, and might raise the finest beef and mutton, rarely see milk or butter, and wear out their systems with indigestible pork and poor whisky. Their indolence, ignorance, and remoteness from any well-ordered farming regions are the excuses. These are the sallow and lean people who always feel "tollable," but who never feel well; a people of dry fiber and coarse existence, yet not devoid of wit and good sense. The Georgia "cracker" is eminently shiftless; he seems to fancy that he was born with his hands in his pockets, his back curved, and his slouch hat crowded over his eyes, and does his best to forever maintain this attitude. Quarrels, as among the lower classes generally throughout the South, grow into feuds, cherished for years, until some day, at the cross-roads, or the country tavern, a pistol or a knife puts a bloody and often a fatal end to the difficulty. There is, in all the sparsely settled agricultural portion of Georgia, too much pop ular vengeance, too much taking the law into one's own hands; but there is a gradual growth of opinion against this, and even now it is by no means so pronounced as in Kentucky, and some other more northward States. The "d-n nigger" is usually careful to be unobstrusive in quarrels with white men, as the rural Caucasian has a kind of subdued thirst for negro gore, which, when once really awakened, is not readily appeased. Yet, on the whole, considering the character which the revolution has assumed in Georgia since the fall of the reconstruction government there, it is astonishing that the two races get on so well together as they do. Columbus, on the border of Alabama, separated from that State by the Chattahoochee River, which gives it an outlet to the Gulf, through Florida, is a lively, thriving town, which must one day rival Lowell or Manchester, because its water power is exceptionally fine. The river, some distance above the city, flows through a rugged and beautiful ravine, where the best building stone is to be had. It is said by competent authorities that along the stream within two miles of the city there are sixty sites, each large enough for the establishment of a capacious factory. Columbus impressed me more favorably than any other manufacturing town I had seen in the far South. It lies right at the center of the cotton belt, is pierced by six impor-Jag tant railways, receives sto about 130,000 cotton b bales yearly, and in the ris mills of the Columbus Manufacturing, and Eagle and Phoenix companies, employs hundreds of women and children. The streets are wide and cheery; the shops and stores quite fine; the residences pretty; the little town of Girard across the river, built by the mill proprietors as home for their operatives, is charming; there is an aspect of life, and energy, and content in the place strongly contrasted with the dead and stagnant towns, of which I had seen so many. True, there were hosts of idle negroes roosting in A SAVANNAH SERGEANT OF POLICE. cotton raising. Macon is the site of the ori annual Georgia fair, which late in autumn, all the planters attend. The smaller towns around about it on the various lines of rail are not very promising in appearance. The unpainted houses seem deserted until one sees half a dozen negro children pop their heads above the window-sills, and the "judge," and the "colonel," and the "doctor" come lazily to the train to get the mail and the newspaper. In most of the towns the train-conductor is looked upon with awe, and is invariably addressed as "captain." The railroads are well managed in everything save speed, and the natives traveling are always civil and communicative. Macon is picturesquely perched on a hill, around which a monat densely wooded country stretches away in all directions. The Ocmulgee River winds between broken and romantic banks not far from the town; and near it are many Indian mounds and the site of a venerable fort, used during the wars with the Cherokees. The cotton factories, large iron foundries and the railway activity of Macon, give it even a more sprightly appearance than Columbus; but the latter has fifteen thousand population, while Macon has but ten thousand. The Wesleyan Female College and the Southern Botanic-Medical Institute, as well as the State Academy for the Blind, are located at Macon. From the pretty Rose Hill Cemetery the outlook over the Ocmulgee is very fine. THE CUSTOM HOUSE, SAVANNAH, GEORGIA. shady places about the squares, and under the porticoes, but they are found everywhere in the South. The managers of the cotton mills will not employ them in their establishments. When I asked one of the superintendents why not, he smiled quaintly, and said: "Put a negro in one of those rooms with a hundred looms, and the noise would put him to sleep.' To which, never having seen the "man and brother "under the specified circumstances, I could, of course, make no answer. Columbus has direct water communication with Texas, the great wool market of the future, and could supply woolen mills very readily and cheaply. The Columbus manufacturers claim that a bale of cotton can be manufactured $22 cheaper there than in or near Boston, and that their labor is thirty per cent. cheaper, while they are never subject to obstructions from ice.