and iron, which would thus be enabled to reach a sea-port. "The opening of these mines, says the article to which we have been referring, "would give a new impulse to the iron trade of Tennessee, and at the same time be a source of revenue to the road. Coal is now elling at Nashville from 12 to 18 cents per bushel; and it may be safely said, that its consumption would be doubled if its cost could be reduced one half. From a calculation, it will appear that coal can be carried on the road to Nashville at 4 cents per bushel, and can be furnished at the mine at 1 or 2 cents, making, at the most, 6 cents a bushel. The revenue to the road from its transportation would be fifty or sixty thousand dollars. Even Charleston and Savannah might be eventually supplied at from 13 to 14 cents per bushel, from these mines."

The question with all of this produce is, how shall the market be reached most advantageously? If the extra expense in reaching an eastern market can be compensated by the better prices there, which would be the case, unquestionably, in reference to a large amount of produce, the eastern market would command that amount. For most of the heavier articles, the old channels of trade, the Mississippi and New Orleans would yet be preserved. We are not to suppose that they would sustain any considerable loss.

The lowest rate of railroad freight could scarcely approach that on the western steamboats. A hogshead of tobacco of a thousand weight, may be transported from St. Louis or Louisville to New Orleans for $3-fifteen hundred miles; and a barrel of pork from the same places for 75 cents. This, of course, will be powerful competition to endure. It is thought impossible that heavy freight can be taken away from New Orleans, unless the eastern market should be found so favorable as to compensate all extra charges. In reference to the most costly articles, the case is otherwise; these will seek the railroad at all times; for a great point will be the saving of time, which is the main consideration.

"No dry-goods merchant," says a writer, "at Little Rock, Arkansas, for example, could successfully compete, upon the old mode of transportation by sea via New Orleans, with his neighbor who obtained his supplies by the Mississippi and Atlantic railroad. The advantage which the latter would secure in time, insurance and capital, would enable him to meet the wants and suit the tastes of his customers, with a promptitude, and at a cost, which would defy competition through any other channel. In this view, time is important. This is still more strikingly true as to mails and passengers.

We have dwelt rather long upon the Nashville branch of the Atlantic and Mississippi railroad; but most of the observations made will apply with equal force to the Memphis, Vicksburg, or Natchez terminations.

In reference to Memphis we desire to make some remarks. The inhabitants of this young, yet vigorous and rising town, are all eager to be reached by this scheme of enterprise. The road would, under such circumstances, strike the Mississippi at a point of never-interrupted navigation, and terminate in a town, destined, we humbly conceive, at no distant day, to become one of the first in the whole valley. It is more distant from Charleston and Savannah than Nash

GADSDEN S RAILROAD REPORT.

27

ville, but it presents equally great, if not greater advantages. It is not conceivable that such a town would consent to remain long with out a branch of the railroad. Independently of the commercial as pect, it would furnish means of throwing down upon the Atlantic coasts, in thirty-six hours, during war, for the common defense, any number of stout hearts and strong arms from the distant West.

This road, as at present projected, will cross the country from At lanta, along the heights of the Etowah to Rome, interrupted by stean navigation down the Coosa, to a point from whence a railroad northward and westward will strike the Tennessee river at Gunter's land ing, near Claysville, Alabama, and interrupted again by steamers or this river, to the eastern terminus of the Tuscumbia railroad, now in operation. The Tuscumbia railroad extends from Decatur to Tus! cumbia, Alabama. From Tuscumbia, to La Grange, Tennessee, there is a road already projected and chartered. From Tuscumbia to Mem phis the distance is one hundred and thirty miles, the road over fifty miles of which is now about half completed. In the way of the Mem phis enterprise there are few natural obstructions, and the whole maj be completed, with proper exertion, in a short period, and at an ex pense, comparatively speaking, not very great.

We shall conclude our subject by introducing the major and mos important part of the report on railroads, which Col. Gadsden, o South Carolina, presented at the late Memphis Convention, esteem ing as we do the paper most highly; and also by presenting an ex tract from a late number of the Merchant's Magazine, which exhib its, in forcible terms, the causes of that anxiety on the part of the East to reach the Valley of the Mississippi.

