1811.-Seven commissioners were that it is much less expensive to manure old land than to clear the timber from new. sent to Pensacola by the president of the United States, to obtain, if possible, a cession of Florida, but were unsuccessful. The next year, Fernandina and Amelia island were captured by Com. Campbell and an American force; and the place was a great resort of smugglers and slave-traders, during the American embargo. 1813. The place was restored to the Spaniards. 1814.-Colonel Nichols, with an English fleet, took Pensacola, and armed the Indians against the Americans. On the 6th of November, in that year, Gen. Jackson appeared before Pensacola with a strong force, and soon took the place, but the British escaped in their ships. Gen. Jackson destroyed the fortifications and evacuated the place, leaving private property wholly uninjured. Sea-island cotton on the sea-border, and green-seed cotton inland, have heretofore been the principal crops; but the cultivation of sugar is now fast gaining the ascendency in the middle and eastern parts of the country; and experiments have proved that the cane will flourish anywhere, while it is more certain and valuable in most places, and there can be no danger of glutting the market with this article. There are three kinds of sugar-cane cultivated in Florida: the Creole, the Otaheite, and the Ribbon; the first of which is thought to yield more sugar, though slower in ripening. The Ribbon is better adapted to a more northern climate, as it ripens in a short time; but the grinding is more laborious, on account of the superior hardness of the stalk. It has another advantage, in not fermenting as speedily as the Creole. 1819. A treaty of amity, settlement, and limits, was concluded between Spain and the United States, by which Florida was ceded to this country. Gen. Jack-The yellow varieties are preferred south son was appointed governor. 1822. Florida was made a territory; and the following year Tallahassee was made the seat of government. The improvements made in population, agriculture, arts, and commerce, have been rapid since that epoch, though much retarded for several years by the war with the Indians, who, in spite of their claim to their own country, and the bravery and skill with which they defended it, have been removed beyond the Mississippi. A careless and wasteful plan of agriculture, too common in some of the southern parts of the Union, has exhausted great tracts of land in Florida. Williams says it "has destroyed the native fertility of the soil, from the Chesapeake bay to the St. Mary's river, with few exceptions. The object has been to cultivate as much land and with as few hands as possible; to exhaust the soil and turn it common, and then to remove and pursue the same course again, upon new land." He remarks that abundance of seaweed and marsh mud are to be found all along the coast of Florida, and that all experience proves of thirty degrees latitude. Transplanting is best performed at the season of ripeness. Excellent stalks have been raised six successive years from the same roots; and we are yet unable to say how much longer it might be done with depreciation. In the spring it is useful to cut off the tops several times, to make the plant spread and destroy the weeds; and the heads cut off are excellent food for cattle and horses. Williams assures us that the culture and manufacture are carried on with full success on small farms, as well as on the largest estates: for a press may be made by the farmer, at little cost, which will perform the work as well or even better, than a mill costing ten thousand dollars. This branch of business has some peculiar advantages, particularly in the small amount of labor required in the cultivation of a sugar plantation. No work upon it is necessary from midsummer until harvest, though at that time many hands must be employed. Indigo was the principal product un der the British, and silk might be well made in the northern districts. WEEKES SO THIS state lies between thirty degrees ten minutes, and thirty-five degrees, north latitude, and between eight and eleven degrees, west longitude from Washington. From north to south it occupies a tract of land three hundred and seventeen miles long, and one hundred and seventy-four miles broad, containing forty-six thousand square miles. In 1850, the population was numbered at 771,650. Alabama is situated in the valley of Tennessee, and the basin of Mobile, except its southeast and southwest angles. The southern part borders on the gulf of Mexico for the space of fifty or sixty miles, and is nearly covered with pines, and low and level. In the central part it is hilly and varied by prairies, and broken and somewhat mountainous in the north. The soil, in the northern portion of the state, is excellent; but in the southern, it is sandy and barren. The native trees in the northern and middle sections are black and white oak, hickory, poplar, cedar, chestnut, pine, mulberry, &c. The arable land of southern Alabama, may be found mostly on or near to the water-courses, and is called by two different names, alluvion and intermediate. The intermediate has a kind of soil between the open pine woods and the alluvial river-bottoms. Although it comprises the much greater part of the state, it is sterile. It abounds more in the southern than in the northern sections. Alabama has a number of fine rivers, of which the Mobile is the principal. The Alabama is a very fine river, and is navigable to Claiborne, sixty miles above its junction, for vessels drawing six feet of water. At the mouth of the Cahawba, one hundred and fifty miles further, it has four or five feet of water, and in the shallowest places, to the junction of the Coosa and Talapoosa, the rivers by which it is formed, it is never less than three feet. The Tombigbee is four hundred and fifty miles long, and is navigable for schooners to St. Stephen's, one hundred and twenty miles, and for steamboats to Columbus, Mississippi. Indeed, it is boatable for the greater part of its course. It has a large branch which is called the Black Warrior. This