It would be much better for Northern men, who seek to avail themselves of these advantages, to go in small colonies. They should not be too large, lest they grow unwieldy. Half-a-dozen families, purchasing farms of one or two hundred acres apiece, adjacent to each other, may thus make up a little neighborhood of their own, which can sustain its own school, and which will be sure to form the nucleus for further accretions from the North. A farm of a hundred acres can thus be bought, in many localities, for five or six hundred dollars, half or more of it on long credits. No emigrant should be without half as much more, to put at once into improvements for his family. * * * * * The Mobile and Ohio Railroad, down which I went from Meridian to Mobile, seemed to be in better condition at that time than any of the other Southern railroads, and the cars ran heavily loaded. Even then they were making the trip between the mouth of the Ohio River and Mobile, in forty-eight hours. The mails here, as elsewhere on the entire trip from Washington, were carried with a degree of carelessness that showed how little the gratuity of keeping up a mail service for them was yet appreciated by the Southerners themselves. Often no one was at the station to receive the mail. Sometimes it was handed to any chance negro boy, with instructions to deliver it to the postmaster. Occasionally it was thrown out on the ground. The route-agents, on the other hand, were not free from fault. Often, especially at night, they went to sleep, carried mails past a dozen stations before they waked again. But they were not always to be blamed. One route-agent told me he had to make the entire trip from Columbus to Mobile, two days and two nights, without sleep! Enough agents had not yet been appointed; and the few on duty were making an effort to do the work of the full force. The greatest embarrassment, however, was for lack of postmasters. “’Twill be a long time ’fo’ you get any postmaste’ heah, ’less you ’bolish that lyin’ oath,” said a strapping fellow who received the mail at one place. “He was not appointed postmaste’, but he tuck pape’s and lette’s to ’commodate ’em. You mout git wimmen for postmaste’s or niggahs; but you can’t git no white men; cause they all went with their State. An’ mo’—ef you fetch any d——d tories heah, that went agin their State, and so kin take the oath, I tell ye, ’twill soon be too hot to hold ’em. We haint got no use for sich.” * * * * *