"The West is richer than the East in the surplus products of th soil, and every year will increase its advantage. It is getting to fur nish most of the flour consumed in the country. In pork, lard, oil and beef, the West is increasingly pre-eminent. In wool, tobacco and cotton, the West is gaining the ascendency, and promises soo to have a virtual monopoly. In sugar, molasses, and hemp, the Wes furnishes the whole produce. In mineral productions, the West pron ises to excel almost as much as in agricultural. Beds of coal an iron abound from the Alleghanies to the Ozark mountains. In lea and copper, the West seems likely to supply a great part of the world In materials for building houses, ships, railroads, furniture, &c., th West has all the varieties of stone, from the recent sand-stone to prin itive granite and marble, with timber and cabinet woods in abundance Before ten years, Ohio will be second only to Pennsylvania in th quantity of iron produced and manufactured. Of steam-engines, th West has already more than the East, and the West almost monope lizes the manufacture of hemp. The West, in sixty years, will pro ably contain one hundred millions of people, while the East will hav but twenty millions. "

COL. GADSDEN'S REPORT.

"The Valley of the Mississippi is among the most favored region of the globe the Father of Rivers taking its rise on the very verge the Arctic regions, and receiving, as it courses south, tributaries equa in magnitude, from the Alleghany and Rocky mountains, and finall

1

harging its accumulated waters at near three thousand five hunI miles from its source, in the warmer hemisphere of the Gulf of ico. This Gulf it is annually encroaching upon by its alluvial dets; and so certain, though slow and imperceptible, are these daily ements these new creations of land and soil-that the speculation >t extravagant, that in some future day the delta of the Mississippi, e multiplicity and shallowness of its mouths, like that of the Nile, be closed to the egress of foreign shipping; or the navigation of e southern seas will have to seek an entrance into this inland ocean een the headlands of Cuba, south, and the keys of Florida, north. Within the personal observation of one of the Committee, the inse of these alluvions at the Balize, has exceeded three miles in it to the northward and eastward, and the approaches to the Mis>pi are now indicated at more than fifty miles from the shore, by resh and discolored water of the ocean, and by the gradually y and muddy state of the bottom of the gulf.

An inspection of the map of that vast and fertile plain, south of 1st degree of latitude, and which constitutes so large a portion of levated and productive soils of Louisiana, leads to the conviction t has been reclaimed from the ocean by the annual contributions >se streams, which in their rapid descent from the mountain eleis of the interior, are but agents in the hands of Providence to out new evidences of his wonderful creations.

'hese continued and successive changes in the physical world are entos of events, slow but certain, the injurious and restrictive inces of which, upon the industry, the internal and external trade pulous and prosperous communities, may prove withering and if not in anticipation counteracted by the vigilant sagacity and ɔrise of man.

'his vast domain, within the limits of the United States, bounded by the 49th degree of latitude, south by the Gulf of Mexico, nd west by the Alleghany and Rocky mountains, is in area, as 7 as can be calculated in round numbers, 1,500,000 square miles, ɔntains 960 millions of acres of land, of which nearly one half e pronounced arable and capable of profitable cultivation, while e portion of the balance, however sterile in its external appearhas concealed other and not less valuable elements of mineral 1 not yet developed. The richer staple articles which give anin to the commerce of the whole world-cotton, rice, sugar, hemp, bacco, may be considered almost as indigenous to portions of untry, while its varied soils, fertile as durable, are productive ost abundant in all the valuable grains and esculent roots which bute to the comfort and subsistence of man. In the Valley of ississippi there can never be those apprehensions of starvation keep the European countries in an annual state of alarm; but as present so in future years, the deficiencies of other portions of orld can be supplied from the overflowing granaries of this land mise.

s artificial, like its natural pastures, are favorable to the successsing of every class of domestic animals, from the noble Arabian laborious, enduring mule-from the varied races of horned cathich have expelled from their ranges the bear and the buffalo,

MISSISSIPPI VALLEY.

to the wool-growing sheep, and the inestimable hog-the animal whi by the lights of chemistry, in the conversion of its lard into oil, threatened to supersede the whale of the Pacific and the olive-tre Italy.

"The country drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries is o third as large as Asia; it is little less than half the size of Europe, is very near as large as the European empire of Russia. France but one-seventh of its area, and the old Thirteen States about o sixth. Compared with the present condition of New England and Middle States, it could sustain, in similar wealth, prosperity and ce fort, 60,000,000 of inhabitants: a population, however, of 230 to square mile-similar to that of Great Britain-would give 345,000, of human beings, equal to one-half of the world.

"This estimate of the capacity of this favored region of the wo will not be considered extravagant, when it is recollected that ma parts of Europe contain from three hundred to three hundred twenty, and some of the provinces of China from four hundred fifty to six hundred to the square mile.

