At last a light side-wheeler came steaming down the river for us, and presently we were joined by General Gordon Granger, and the whole array of city officials, representing the Yankee Government in the city. Among them was a keen-looking, suspiciously-elegant cotton agent, shirt and fingers ablaze with diamonds, and face wreathed in smiles, to meet the gentlemen whom he supposed all-powerful at the Treasury Department. He was enamored of the South; thought it would be best now not to irritate her, and especially that there should be no more offensive abolitionism than was absolutely necessary. He doubted very much the policy of talking about negro suffrage, and was sure he could do better for the Government in cotton by conciliating the Southern character. Besides, the negroes ought to be under some rigid control any way. If left to absolute freedom, they would not work, and the country would be ruined. Secretary McCulloch once said: “I am sure I sent _some_ honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whether any of them remained honest very long.” This man, who greeted us with such bright smiles and smooth-spoken talk, has since been fined two hundred thousand dollars and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for cotton stealing! With attention about equally divided between the dangers of our tortuous, torpedo-lined passage, and the “thunders” of the salute to the Chief-Justice, we finally reached the tumble-down wharves. Planks had been torn up for squares along the levee to make fire-wood, and the bare sleepers were rotting from exposure; elsewhere the decayed planks rattled ominously under carriage-wheels, and disclosed here and there ugly holes that might prove dangerous to unwary walkers. Half the warehouses and shops along the levee seemed closed; a few transports only lay at the landing, and anchored off in the stream were portions of Farragut’s famous fleet; but of the commerce that once made Mobilians dream of rivaling New Orleans, scarcely an indication remained. When one entered the city, however, save in the universal torpor of business, and the presence of soldiers at every corner, few traces of the war were to be seen. The shrubbery was as glorious as ever—a little more luxuriant indeed, since the pruning-shears had perforce been idle for a year or two. Lovely country villas still lined the shell-road, which was once the glory of Mobile. There were hedges of Cherokee rose, and arbors of Scuppernong grapes, groves of orange-trees, and everywhere the glossy leaves of the magnolia, gleaming and shimmering in the sunlight, as the wind stirred them. A better hint that the war had wrought its changes was to be gathered when one came to pay the bill for an hour’s drive. The craziest, ricketty vehicle, with a single seat, cost ten dollars.