lanta, therefore, has come to be not only a great dépôt of supply for this guano, furnishing its vicinage a hundred thousand tons a year, but also the entrepôt of all the cotton produced within a circle of nearly two hundred miles. This cotton is bought mainly for foreign export, and is shipped under through bills of lading to foreign ports, thus dodging the factors at New York, Savannah, and other coast cities. The business is not done on commission, but by buying and selling on a margin of profit. There are other extensive business interests. Iron is mined near by, and extensive foundries and rolling-mills manufacture it. Great crops of corn and grain are raised throughout the central part of the State, which find their way into Atlanta distilleries, while her winemerchants are many and rich. She can make the best of brick, and has a whole mountain of solid granite close by, with other building material accessible and cheap. She sighs for only one more commercial advantage, namely, a railway to the coal regions of Alabama. Now her coal is largely supplied from ex-Governor Brown's mines in the extreme northwestern corner of the State. Looking away from the city, Barracks Hill furnishes a good vantage-point, as I have already hinted; but to view the town itself, let me commend a ride along the PONCE DE LEON SPRING. new "boulevard" on the eastern edge. This broad, well-formed driveway follows the crest of one of the many ridges into which the surface of the country is cut up, and the solid squares of the city's business houses, the lofty proportions of her great hostelries, the scores of spires of her handsome churches and school-houses, and the charming, foliage-hidden avenues of her dwelling-places and suburbs-all appear to the best advantage. No one will deny that she is attractive. Just at the northern extremity of the boulevard is a pretty little vale, upon which some slight cultivation has been attempted, mineral waters having been discovered bubbling out of the bank a few years ago. The name Ponce de Leon Spring was at once given to it, and the spot has become a pleasure resort, always visited in the course of an afternoon's drive. The horse-cars run out there along a wonderful tramway, laid through a series of cuts and over a long trestle-work, like a steam railroad. The waters have a sulphurous, nasty taste, and therefore it is quite likely that they possess some at least of the medicinal properties ascribed to them. But I fancy the bracing violet-scented air, the tramping about un der the trees, and the vigorous bowling over of ten-pins have more efficacy in accomplishing cures. On the outer side of the boulevard, as it follows the circle of the city boundary eastward and southward, runs a strip of tangled woodland, where two or three little streams meander in shadow and negligence. The ground is rough, and the authorities propose to take advantage of all this prettiness by annexing the vale and forming it into a park. It is certainly to be hoped that the scheme will be carried out. "I AM A GEORGIAN!"-[SFE PAGE 42.] Atlanta has no park at all at present, excepting the grounds about the City Hall. This is less to be deplored here, however, than in any other town you could find in the country, perhaps. One doesn't appreciate how healthful is the position of this favored spot until he studies it. Atlanta stands upon an outmost spur of the Blue Ridge, eleven hundred feet above the sea-an altitude equalled by no other city of her size in the United States. Her climate is equable and pleasant. "The nineties," with which New-Yorkers and Philadelphians are so familiar, are an almost unexplored region to Atlanta's mercury, while in winter the southern latitudes preserve her from long or severe cold. The head waters of the Ocmulgee and several minor streams spring within her very boundary, and flow both east and west to the Atlantic and to the Gulf. Her drainage is therefore excellent. Men and women do die there-no denying it; but epidemics are unheard of, and the locality is an island of health in the treacherous yellow-fever climate of its region. It is all Dei gratia, however. No sanitary measures worthy of mention have ever been effected, or even tried; yet Atlanta is by no means a dirty city. From a consideration of her healthfulness we turn by antithesis to Oakland, the most artistic and beautifully caredfor cemetery south of the oak groves. It shows a marked contrast to the decay and complete neglect of grave-yards prevailing in all the rural towns. Here lie some thousands of dead Confederate soldiers, and a plain but enduring monument watches over the graves. At this grateful season the cemetery becomes a garden of flowers, and is worth being seen for these alone. Here too, as elsewhere in Atlanta, the number and perfect growth of the hedges are very noticeable; but that finest of all Georgia's hedge plants, the historic holly, is not often seen, though abundant in a wild state in all the hilly regions of this part of Georgia. Public buildings in Atlanta are not imposing. The United States is just finishing a custom-house, court-room, and postoffice in the shape of an attractive structure of brick and granite, modelled in a manner happily different from the ordinary government architecture. The Statehouse of Georgia is a square, businesslooking building on a prominent street, having as unofficial an air as any warehouse, and almost as roughly furnished within. The Court-house and City Hall form a large square building, surmounted by an accumulation of cupolas, reminding one of the touching ballad of "Kafoozalum," where the hero appears as a 'gentleman in three old tiles." The site is high and beautiful, and will before long be adorned by an ornamental building for public purposes. 