CHAPTER IV.

THE COTTON STATES OF THE SOUTH.

THE Cotton States, par excellence, are South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The southern half of North Carolina and Tennessee produces good cotton; but neither of these States is included by our best planters in the list of cotton States. As, however, they both produce and manufacture largely, we think they are entitled to be included in the cotton zone of the world, if not in the first-class cotton States of the South.

The area of this entire region is about 650,000 square miles, containing over 400,000,000 acres, greater than the area of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and some of the German States, put together.

Let it be populated as densely as England, it is capable of sustaining 160,000,000 people. Populated like France, it would hold about 100,000,000. Populated as we think it should be, it will sustain, with ease and comfort, about 30,000,000.

No country on the face of the earth presents greater inducements to the laborer, the manufacturer, or the capitalist. Fifty years ago three-fourths of it was a wilderness. A traveller through the South, in the summer of 1860, might have said with propriety, "The wilderness shall

blossom like the rose." The millions of cotton blooms in myriads of fields would have suggested the passage.

As this book is intended partly for those who want information on all matters of interest to the immigrant, we propose a brief sketch of the cotton States, exhibiting the varied resources of the country, and pointing out with candor the facilities which the planter will enjoy, and the difficulties which he must expect to encounter.

Man cannot live by cotton alone. He must have food and timber and iron, coal, salt, and the fruits of vines, trees, and shrubs. Do the cotton States supply all these wants? This question we propose to answer.

We will distribute the subject under the following heads:

Section 1. Geological Features, including Mineral Produc

tions.

5. Productions of the Forest-Flora of the South.

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6. Fauna of the South.

SECT. I.-GEOLOGICAL FEATURES.

The southern portion of the Gulf States, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, is included by geologists in the alluvium and post-pliocene formations, and the eastern parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, along the Atlantic slope, belong to the same formation.

The average width of these deposits is about one hundred and fifty miles. Proceeding northward from the Gulf toward the State of Tennessee, we find, underlying these formations, the eocene and cretaceous in Mississippi; the eocene, cretaceous, carboniferous, and upper Silurian and granite series in Alabama; the eocene, cretaceous, carboniferous, and granite series in Georgia; the eocene, cretaceous, and granite series in South Carolina. Proceeding from east to west in North Carolina, we find the alluvium, post-pliocene, miocene, eocene, cretaceous, granite series, and, near the junction with Tennessee, the lower Silurian rocks.

The State of Tennessee is more complicated in its geology than any other. Beginning at the western boundary, we find, at the low places on the Mississippi river, the alluvium and post-pliocene extending from the northern to the southern part of the State. Proceeding eastward,. we discover the eocene, underlaid successively by the Cretaceous, the Devonian, the upper Silurian, and lower Silurian, till we reach the Cumberland mountains, where the last-mentioned formation is overlaid by the carboniferous group, including the coal itself. This coal is a part of the great Appalachian coal field, which extends in a southwestern direction into northeastern Alabama.

Texas and Arkansas present substantially the same variety as Alabama.

MINERAL PRODUCTIONS OF THESE STATES.

The alluvium, post-pliocene, and cretaceous formations nowhere produce any massive or heavy minerals. The other formations bear the usual variety of minerals useful in arts and agriculture.

North Carolina has gold, iron, marble, limestone, lead, marl, and salt.

Tennessee has compact limestone, marbles in great variety, saltpetre, Epsom salts, alum, fine quartzose sand for glass, hydraulic limestone, millstone grit, roofing slate, iron, zinc, lead, copper, coal in abundance, and gold and silver in small quantities. Marl is also found in the western part of the State in the cretaceous system.

South Carolina has marl, salt, metamorphic marble, gold. Georgia and Alabama have marl, salt, limestone, marble, coal, gold, lead, and quartzose sand.

Florida has no massive minerals, but has an abundance of clay, marl, and fine sand for glass. The same remark is applicable to Mississippi and Louisiana. There is no building limestone in any one of these three States, and the soft ferruginous sandstone is unfit for architectural purposes. Some salt has been found in Florida, and a considerable mine of it in Louisiana.

Texas has marl, salt, coal, lead, saltpetre, and limestone. Arkansas has marl, salt, saltpetre, lead, silver, limestone and gold-bearing rocks, in which some gold has been found, roofing slate, and whetstone.

SECT. II.-HYDROGRAPHY.

WE recognize in this region four water slopes: 1. The Texas slope; 2. The Mississippi slope; 3. The eastern Gulf slope; 4. The Atlantic slope.

THE TEXAS SLOPE.

The largest rivers of this system are the Rio Grande, Nueces, San Antonio, Guadalupe, Colorado, Brazos, Trinity, Neches, and Sabine.

All of these streams run separately into the western part of the Gulf of Mexico. Most of them are navigable, and small steamers are generally able to ascend to a distance of from fifty to five hundred miles.

The Mississippi slope embraces all the country watered by streams which flow into the Mississippi river, and includes the States of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the western part of Tennessee.

The principal streams are the Mississippi, the White, Arkansas, and Red rivers on the west of the "Father of Waters," and the Yazoo and Big Black on the east. We may also include the Pearl and Pascagoula, which, running southward through the State of Mississippi, empty into the Gulf.

The eastern Gulf slope embraces all of Alabama except the northern part through which the Tennessee river runs, all of Florida except that lying immediately on the Atlantic, and western Georgia.

The principal streams are the Tombigbee, Alabama, Appalachicola, and Suwanee.

These streams all flow in a southerly direction, and empty into the Gulf of Mexico between longitude 83° and 88° west from Greenwich.

The Atlantic slope embraces eastern Georgia, eastern Florida, all of South Carolina, and all of North Carolina except that part which lies between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany mountains.

The principal streams are the St. Johns, Altamaha, Ogeechee, Savannah, Edisto, Santee, Great Pedee, Cape Fear, Neuse, Tar, and Roanoke.

On all these streams and their unnumbered tributaries there are valley lands of surpassing richness and fertility,