[portrait of BIENVILLE]
     At the dawn of her history, Alabama contained four tribes of aborigines, the civilized and hospital Cherokees, in the northeast, in a region that they always called Chiah; the warlike and heroic Chickasaws, in the northwest, along the Tennessee, the Tombigbee and the Upper Yazoo; the friendly Choctaws, in the west and southwest; and the Muscogees (or Creeks), called by Bancroft "the most powerful nation north of the Gulf of Mexico," west of the Ocmulgee.
     The first historical mention of Alabama deals with the marches of Hernando De Soto, the Spanish cavalier, with 620 knights and priests, crossbowmen and arquebusiers of Spain, who landed at Tampa Bay, cross Georgia, and Spain, who landed at Tampa Bay, crossed Georgia, and entered Alabama in July, 1540 (80 years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth).  The army visited Coosa, Tallasee, and other Indian towns, in search of a land of gold; and then marched by Piachee to Maubila (whence comes the name of Mobile.  Here they were fiercely attacked, and during a long day's battle in and around the burning town, the Spaniards defeated the natives, losing 168 men, and slaying 2,500.  Thence the European army moved through the lonely land of Pafallaya, and up the Tombigee Valley into Mississippi, fighting many a bloody battle, and enduring and causing frightful sufferings.  One hundred and sixty-two years later, the sieur do Bienville, "the Father of Alabama," transferred his French colony from Biloxi to Dog River, on Mobile Bay, and erected Fort St. Louis de la Mobile.  In 1711, he moved to the present site of Mobile.  A few years later, English traders from Georgia built a stockade at Ocfuskee; and Gen. Ogiethorp made a treaty with the Muscogees, at Coweta.  After the cession of the trans-Alleghany country to Great Britain, at the peace of 1763, the part of Alabama south of Selma and Montgomery was included in the district of West Florida, and the unsettled country to the

[Page 28]
north belonged to the district of Illinois.  Montgomery lay in Florida, and Wetumpka in Illinois.  The people here were so few, and so remote from the Atlantic settlements, that they did not unite with the Thirteen Colonies in their conflict with England.  Envoys and agitators sent from the United States were seized and imprisoned in the stone keep of Fort Charlotte.  When Spain Declared war against the mother-country, Galvez, the governor of Louisiana, with 2,000 soldiers, besieged and captured Mobile, even then a French town,
     The Spaniards held the country until 1798, as a part of Florida.  Georgia also claimed nearly all of Alabama and Mississippi, under her royal charter of 1665, and in 1798 and 1802 ceded them to the United States for $1,250,000.
[portrait of MONTGOMERY: SOLDIERS' MONUMENT]

     About 1790, American pioneers began to settle in the northern valleys.  In 1798, Congress formed Mississippi and Alabama, from 31° to 32° 28´, and between the Mississippi River and the Chattahoochee, into the Mississippi Territory; and four years later, the Territorial boundary was carried north to the Tennessee line.  The Indians ceded vast domains to the incoming Americans by the treaties of 1805; but Tecumseh aroused the Creeks to war, and in 1813 they destroyed Fort Mimms, with its 500 inmates.  Gen. Coffee retaliated by killing 186 Indians in battle at Tallaseehatchee; Andrew Jackson won the fight at Talladega; Gen. White destroyed Hillabee; and after many other engagements, Jackson slew 600 creeks at the Horse-Shoe Bend, losing 210 men himself.  In the 30 engagements of the Creek war 4,000 Indians were killed.  The Spanish power at Mobile was broken by Gen. Wilkinson's army from New Orleans, in 1813; and a British attack on Fort Bowyer, at Mobile Point, met a disastrous repulse, followed by Jackson's capture of Pensacola.  In 1817, Congress organized the Territory of Alabama, with its present boundaries, and St. Stephens as the capital..  Two years later, Alabama became a State , then having about 127,000 inhabitants, besides the Indians.  Cahaba became the capital in 1820; Tuskaloosa, in 1826; and Montgomery in 1847.  After frequent Indian wars, mainly with the Creeks, the tribes were removed to the Indian Territory, the Choctaws in 1830, the Chickasaws in 1834, the Cherokees in 1836, and the Creeks in 1837. 
     The population in 1860 included 526,271  whites, 435,080 negro slaves (owned by 30,000 persons) and 2,690 free negroes.  Alabama was then the fifth State in the value of its agricultural products, and the seventh in wealth.  Its valuation sunk from $792,000,000 in 1860 to $202,000,000 in 1865 (partly due to the emancipation of the slaves).

