I found that from Memphis, as from many other places in the South, a considerable emigration was going on. While I was there names of intending emigrants were being collected for a settlement in British Honduras: this however, I believe, was abandoned on account of the unsuitableness of the climate for white labour. As in their own State of Tennessee there is so much good land, and so delightful a climate, it could have been political reasons only that prompted this thought of leaving their country. For such persons Brazil appears just now one of the most favourable fields for commencing life anew; as the government is there offering, at a merely nominal price, in the hills in the neighbourhood of the capital, land well suited for coffee plantations, and where the climate is such as to admit of European labour. This has been done with the especial view of attracting some part of the emigration from the Southern States. No friend, however, of the unhappy people of the South would advise them to accept any offers of the kind. How much more manly would it be, and how much better would it be financially for themselves, and morally for their children and descendants, if they are prepared to labour with their own hands, to do so in their own country, and remain a part of the great Anglo-Saxon race, with all its rich inheritance of laws, literature, and traditions, than to cast in their lot with mongrel Portuguese and Africans! Among the letters of introduction I carried with me to Memphis was one to the President of the Memphis and Ohio railway. He had just returned from a short stay at the Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas. He is one of those gentlemen who are doing everything in their power to resuscitate the South by persuading the people to turn their attention to the varied and inexhaustible resources they possess within their own territories. As instances of this he showed me two specimens; one of a creamy white stone he had lately brought from the Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas, and which could cut steel as readily as a file does soft iron. Of this stone he was having hones and grindstones made, which would probably be the best things of their kind anywhere to be had. The other specimen he showed me was that of iron ore from the Iron Mountain in Alabama. It looked almost like the metal itself. He said it contained sixty per cent. of iron, and that the Confederates had made use of it in the late war. This mountain is sixty miles north of Montgomery, and there is in its neighbourhood plenty of limestone, and of coal. For this district he expected (as who would not?) a great future; for not only is the consumption of iron in agriculture every year increasing, in the form of new machinery as well as tools, of which the South now stands greatly in need, but the place itself, from its contiguity to several large navigable streams, is admirably situated for a great manufacturing centre. [Sidenote: _A Conversation with Two Ministers._]