[Sidenote: _Mobile._] The railway does not run into Mobile, but ends at a wharf, about twenty miles from the city, on the Tensas (pronounced Tensaw), a kind of loop branch of the Alabama, which it rejoins at Mobile. It is a fine broad piece of water, and its banks are clothed with the undisturbed primæval forest, which is always to the European a sight of great interest. On unloading the train I saw that we had picked up during the night a dozen fine bucks, which we were to take on to Mobile. I had observed in the early morning two or three small herds of wild deer feeding in the forest. They seem to have become accustomed to the locomotive. Even here it was freezing very sharply, and the buckets of water on board the steamer were thickly coated with ice. This frost, I found at Mobile, had killed all the young wood of the orange trees. The crew of the steamer were negroes, and I was surprised to see them on so cold a morning washing their woolly heads in buckets of water drawn from the river, and then leaving their wet hair and faces to be dried by the cold morning air. At the junction of the Tensas and Alabama there was a great deal of swampy land, partly covered with reeds, and much shallow water, upon which were large flocks of wild fowl. The river was here full of snags and sawyers, and its navigation was still further impeded by a fortification of piles the Confederates had driven across it during the war, to keep the enemy from getting up to the city. This approach to Mobile had more of the air of novelty about it than anything I had yet seen in America. It made me feel that I was really in a new world.