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LETTERS FROM ALABAMA.-No. II.

Dallas, May 20th, 18-. THERE is no solitude like that which is felt by him who for the first time walks the streets of a busy city in which he is a total stranger. Crowds of human beings pass by, each possessed of the thoughts, feelings, and affections of a man; yet not one stretches out the hand of friendship, not one bestows a nod of acquaintance, not one gives so much as a glance of recognition. In the gloom of the forest, in the silence of the wilderness, far from human abodes, my heart leaps for joy; there I am not lonely, though alone; there hundreds of objects meet my gaze, with which I have long been accustomed to hold sweet communion.

"Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears;
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

Such thoughts as these obtruded on my mind, as, having landed from the vessel just as day was departing, a time that predisposes to depression, I walked, unheeded and unknown through the city of Mobile. These thoughts, however, soon passed off, and gave way to curiosity and surprise. I was struck by an unusual character, a certain something of a foreign appearance, which was forcibly evident, but which I cannot describe, in the streets a little removed from the more commercial part of the city. Perhaps it was owing to the absence of foot-pavements, and to the occurrence of large patches of what looked at a little distance like grass, but consisted only of short weeds very thinly scattered; to the strange trees and plants which shaded the sides, such as the pride of China (Melia azedarach), the honey locust (Gleditschia triacanthos), the fan-palm (Chamarops palmetto), Adam's needle (Yucca aloifolia), &c.; to the almost universality of open verandahs, beneath which the inhabitants were sitting to enjoy. the cool breath of evening; or to all these combined, and other causes which escaped my detection.

I was surprised to observe dead horses and cows suffered to lie exposed on the shore, scarce out of the town, a neglect which I should suppose by no means likely in this hot climate to contribute to the health of the inhabitants. The exhalations arising from the extensive muddy flats, which are left uncovered at low water, must

likewise be very prejudicial, and probably materially tend to give this town the unhealthy reputation which it possesses. Placed at the mouth of two large rivers, which may be said to drain the whole of the State, and protected by a deep and capacious bay, Mobile may be considered as well situated for commerce; and a flourishing trade exists in cotton, the staple of the State, with Liverpool, London, Havre, and the ports of the northern United States. The shallowness of the water in the bay is however a drawback, as vessels above a hundred tons burden cannot come to the town, but are compelled to lie at fifteen or twenty miles distance, causing great delay in unloading and shipping goods.

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Having left all nature still unemerged from the torpor of winter, when I departed, and having since spent a tedious period of many weeks on the ocean without any intermission, except that of the brief but pleasant hour spent on Cayo Boca, you will easily understand the enthusiasm with which I embraced the first opening of sunlight the next morning, to hasten into the dense forests which closely environ the town. Everything here was new, scarcely a tree occurred that I was familiar with, and few I can now recollect sufficiently to identify. The magnolias, superb and magnificent as they are, were conspicuous and numerous; large, glossy, laurel-like leaves, gave them a rich and noble appearance, though I saw none of them adorned with the beautiful blossoms for which they are so famous. It may be that I was too late, that the season of flowering was over; for, as I passed up the river, many trees on the banks were richly ornamented with blossoms, especially as I approached the hill country. Large and gorgeously-coloured insects hovered over the flowers, or fluttered from bush to bush, in such profusion that I was almost bewildered. I was but scantily furnished with collecting boxes, and one was no sooner occupied than it had to be emptied, and the former captive rejected for a more tempting prize, until at length I resolved to cease capturing, and content myself with admiring. A handsome locust was numerous in the larva state, of a glossy black, striped longitudinally with showy scarlet. I took a pretty little skipper butterfly which is not figured in Boisduval's splendid "Iconographie ;" it is much like Hesperia malva, but still more resembles H. Proto of Godart, or H. Orcus of Cramer. I observed, in the little pools of dark water by the road-sides and in the woods, numbers of creatures that would dart from the edge into deep water the instant a footstep approached, so quickly that it was almost impossible to catch a glance at their form. I at

length discovered that they were cray-fish (Astacus Americanus), closely resembling those of our own rivers.

In the waste places around the city, and especially near the shore, the prickly pear (Opuntia) grows in large impenetrable thickets. Every one knows the flat, oval, fleshy joints of which this plant is composed, each growing out of the edge of another, and each studded with tufts of bristling spines. Flowers and fruit were both numerous; the latter unripe indeed, yet sufficiently attractive, from their plump contour and purple hue, to tempt me to essay the taste of one. In a moment I regretted my rashness, for my tongue and lips were filled with fine barbed spines, which continually worked farther in, and gave great pain. One by one, however, I contrived to tear them out, or break them off, but not till I had thoroughly learned the need of caution in eating prickly pears.

As I had no acquaintance in Mobile, I took the first opportunity of proceeding to the mountainous part of the State, to which I had introductions. The same day, therefore, I took passage on board one of the fine high-pressure steamers that throng the Mobile wharves, to go up the Alabama river.

