We soon arrived at Sandy the negro-hunter's, and halted to allow the Colonel to inquire as to the health of his family of children and dogs,--the latter the less numerous, but, if I might judge by appearances, the more valued of the two. * * * * * SOUTHERN AIDS TO THE NORTH. II. If war did little else, it would have its value from the fact that it acts so extensively as an institution for the dissemination of useful knowledge. Every murmur of political dissension sends thousands to consult the map, and repair their early neglect of geography. Perhaps if atlases and ethnographical works were more studied we should have less war. And it is by no means impossible that the mutual knowledge which has been or is to be acquired by the people of the South and the North during this present war will eventually aid materially in establishing a firm bond of union. That we have much to learn is shown in the firm faith with which so many have listened to the threats of 'a united South.' Until recently the fierce and furious assurances of the rebel press, that south of Mason and Dixon's line all were wedded heart and soul to their cause, were taken almost without a doubt. Who has forgotten the late doleful convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old refrain,--'Suppose we conquer them--what then?' Had the country at large known in detail, as it _should_ have known from a common-school education, what the South _really_ is,--or from experience of life what human nature really is,--it would never have believed that this boasted unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been developed a race essentially alike in all its characteristics. The planter and the slave-owner, or the city merchant, has been the type with which our writers have become familiar at the hotel and the watering-place, or in the 'store,' and we have accepted them as speaking for the South, quite forgetful that in America, as in other countries, the real man of the middle class travels but little, and when he does, is seldom to be found mingling in the 'higher circles.' Yet even this Southern man of the middle class and of 'Alleghania,' when at the North frequently affects a 'Southern' air, which is not more natural to him than it is to the youthful scions of Philadelphia and New York, who, when in Europe, so often talk pro-slavery and bowie knife, as though they lived in the very heart of planterdom. But the truth is that when