In Georgia, particularly in the upper part of the State, where the ground rises considerably, I heard and saw that successful efforts were being made to effect the change from the estate to the farm system; and, instead of trusting entirely to cotton, to try what could be done by growing wheat and maize, the latter to be turned into pork—in short, to do whatever could be done to adapt their industry to existing circumstances. Florida at present is rather occupied by wild deer than by man; but as it is capable of becoming the chief winter _sanitarium_ for the consumption-scourged North, and also of producing tropical fruits and sugar for the whole Union, it has a fair prospect before it. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the writer of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ and sister of the celebrated Brooklyn preacher, has gone to Florida, with her brother, Mr. Charles Beecher, for the purpose of attempting the cultivation of the sugar cane with free labour. North Carolina is endeavouring to follow the example of its neighbours Virginia and Georgia. Arkansas, which was settled chiefly by the sons of Georgian planters, is showing much of the Georgian spirit. In Alabama great efforts had been made to re-establish the cultivation of cotton on the basis of freedom; and things were promising well, when at the end of 1867 the price of cotton, by a concurrence of adverse accidents, fell to 15 cents or 7½2_d._ at Liverpool. This depression to a point below the cost of production in any part of the world was felt, I believe, by most of those who attend to these matters, to be only a temporary mishap. The same cotton was selling at the end of the following March at 25 cents—a fully remunerative price; but in most cases the planters had not been able to hold, so that the low price they were obliged to accept has ruined many, and discouraged more. I was told by a Tennessee cotton planter that a price of 20 cents would have contained an ample margin for profit on the cotton he had himself grown, on a large scale, with hired black labour. His contract with those he employed was that he should give them high wages, with more than a proportionate deduction for every hour of absence from work. [Sidenote: _Distress in South Carolina._]