66 A noted trial for homicide was in progress, and I went in to witness the proceedings. The court-room was crowded to repletion with men, half of whom were smoking, though all had their hats off except an officer or two. The prisoner was in a happy mood, perhaps following Mark Tapley's rule as to jollity under creditable circumstances. The lawyers and jury and everybody else were mixed up in the most picturesque style, and the judge's bench had been seized upon as a good point of view by a dozen or more eager spectators. Notwithstanding these seemingly unfavorable conditions, good order was preserved. It was a good place to study faces. The audience was just such a SHERMANTOWN. throng as naturally would gather at a murder trial in the provinces. No city man or person of delicacy did more than glance in out of momentary curiosity, unless he had a direct part in the proceedings. It was interesting to watch these farmers and roughs, the consumption of unlimited quantities of tobacco in Each any community, large or small, south of "the line." Unless Richmond, Virginia, be excepted, this is true. Atlanta has a complete system of graded and high schools, and they are fully attended. Then there are two or three commercial colleges, two "universities" for colored pupils who desire more than a commonschool education, two medical colleges, and an instructive display of the geological and agricultural resources of the State at the State-house. The Library of Atlanta is peculiarly Southern in its associations. Around the walls of its handsome hall on Marietta Street are hung portraits and engravings of Confederate leaders, some in the gray uniform of the defeated "cause," and some in the flowing robes with which painters love to enshroud their statesmen. Swords and ban every shape forming a bond of union among them. I fancied an indefinable air hung over the assemblage which would not pervade a Northern crowd of similar character, or want of character. one of these gaunt-limbed, high-cheeked, swarthy loungers seemed to say: "I may be poor, ignorant, diseased, and bevermined, may have come here in a two-wheeled cart with a mule in a rope harness, and sat on the bottom because I was too lazy to arrange a seat; no doubt I'm an utterly useless Corn-cracker-but, Sir, I am a Georgian!" There have been persons in the halls of Parliament and on the floor of Congress who have attempted to assert themselves Englishmen and Americans, with the intent to be impressive in their patriotism, but I am perfectly sure none of them ever really did make the asseveration half so strong as do these butternut-ners and maps and other relics of war are dyed Crackers by a single glance of the black eyes and a single toss of the shaggy head. Well, to be a Georgian is something; otherwise these fellows would be hard put to it to define their position in the economy of nature. Atlanta boasts, undoubtedly upon a firm basis of facts, that she offers the best educational privileges to her citizens of profusely displayed. The Library is selfsupporting, contains some thousands of well-selected and, what is more, well-read volumes, has chess-rooms and readingrooms attached, and is a matter of just pride and comfort to the town. A feature of the city to which no wellordered resident will be likely to direct a stranger's attention is "Shermantown" a random collection of huts forming a dense negro settlement in the heart of an otherwise attractive portion of the place. The women take in washin'," and the males, as far as our observation taught us, devote their time to the lordly occupation of sunning themselves. When General Sherman occupied Atlanta, it is said, barracks were located here; hence the name. After dinner I take a cigar and saunter out. The streets are very quiet. People have hardly risen from their evening meal; and as I walk on out Peach-tree Street, and the moon rises proof-bright toward the starry zenith, it is not easy to realize that I am in the midst of forty thousands of busy men and women. Beautiful homes, varied, tasteful, sometimes grand in exterior appearance, luxurious in interior appointments, stand thickly on either side, embowered in trees and surrounded by hedges and lawns, thickets of shrubbery, and parterres of flowers. Between the sidewalk and the hard but unpaved roadway stand lines of venerable shade trees, through whose dense foliage the moonbeams struggle in uncertain manner, and sketch a flickering mosaic of light and shadow across the path. Attracted by music down a dark alley way, I find five laborers, each black as the deuce of spades, sitting upon a circle of battered stools and soap boxes, and forming a "string" band, despite the inconsistency of a cornet. The whole neighborhood is crowded with happy darkies, and though the music is good, I choose the enchantment of distance. Not far away I strike another little circle of freedmen, and discover that a guitar and a banjo are the attractions. On a vacant lot near the railway station a vender of patent medicine has set up a rough platform, and hung about it some flaring paraffine lamps. Two negroes-genuine negroes, but corked in addition to make themselves blacker!-dressed in the regulation burlesque style familiar to us in the minstrel shows at the North, are dancing jigs, reciting conundrums, and banging banjo, bones, and tambourine to the amusement of two or three hundred delighted darkies. Ten o'clock arrives, and with many another lounger I saunter down to the station to see the trains from the north and east come in. Then the lights of the station are extinguished. Even the "Raven" who croaks his dismal forebodings of fatality, and sells accident policies to travellers, has disappeared. |