river is navigable to Tuscaloosa. Another river, the Chatahoochee, forms a boundary of Alabama; and the northern part is watered by the Tennes see. Mobile river, properly the lower part of the principal stream in the state, is formed by the confluence of two others, the principal of which is the Alabama, and the second the Tombigbee. And the Alabama, in its turn, is formed by the Coosa and the Talapoosa. It is to be regretted that this incorrect plan in naming streams has been adopted here, as in some other places, as it leads to confusion and often to false impressions. A stream should bear one name from its source to its mouth, and each branch should be named in the same manner. The Coosa, which is regarded as the main branch of the Alabama, ought to have been named as the main stream; and we shall so consider it, and follow the order of nature, and the proper practice of geographers, in our brief description. It rises in Tennessee, between the sources of the Hiwassee and Chatahoochee, in latitude thirty-five degrees five minutes south, the highest point of all the waters flowing directly into the gulf of Mexico, east of the Mississippi. The head stream bears the name of the Conessauga, and flows first in a westwardly direction, and then southwestwardly and south. At the distance of seventy miles in Georgia, it receives the Etowah, and there assumes the name of Coosa. About ten miles beyond it crosses the line of Alabama, and turns southwest, south, and southeast, till it receives the Talapoosa and changes its name again, as beforementioned, to Alabama river, at Coosanda, in latitude thirty-two degrees twentyeight minutes, longitude nine degrees twenty-two minutes west from Washington. In this part of its course, the Alabama (or Coosa) flows about four hundred miles, including its windings, while it gains only two hundred and forty, measuring in a straight line, draining an area of about nine thousand square miles. The Alabama now flows westwardly until it receives the Cahawba, and then turns south-southwest, until it is joined by the Tombigbee, and changes its name to the Mobile. The lower part of the channel is no less crooked than the upper; for while the distance in a direct line from the Talapoosa is but one hundred and twenty miles, the navigation is not less than two hundred and fifty. Mobile bay is of a triangular shape, about thirty-two miles across, and into it empties the Mobile river, by several mouths. The outer bar has sixteen feet water; but Dog river bar, which is seven miles below the harbor, has only eleven. The principal entrance is between Dauphin island and Mobile point. There is another: the pass of Heron, which affords a communication between Pascagoula sound and the harbor, between Dauphin island and the continent. This has six feet of water at middle tide, and is taken by steamboats and coasting vessels on the way to New Orleans, by the Rigolets, Lake Pontchartrain, and Bayou St. John. Anchorage can be found in any part of that route, in mud, shells, and sand. The basin of Mobile river contains an area of 37,120 square miles, in the draining of which that stream and its branches perform their parts. It extends north to the borders of the basin of the Tennessee, and east to that of the Chatahoochee. When we consider the variety of surface, soil, and productions, in Alabama the extent of its navigable routes, and the facilities for commerce, together with the mildness of its climate, it might seem strange that it should so long have remained almost uncultivated and uninhabited, if we were not aware of the various unfavorable circumstances connected with its situation. It has been shown, in our notices of the Carolinas, that the colonists near the coast remained for a generation ignorant of the advantages of the upper country in the interior: those elevated regions, which enjoy a climate more favorable to health and bodily exertion, and abounding in productions unknown among the low, hot, and often sandy and barren | rangement of difficulties arising out of plains on which they had pitched. conflicting claims to territory in America. The feebleness of the young colonies, the distractions caused among them by ignorant and evil counsellors and rulers, the danger of foreign invasion by sea, and still more the fear of the powerful Indian tribes on their western frontiers, afforded sufficient explanation for this delay in extending their borders in that direction. These reasons apply with double force to Alabama, for it lay still further beyond; and, in addition to this, the territory was in the vicinity of another enemy or rival of the English: the French on the Mississippi. A portion of it, indeed, and that the most important part, in fact, the key of the whole, was early occupied by them: we mean Mobile; which, being placed at the mouth of the chief river, and on a good harbor, commanded the whole accessible portion of the country. Since Alabama has come into the possession of the United States, and has risen to the dignity of a state, it has had to struggle with obstacles arising from its backwardness; and by the superiority of New Orleans as a great mart of commerce, long established, the difficulty of concentrating business at a small place in its neighborhood is much increased. The natural obstacles of the interior are in many parts great, as may be perceived from some of the particulars we have given; and thus several circumstances combine, which are likely to retard the rapid increase of settlements for some time to come. The prolonged disputes and contests for territory between England, Spain, and France, brought an innumerable host of evils upon the early colonies, and especially upon those most accessible to invasion. Alabama lay so far from the Atlantic coast, so near to the French settlements on the Mississippi, and so totally within the Indian territory, that an occupation of any part as a British colony, or even a visit to it, was not to be regarded as a possible thing, for a long time. Until the year 1667, there had never been any treaty or understanding entered into between England and Spain, for the