It was evening when we left the city; from which the course of the river winds for many miles through a flat marshy country, and is bordered on each side by a broad belt of reeds, which grow thick and strong out of the very water. By day I suppose this appearance would be unpleasing; but the gloom of night, limiting the view to a few yards around us, and making yisible the beautiful fireflies which danced and crawled about the reeds in myriads, or made interrupted lines of radiance as they flew like shooting stars through the air, made the scene one of romantic and high gratification. By and by, we come into more uneven ground, where the high banks reflect a black shadow on the smooth water, seeming to contract the broad river to a brook; the calm, mirror-like surface, unruffled by a zephyr, gives back the light of each individual star; and now and then, as we round some point, a bright red glare, with its watery reflection, suddenly and unexpectedly bursts upon our gaze from the beacon-fire of some wood-yard, casting a broad illumination on the opposite bank, which has a startling and poetic effect; while the hoarse and hollow booming of the steam, occurring at regularly-measured intervals, seems not out of keeping with the general solemnity of the scene. The busy hum and bustle of the vessel gradually subsided into quietness; but long after all the rest of the passengers had retired to rest, to

whom I suppose the scene presented not the charm of novelty, I continued on deck with unabated delight; and when I retired, it was not to sleep, for I could not avoid sitting up in bed, and gazing, through the open window of my berth, on the placid beauty of the night.

At early day, too, I found it delightful to stand alone on the upper deck, and watch the opening morning. It was yet dawn; stillness and quiet prevailed, the decks were yet untrodden, the noise of the day was yet hushed, the bats and the whip-poor-wills were still sweeping over the stream in tortuous flight, both engaged in the same vocation, the pursuit of crepuscular insects. The breadth of wing and rushing flight of the latter deceived me for some time into the notion that they were large swallows; the bat, though of swift wing, had no chance whatever in a race with them. As the eastern sky began to glow and brighten into fiery red, they gradually disappeared, the bats being the first to retire. Soon the sun, with dilated face, peeped over the horizon in cloudless majesty, and flushed with golden light the hills and cultivated fields that surrounded us; but as yet the air was delightfully cool and refreshing, and perfumed with the breath of flowers, which after a while was dissipated by the increasing heat. The river was smooth, and shone like silver, until its surface was broken and swollen by the rushing steamer; before us we had a polished surface, reflecting a cloudless sky; behind us we left a rolling sea, enshrouded beneath a long sable cloud of dense smoke.

Nor was the day without pleasure, though we passed no towns, and very few settlements, at least during the daylight: occasionally we stopped to replenish our stock of wood, which is cut, split, and corded, at certain stations by negroes residing at them; these stations are called wood-yards. The moment the steamer stops, the crew begin to bring the wood on board on their shoulders, and it is astonishing to observe how quickly the great piles are transferred, and we are again on our roaring and rushing course. Here and there we open on some large cleared estate, and fields planted with corn or cotton, as yet scarcely appearing above ground, and perhaps a single negro-hut; but the planters' houses and the general buildings of the farm do not appear, they being situated at a considerable distance from the margin. Every spring the river overflows its banks, and inundates the surrounding country to a wide extent. Of this I saw sufficient traces, though the water had now returned to its wonted channel: high up, on the trees which overhang the water, the branches were incumbered with

rubbish that had been left there by the spring flood, and which showed the great extent to which the river had been swollen. In one tree was the carcase of a cow that had probably been drowned in the freshets, and having become entangled among the forked boughs, had been deposited in the odd situation in which I saw it. In general the banks are clothed with tall forests to the water's edge; trees arrayed in all shades of green, of various height and form, some covered with glorious flowers, suddenly appeared and as swiftly vanished-a constantly-shifting panorama. Many trees had their tangled roots all exposed by the washing away of the soil from beneath them, others were prostrate in the stream from the operation of the same cause; sometimes a pretty wooded island appeared, cleaving the stream with its shore of bright yellow sand; now the river expanded into a silvery lake, then narrowed to a gorge, between beetling precipices of limestone rising perpendicularly to the height of several hundred feet.

I was surprised to observe so exceedingly little of animal life: scarcely a single insect (except the fireflies) was to be seen during the whole voyage up, and very few birds. The depth of the forest is not favourable to the development of animal existence; the edges of the woods, or open plains, where light is abundant, where flowers bloom, and herbs seed, are the resort of birds and insects; and on this account, these charming visitants are found to swarm when man has made a clearing, even in the spot where before scarcely an individual could have been found. few I saw the blue heron (Ardea caerulea), with double neck and stretched-out legs, slowly flapped his great wings, in his heavy flagging flight from shore to shore; the belted kingfisher (Alcedo alcyon) shot along with a harsh rattling laugh, or sitting on some low projecting branch, suddenly plunged headlong into the water beneath, and instantly emerged with his prey; the wood-duck (Anas sponsa) flew shyly along the margin, close to the water, beneath the overhanging bushes; now and then we overtook a water-tortoise (Emys) swimming at the surface, his body submerged, poking up his head at intervals with a timid curiosity, to see what all the noise was about.

There is perhaps no river so winding as the Alabama. The boat's head is turned towards every point of the compass, and that often within the space of a few minutes: sometimes we may make a run of fifty miles, and be then within three miles of where we were at first. Indeed, at the place where I am now residing, which is about six miles in a direct line from the river, I have

VOL. II.

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