Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existingCatlin, George
History
Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existing
Catlin, George
Indians of North America
This is the only place I have found in the Southern country to which
Northern people can repair with safety in the summer season; and I know
not of a place in the world where they can go with better guarantees
of good health, and a reasonable share of the luxuries of life. The
town of Pensacola is beautifully situated on the shore of the bay,
and contains at present about fifteen hundred inhabitants, most of
them Spanish Creoles. They live an easy and idle life, without any
energy further than for the mere means of living. The bay abounds in
the greatest variety of fish, which are easily taken, and the finest
quality of oysters are found in profusion, even alongside of the
wharves.
Government having fixed upon this harbour as the great naval depôt
for all the Southern coast, the consequence will be, that a vast sum
of public money will always be put into circulation in this place;
and the officers of the navy, together with the officers of the army,
stationed in the three forts built and now building at this place, will
constitute the most polished and desirable society in our country.
What Pensacola _has been_ or _is_, in a commercial point of view,
little can be said; but what it _can be_, and most certainly _will
be_, in a few years, the most sanguine can hardly predict. I would
unhesitatingly recommend this to the enterprising capitalists of the
North, as a place where they can _live_, and where (if nature has been
kind, as experience has taught us) they _will_ flourish. A few such
men have taken their stand here within a few months past; and, as a
first step towards their aggrandizement, a plan of a rail-road has been
projected, from Pensacola to Columbus, in Georgia; which needs only to
be completed, to place Pensacola at once before any other town on the
Southern coast, excepting New Orleans. Of the feasibility of such a
work, there is not the slightest doubt; and, from the opinions advanced
by Captain Chase and Lieutenant Bowman, two of the most distinguished
engineers of the army, it would seem as if Nature had formed a level
nearly the whole way, and supplied the best kind of timber on the spot
for its erection. The route of this rail-road would be through or near
the principal cotton-growing part of Alabama, and the quantity of
produce from that state, as well as from a great part of the state of
Georgia, which would seek this market, would be almost incalculable.
Had this road been in operation during the past winter, it has been
ascertained by a simple calculation, that the cotton-growers of
Alabama, might have saved 2,000,000 of dollars on their crop; by being
enabled to have got it early into market, and received the first price
of 18¾ cents, instead of waiting six weeks or two months for a rise of
water, enabling them to get it to Mobile—at which time it had fallen to
nine cents per pound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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