prevention or ar It was then, however, happily agreed, in due form, between those two powers, in a treaty framed by Sir William Godolphin, that, "the king of Great Britain should always possess, in full right of sovereignty and property, all the countries, islands, and colonies, lying and being situated in the West Indies, or any part of America, which he and his subjects then held and possessed, inasmuch that they neither can nor ought to be thereafter contested on any account whatsoever." The buccaniers were suppressed, and the navigation of the American seas was freely opened to both nations. It was also agreed, that all ships in distress entering any of the ports, should be admitted and treated with humanity, and freely permitted to depart. The Spaniards then gave up, by this treaty, all claim to the Carolinas; and the prosperity of the British colonies would have been increased by it, had that power observed it in good faith. Soon after this event, a treaty of neutrality was concluded between Great Britain and France, by which limits were fixed, with greater precision than before, to the various possessions of these three powers in America, and the freedom of commerce and navigation was better secured. But the happy results which might naturally have been expected from these measures, were greatly diminished by the arrogant pretensions advanced by one of the religious orders in Spain. The Franciscan monks, claiming the authority of the pope as paramount to international agreements, found means to gain a footing in Florida, where, under the protection and favor of Spanish fortresses and troops, they soon gained over to their direction the Indians, and established a missionary system throughout that country, by which they raised up a power hostile to Great Britain, as a protestant nation, from which a long series of evils resulted, that continued through several generations. Hence arose the hostility of the Florida Indi ans and some of the more northern tribes, with many of the disasters which they produced; and hence, and from a similar cause, viz., the long and continued intrigues and open military expeditions of the French Jesuits in Canada, the sad scenes of fire, murder, and captivity, which spread a gloom over the history of the colonies of New England and New York. more bold, formidable, and destructive enemies than they would else have been. In 1730, after the colony of Carolina, with the extensive territory which it then included, had been purchased by the crown, Sir Alexander Cumming came from England to America, to secure the friendship of the Cherokees by a formal treaty; and met the chiefs of the nation at Nequassee, a place about three hundred miles in the interior, where he was received on the most friendly terms. Five of them accompa-. nied him to England, where they made a treaty of peace and amity, agreeing never to trade with any other people but the British, to aid and fight for them, &c.; "not to permit the white men of any other nation, to build any forts or cabins, or plant any corn among them, upon lands which belong to the great king, to restore runaway negroes, to submit to English laws in case of murder on either side," &c. The Indians returned the following year, highly satisfied with their success. Governor Glen, in 1755, had the treaty confirmed, and obtained a vast cession of land. But this promising aspect of affairs was not of long duration; and the scenes of war and distress which followed, as we have briefly stated in our accounts of the older colonies, condemned the territory of Alabama to the long neglect which it suffered, in consequence of the hostile state of its savage inhabitants. The planting of the colonies along the Mississippi, in the year 1709, is worthy of notice as one of the great causes of the delay in the occupation of the territory of this state by the English. Louis XIV. of France having granted a large tract of land about the mouths of that river to Secretary Crozat, the settlement was soon commenced; and, although the place was considered by the southern British colonists as lying within their patent, no attempt was made to interrupt the intruders, and the steps they were taking were not even protested against. The French gradually won to their interest some of the Indians, and extended plantations in different directions, while they established forts and trading stations still further in advance. In 1725, they built a fort on Alabama river, at a considerable distance above its mouth. That position, called Fort Alabama, afforded them facilities of intercourse with the Creek nation, whose hunting grounds extended to that vicinity; and when a friendly standing had been established with Thus we have seen that a small porthem, the Cherokees were, ere long, tion of the present state of Alabama brought into correspondence; and thus was occupied by the French, early in the foundations were laid of an exten- the last century, when, soon after the sive rival interest to the British colonies, founding of Louisiana, they built a fort the evil effects of which were long felt. at Mobile, and settled at several points To oppose the intrigues of the French, upon the river; while the English left who soon brought the Choctaws, Chick- the territory unoccupied, and made no asaws, and other tribes, under their in- attempt to settle any part of that large fluence, the president of Carolina em- portion of it which was included in the ployed Captain Tobias Fitch, to act as charter of Georgia, so that nearly the his agent among the Creeks, and Colo- whole territory remained in the undisnel George Chicken among the Chero-puted possession of the Indians. In kees; but they were unable to prevent 1802, it was ceded to the United States all connexion between those nations and the French, who generally supplied them with tomahawks and firearms, which they adopted instead of their bows and arrows, and thus became far by Georgia, and annexed to the Mississippi territory. In 1817, it was made a distinct territory, and on the 2d of August, 1819, admitted as a free and independent state into the American Union. |