Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Volume 2 (of 2)Power, Tyrone
History
Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Volume 2 (of 2)
Power, Tyrone
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
In the year 1830, the total value of the importations to the port of
Mobile was 1,044,135 dollars: the value of the exports for the same year
was 1,994,365 dollars. In 1834, the value of the imports is stated at
3,088,811 dollars: the exports for the same year at 6,270,197 dollars.
For the current year, I am credibly assured that an addition of
one-third to these last amounts will not much overrate the enormous
increase to which, should peace continue, each year must add for many
seasons to come, since the influx of planters to Alabama is clearing the
cane-brake with a rapidity unprecedented even in this country: the
Indian reserves are all coming into cultivation as fast as they are
vacated; and, in fact, Alabama at this day may be said to present a
spectacle of successful energy and industry not to be surpassed. A
railroad is now in progress, the prospectus for which was in circulation
during my visit, which is to connect North and South Alabama, commencing
in the valley of Tennessee, and running to some navigable point of the
harbour of Mobile. A glance at a map of the States will at once render
obvious the immense importance such a line of communication will be of
to this city, concentrating on this point the trade, not only of North
Alabama and the Tennessee valley, but some of the most fertile portions
of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi.
By this railway the great obstacle in the way of the trade of the
Tennessee valley, the muscle shoals, will be avoided, whilst, at a fair
calculation, it is expected that the increase of cotton received into
Mobile will amount to one hundred thousand bales: besides a vast
quantity of pork, beef, bacon, flour, lard, whisky, &c. that now seeks a
market at New Orleans, through those great natural channels, the
Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers: to the navigation of the
first-named river the shoals have hitherto been a serious drawback,
detaining laden craft of all kinds for weeks, and even months, until,
late in winter or early in spring, a rise in the river enabled them to
float over into the highway of the Western world, the Mississippi.
The grounds on which the vast and seemingly extravagant increase of the
cotton crop of this State of Alabama may be justified, are to be found,
not only in the great fertility of the virgin soil yearly brought under
cultivation, but in the unprecedented increase of population. This very
year, it is calculated, not less than twenty-five thousand slaves have
been brought into this country from the older States on the Atlantic;
this amount will, in all probability, be exceeded by the increase of
next season, as there are many millions of acres of the most fertile
land in the Union yet in the hands of Government for sale, lately
conceded in exchange by the Indians of the Creek and Cherokee tribes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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