[portrait of MUSCLE SHOALS AND CANALS.]
     Late in 1860 the National forts at Mobile were occupied by Alabama troops; and in January, 1861, by a vote of 61 to 39, the State suceded from the Union.  In the mournful conflict which followed, she sent into the field 122,000 soldiers (in 69 regiments of infantry, 12 of cavalry, and 27 batteries), one fourth of whom died in the Confederate service.  The northern counties long remained devoted to the Republic, and desired to erect themselves into a new State.  The chief local events were Forrest's capture of Streight's 1,700 Union cavalry, in Cherokee County; Rousseau's raid through the southern counties; and Farragut's attack on Mobile, resulting in the capture of Forts Morgan and Gaines, and followed by the reduction of Spanish Fort, the storming of Blakely, and the occupation of Mobile (in April, 1865), by Gen. Canby's Union army of 45,000 men after much fighting.  At the same time, Gen. Wilson, with 9,000 mounted troops from the north, stormed Selma, destroying the Arsenal and Navy Yard, and occupied Montgomery.  Several thousand white Alabamians served bravely in the National armies.

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[portrait of THE ALABAMA RIVER.]
     The re-establishment of the National power was followed by unhappy years of carpet-bag administration, when the treasury  of the State suffered from venal legislation, and her standard eight per cent. bonds fell to 20 cents on the dollar.  Emerging at last from this cloud, Alabama has resumed her place as one of the most conservative of the Southern States, with a strong and capable "white man's government."  Within ten yeas a wonderful and unexampled development of mineral wealth has gone forward, is the northern part of the State, which is already entering into competition with Pennsylvania as a producer of coal and iron.  The output of pig-iron alone, mounted from 449,492 tons in 1888 to 791,425 in 1889, and is still increasing, and building up new cities.
     The Name of Alabama comes from its chief river, and the word being of Indian origin and unknown meaning.  There is a poetic legend that an exiled Indian tribe reached the great river, and its chief struck his spear into the shore exclaiming, Alabama! - that is to Alabama is sometimes called THE COTTON-PLANTATION STATE.
     The Arms of Alabama bear an eagle, with raised wings, alighting upon the National shield, and bearing three arrows in his left talon.  He holds in his beak a floating steamer, inscribed with the words HERE WE REST.  this nobly patriotic device was adopted in 1868, to replace the older seal, a rude outline map of Alabama, fastened to a tree.
     The Governors of Alabama have been William Wyatt Bibb, 1817-20; Thomas Bibb, 1820-21; Israel Pickens, 1821-25; John Murphy, 1825-9; Samuel B. Moore, 1829-31; John Gayle, 1831-5; Clement Comer Clay, 1835-7; Hugh McVay, 1837; Arthur Pendleton Bagby, 1837-41; Benjamin Fitzpatrick, 1841-5; Reuben Chapman, 1847-9; Henry Watkins Collier, 1849-53; John Anthony Winston, 1853-7; Andrew Barry Moore, 1857-61; John Gill Shorter, 1861-3; Thomas Hill Watts, 1863-5; Lewis Eliphalet Parsons, 1865 (provisional); Robert Miller Patton, 1865-8; William Henry Smith, 1868-70; Robert Burns Lindsay, 1870; David C. Lewis, 1872-4; George Smith Houston 1874-8; Rufus W. Cobb, 1878-82; Edward Asbury O'Neal; Thomas Seay, 1886-90; and Thos. G. Jones, 1890-2.
[portrait of MOBILE]
     Descriptive - Alabama is from 150 to 202 miles wide, between Georgia and Mississippi, and from 278 to 336 miles long, between Tennessee and Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.  It is larger than New York or Pennsylvania, Virginia or England.  The northeast contains the declining Alleghany ridges, melting away toward the south into a broken hill-country, and then into extensive plains, which for 60 miles inland are almost on the sea-level.  There are four great divisions of the State - the cereal, mineral, cotton, and timber regions.  The beautiful Tennessee Valley, in the temperate and health ful north, is a rich agricultural country, rising toward the east into the long blue highlands of the Raccoon and Lookout ranges.  The Alabama section of the valley is 200 miles long and 20

