In addition, is a series of romantic sketches which lie outside the channel of ordinary history, and yet they serve the function of imparting to its pages a zest and flavor that relieve it largely of commonplace. These scenes derived from the transactions of nearly four hundred years, have been carefully gleaned from every possible source, and are here embodied for the first time in convenient form. The conditions which have attended on the evolution of a great state from the rawest of savage wildernesses, have yielded a store of material intensely romantic. The original tribes with their rude settlements and forts dotting the uncleared surface of Alabama over, skimming the waters of the streams and bordering bays in their tiny canoes, and threading the forests along narrow paths; the invasions of the Spanish and the French, and their transactions and conflicts as they would encounter aboriginal resistance, and the later and lasting occupation of the territory by the Anglo-Saxon, who came with dominant determination to possess the land and to transform it through the agencies of a conquering civilization into an exalted government--these have yielded a harvest of romance exceptional in its rareness and fascinating in its nature. While the record of scenes like these afford diversion, at the same time, they serve as no inferior contribution to our history. Like the lives of prominent makers of history, these rare scenes are indexes of the times in which they took place. It is proper to say that the material embodied in this volume appeared first on the pages of The Age-Herald, of Birmingham, Alabama, with no original design of the expansion which they gradually assumed, and with no purpose, in the outset, of embodying them in permanent form. As first appearing, the individual subjects were treated under the general head of Men Who Have Made Alabama, while the other sketches appeared under the subject of Romance of Alabama History. The only change which they have undergone has been in the way of the correction of certain minor errors to which the attention of the author was kindly called, and for which he now acknowledges his gratefulness. The publication of this volume is due to numerous requests which have come from both within and without the state, attended by a generous suggestion of the historic value of the matter herein embodied. It is in compliance with these requests that the volume is published. INDEX ABERNETHY, M. W. 289 BAKER, ALPHEUS 261 BAGBY, A. P. 18 BALDWIN, A. G. 62 BATTLE, C. A. 243 BESTOR, D. P. 105 BIBB, W. W. 1 BOWDON, F. W. 110 BOWIE, ALEXANDER 124 BREWER, WILLIS 361 BRYCE, PETER 181