In these latitudes the forest becomes a little diversified by the appearance of several evergreens. One of the commonest is the evergreen or live-oak. I frequently saw from the cars a small tree having very much the appearance of our bay. There is an occasional magnolia. There are several evergreen shrubs, and some creepers. In swampy places there are long reaches of cane-brake. This is the Bambusa gracilis, which we sometimes see in this country in gardens, in spots where moisture and shelter can be combined. These cane- or bamboo-brakes are evergreen impervious jungles about twenty feet high. But the most interesting form to Northern eyes is that of the little palmetto palm. Its fan-like leaf, however, is all that can be seen of it, for its trunk scarcely rises above the ground. In some of the swamps around New Orleans it and a kind of iris are the most conspicuous plants. The question of the colonisation or resettlement of the South by the North is simply one of £. _s._ _d._ Will it be more profitable for a Northern man to grow cotton in the South, or wheat, pork, beef, &c. in the West? People say Northern emigrants will never go to the poor lands of the South till all the good land of the West is taken up. This is quite a wrong way of putting the case between the two. A man would not go to the South to grow wheat, beef, and pork. That can be done cheaper in the fertile West. But it is not impossible that an equal amount of capital and labour embarked in the cotton culture of the South might produce a greater return. In that case the poor soils of the South might be preferred to the rich soils of the West. One infers how much more completely the fabric of society rested on slavery in South Carolina than it did in Virginia, by the fact that three fourths of the devastation caused by the great fire at Richmond have been already repaired, while nothing had been done to repair the damages done by the great fire at Charleston, which destroyed the whole of the centre of the city. Literally not one single brick has yet been laid upon another for this purpose. There stand the blackened remains of churches, residences, and stores, just as if it were a city of the dead. [Sidenote: _A Charleston Sam Weller._] Still, even here I was surprised at the number and magnitude of the hotels. I had taken up my quarters at the Mills House, where I suppose there were three hundred guests. I saw another, the Pavilion, quite as large; and I was told of a third, the Charleston Hotel, which was described to me as being much larger than either of the two just mentioned.