"The population of the Valley, by the census of 1840, was 8,434,70, it is now estimated at ten millions, and its increase for the ten ye preceding was at the rate of 80 per cent. The value of the produ of the same year were calculated at $750,095,920; the descend trade of the Mississippi at $120,000,000, and the ascending tra at $100,000,000, making an aggregate of $220,000,000, o $30,000,000 less than the whole export and import trade of the Uni States.

"The population of New Orleans (the commercial city throu which this vast trade flows, and by which it is nourished and riched) has within the period of ten years more than doubled ; the census, which in 1802 showed a population of 10,000 of Frer and Spanish Creoles, in 1840 exhibits 102,193.

"The exports of this Western Emporium in the three great stap of cotton, sugar, and tobacco, show 984,616 bales of cotton in 1844 against 490,495 in 1835-6; 81,249 hogsheads of tobacco in 1843 against 41,634 in 1835-6; and 104,501 hogsheads and 10,561 barr sugar, and 17,094 hogsheads and 94,451 barrels of molasses in 1844 against 40,526 hogsheads and 4,092 barrels of sugar, and 11,284 ho heads and 48,104 barrels molasses in 1840-41: showing the expo of cotton and tobacco to have doubled in ten years, and that of sug and molasses in five years.

"In 1844-5 there were 1682 arrivals and departures of shi barks, brigs and schooners, and 2530 steamers, against 1643 of former class and 2187 of the latter in 1842-3; exhibiting an incre in three years of 39 arrivals and departures of ships, brigs, &c., a 343 steamers. This small increase of foreign tonnage is to accounted for in the commercial economy of employing a larger cl of ships than those hitherto used, and probably in the fact that mu! of the western produce which used to find its outlet by the Bali now seeks a market by the Lakes to the northern ports.

"Sixty years ago, this vast domain (if we except the French a Spanish settlements on the coasts of Louisiana, and which did r number a population exceeding 20,000 souls) was occupied exc

sively by wandering tribes of Indians, whose population, though variously estimated, did not exceed 250,000, and whose trade in furs and skins was restricted to the limited wants of the savage. At this early period, however, such was the sagacity of the Indian in estimating distance, that few descended the Mississippi; while all the trading paths of the different tribes, many of which may still be traced, were in the direction of the South Atlantic, toward Augusta and Charleston..

"In those days these cities participated largely in the Indian trade, and before the revolution, Charleston, as an exporting and importing pity, maintained an equality with Boston, New York and Philadelphia, which equality was never lessened until after the adoption of he Federal Constitution, when the greater capital and unequal expenditure of the revenue, began to centralize trade in the northern o the prejudice of the southern ports.

"This vast domain, so highly favored with the abundant gifts of Providence, and with a population whose enterprise and energies pre daily stimulated to new and alluring prospects on yet unexplored orizons, has but one drawback to check its rapid strides to commerial empire, and that is in having but one natural outlet to the highvay of nations.

"The Mississippi discharges in a low southern latitude, in a clinate unfavorable, for four months in the season, to the health of he inhabitants of a more northern latitude, and equally deleterious its influences on the meats and produce of the interior, which, for he want of a market at all seasons accessible, have to be held in large uantities in deposit.

"Even that which merely passes in transitu to some other port, as been known to suffer in the warm season of the summer, particurly pork, lard, beef, bacon, tobacco, tallow, butter, flour, and the arious grains; and if from necessity held over for another year, is ertain of deterioration, if not entire destruction.

"The mouths of the Mississippi are in the Mexican Gulf, and in me of war may be easily blockaded by a superior naval force. he outlet of this gulf is by a circuitous and hazardous voyage rough the keys and currents of the Florida and Bahama banks and efs, subjecting the whole trade of the Valley, whether destined. pastwise or to foreign ports, to great loss of time in transitu, extra zards and exposures, and heavier charges for insurance and eight, all of which is a tax upon the whole trade of the Valley. "In the early settlement of the country, when the produce raised y the pioneer was consumed by the emigrant who followed on his ack, and when successive waves of population, who had to be fed, rnished home and profitable markets to those who had proceeded these new countries, this impediment to cheap and rapid comunication to the markets of consumption, was not felt or appreated. But now that the Valley of the Mississippi contains ten ates, three territories, and ten millions of population, with an exrt of productions seeking foreign markets, at the present low preciation estimated at $60,000,000, the subject of the cheapest, ost certain, and most expeditious avenues of inter-communication th all parts of the United States and of the world must necessarily