Now run up to Central Georgia. Here is found the flourishing city of Macon, in the county of Bibb. The census of 1890 gave Macon a population of 22,746, of whom one-half were negroes. The land in this section is hilly, with soil mixed, good and bad. Twenty-five years ago there were something over 11,000 negroes in the county, outnumbering the whites by nearly two thousand, and they owned 2,611 acres of land. Now the blacks have a trifle more than doubled in numbers, as well as in property-holdings. Observe, too, the higher value of the negro’s farm lands in this section. His 4,500 acres of Bibb County land is now assessed at $413,300, which amount, added to his town and city realty and other taxable properties, makes an aggregate value of $719,380 in this county alone. A little to the northeast of Bibb County lies Baldwin, of which Milledgeville, the former state capital, is the chief town. This was a very wealthy ante-bellum section, with large holdings in slaves as well as lands. When the Civil War began Baldwin County could muster 5,000 slaves, although of the whites, rich and poor, there were only 4,000. When the census of 1890 was taken the negroes had increased to 9,343, the whites only to 5,262. Last year the negroes were paying taxes on 6,501 acres of Baldwin County land, valued at $26,599, besides a large amount of city and town property and other possessions, the whole aggregating $104,592. Take another county in Middle Georgia, a county of good lands but without a town of any size in it, therefore representing more nearly a plain agricultural average. Any one of a score might be selected. Let us say Butts, a small but prosperous county which was laid out in 1825 and at the outbreak of the war had 3,082 slaves and 3,375 whites. A quarter of a century ago its freedmen, numbering approximately 4,000 people, owned but ninety-seven acres of land in the entire county and $350 worth of town property. Have they climbed since 1875? In numbers they are now estimated at 7,000, against a like number of whites, and last year these negroes paid taxes on 1,613 acres of good average farming land, and on other property which ran the total valuation in Butts up to $49,941. In the mountain counties of Georgia it has been different, the increase in number of negroes as well as their possessions being slow and uncertain, while the whites have maintained a steady progress in such sections. This, however, is clearly accounted for by the lesser ratio the agricultural interests bear to others in mountainous districts, and the dependence of the negroes upon the former. Glance at Gilmer County, with its sixty-nine blacks and almost 10,000 whites, the former paying taxes on a few hundred acres of rocky hillsides, and their whole county property aggregating, by the most recent returns, only $957, while the latter show taxable possessions valued at $728,000. In Rabun, Towns, Flannin and neighboring counties the situation shows much the same.