* The operatives in the mills were evidently saving money, and their houses and gardens were models of neatness and comfort. After riding all day through regions where the log-cabin was oftener seen than the frame house, and where the forests still hold possession of nine-tenths of the land, it was refreshing to come upon a town of such energy, activity and prospects as Columbus. The journey from Savannah to Macon carries one well out of the lowlands into a high rolling country, admirably suited to *The first cotton factory established at Macon has sometimes divided twenty-one per cent yearly, and is gradually accumulating a very large surplus fund. Society is good and cultured in Savannah and in most of the large towns through the State. There is still bitterness and ostracism for him who votes the Republican ticket, whether he comes with the odor of carpet-baggery about him or not. Savannah is more courteous and liberal in her sentiments than a few years since, but keeps up a latent bitter feeling, ready to be flashed out on good occasions. These remarks do not apply with so much force to the gentlemen as to the ladies, for the average Southern man is altogether too American and too frank to show resentment towards individuals because they represent the best element of a party whose worst elements are obnoxious to him. There is a tendency among large numbers of the men to sink politics, and to attend with all their energies to business. But all seem determined to make Georgia's government one" for white men;" and whenever there is any need for concerted action, every one is alert. Still it is morally certain that before a continued prosperity all political troubles will finally disappear. The labor question is the important one for Georgia, and all the other cotton States, to settle. The negro, after he discovers what he loses by allowing himself to be intimidated or talked out of his vote, will learn to respect it, and use it intelligently. The negroes of the State are possessed of no small acuteness and power of development, and, wherever there are educational facilities for it, they speedily improve them. The especial need of the race is good teachers, raised from its own ranks, and the creation of a university at Atlanta for the colored population was one of the most beneficient works of the American Missionary Society. The Georgia University at Athens, frequented, of course, exclusively by whites, is an excellent institution. It was endowed by the legislature in 1788, but did not begin its sessions until 1801, since which time it has been noted among Southern literary institutions. Milledgeville, the quondam capital of Georgia, is a quaint and pretty little town on the Oconee River, not far from Macon. The State Asylum for the Insane is located there, and the legislators now and then ominously mutter that they would like to remove all the governmental machinery from Atlanta back to the old govermental seat; but the Atlanta influence is powerful against such a movement. A SPANISH DAGGER TREE, SAVANNAH. The deft and graceful pen of that sprightly and distinguished Georgian poet, Mr. Paul H. Hayne, is fitter than mine to paint aright the charms of the Georgia lowland scenery. To a poet's verse belong the inexpressible charms of the dark green and somber foliage, the hurry of waters on the white, low beaches, the sighing of the wind through the long and dainty moss-beards, and the magical effects of sunrise and moonrise on the broad and placid current of the Savannah. To verse belong the many stories and legends of the chain of fertile islands strung along the Georgian coast, from Tybee to Cumberland. These island plantations are fast falling into decay since the close of the war, and the culture of sea island cotton on them has experienced many sad reverses. The war left its scars on these islands. The Union troops seized Tybee, near the mouth of the Savannah, as early as 1862, and from it bombarded that superb fortification, Fort Pulaski, on Cockspur Island. The massive walls of Pulaski, on which the United States had lavished money and skill, only to find it turned against them, yielded to the terrible summons hurled at it from the mouths of rifled cannon and mortars; and the battered stones loom up to-day, a sad memorial to the passer-by on the river of the havoc wrought by civil Journeying along the coast, one passes Warsaw sound, where the plucky little monitors captured the ironclad "Atlanta" in 1863, and a sail up the Ogeechee River will bring one to the scene of the brave defense of Fort McAllister, whose little garrison, stirred by a sense of duty, held grimly on, long after Sherman was at the gates of Savannah with a victorious army, and the Union fleet kept the coast blockaded-long after they had been cut off from all hope of relief; who held on until captured and literally crushed down by overwhelming numbers. The many lagoons which penetrate the low and fertile lands are easily accessible, and on the islands there will in future be delightful homes, when a fresh and numerous population shall have come to a State whose only need is more people. The Atlantic coast of Georgia, seen from the deck of an ocean steamer, seems low and uninteresting,-only a few sand hillocks now and then loom above the level of the waves, but a nearer approach shows luxuriant vegetation and enviable richness of |