year.  The amount of money deposited in bank by the negroes of these islands is a hundred and forty thousand dollars.  One joint, subscription to the seven-thirty loan amounted to eighty thousand dollars.  Notwithstanding the fact that the troops which landed on the islands robbed, indiscriminately, the negroes of their money, mules, and supplies, the negroes went back to work again.  General Saxton, who has chief charge of this enterprise, has his head-quarters at Beaufort.  If these facts, and the actual prosperity of these islands could be generally known throughout the South, it would do more to induce the whites to take hold of the freed-labor system than all the general orders and arbitrary commands that General Hatch has issued.

The resources of Georgia are similar to those of South Carolina, and the climate differs but little from that of the latter State.  The rice-swamps are unhealthy, and the malaria which arises from them is said to be fatal to whites.  Many of the planters express a fear that the abolition of slavery has ended the culture of rice.  They argue that the labor is so difficult and exhaustive, that the negroes will never perform it excepting under the lash.  Cruel modes of punishment being forbidden, the planters look upon the rice-lands as valueless.  Time will show whether these fears are to be realized or not.  If it should really happen that the negroes refuse to labor where their lives are of comparatively short duration, the country must consent to restore slavery to its former status, or purchase its rice in foreign countries.  As rice is produced in India without slave labor, it is possible that some plan may be invented for its cultivation here.

Georgia has a better system of railways than any other Southern State, and she is fortunate in possessing several navigable rivers.  The people are not as hostile to Northerners as the inhabitants of South Carolina, but they do not display the desire to encourage immigration that is manifested in North Carolina.  In the interior of Georgia, at the time I am writing, there is much suffering on account of a scarcity of food.  Many cases of actual starvation are reported.

Florida has few attractions to settlers.  It is said there is no spot of land in the State three hundred feet above the sea-level.  Men born with fins and webbed feet might enjoy themselves in the lakes and swamps, which form a considerable portion of Florida.  Those whose tastes are favorable to timber-cutting, can find a profitable employment in preparing live-oak and other timbers for market.  The climate is very healthy, and has been found highly beneficial to invalids.  The vegetable productions of the State are of similar character to those of Georgia, but their amount is not large.

In the Indian tongue, Alabama signifies “Here we rest.”  The traveler who rests in the State of that name, finds an excellent agricultural region.  He finds that cotton is king with the Alabamians, and that the State has fifteen hundred miles of navigable rivers and a good railway system.  He finds that Alabama suffered less by the visits of our armies than either Georgia or South Carolina.  The people extend him the same welcome that he received in Georgia.  They were too deeply interested in the perpetuation of slavery to do otherwise than mourn the failure to establish the Confederacy.