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miles wide, covering eight counties, and with 180,000 inhabitants.  This is the Cereal Belt, its fertile red lands producing grains and grasses, cotton and fruits, with noble mountain walls sheltering it alike from the icy southern winds and the intense heats of the southern plains, and traversed by rich lateral valleys, abounding in farms.  The Mountain and Mineral Region covers the northeast, and the Alleghany Mountains, which open out across all north-central Alabama, with 5,500 square miles of rich coal-measures, and vast deposits of iron-ore and limestone.  It includes 28 counties, with 400,000 inhabitants.  The
[portrait of MOBILE: government street]
Agricultural Region, 70 miles wide, clear across the State, comes next, between 33° and 31° 40´, in the rotten limestone formation, scarce of water, but on the west occupied by fertile bald prairie and wooded prairie.  This is the celebrated Black Belt, or Cane-Brake Region, where the negroes greatly predominate in numbers, raising vast quantities of cotton from the richest of lands.  It includes 17 counties, with over 500,000 inhabitants.  The Piney-Woods Region extends from the Black Belt to the Gulf, more than a hundred miles wide, abounding in long-leafe and yellow pine, and low and miasmatic along the rivers and coast, but elsewhere undulating, with
[portrait of MOBILE: COTTON EXCHANGE]
a sandy soil.  The summers are long, but tempered by the Gulf breezes, and vary between 73° and 94°.  Here grow the magnolia and the sweet-bay, gigantic water-oaks and live-oaks, black gums and venerable cypresses.  Turpentine and rosin are valued products; and vast quantities of lumber are shipped thence.  The land is very cheap; and the exporting of naval stores is facilitated by the navigable bays and entrances along the coast.
     The Gulf coast of Alabama, only 50 miles long, is broken by Mobile Bay, entering the land for 30 miles, and navigable by an artificial channel for vessels drawing 19 feet of water.  The deep and broad Mobile River, 50 miles long, enters the bay at its head.  It is formed by the powerful Alabama (312 miles long, and from 600 to 800 feet broad), and teh Tombigbee (navigable for 393 miles, to Fulton).  The Black Warrior (300 miles long) is navigable form Tuskaloosa to its union with the Tombigbee, at Demopolis.  The Coosa is 355 miles long, navigable for its lower ten miles, up to the falls at Wetumpka, above which there are 145 miles of rapids and rough waters.  At Greensport begins another navigable reach, 180 miles long, to Rome, furnishing trade for six steamboats.  The Tallapoosa is a picturesque stream 225 miles long, without commerce, on account of its rapid waters.  The Chattahoochee may be ascended for 350 miles, to Columbus.  The noble Tennessee River, heading southward from Virginia toward the Gulf is repelled by the rocks barriers of northern Alabama, and sweeps around toward the north, with 250 miles of its course within this State, navigable by steamboats from Decatur to Knoxville, and from Florence to the Ohio River.  The
[portrait of GREENSBORO: SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY]
rocky Muscle Shoals long prevented the passage of steamboats between Decatur and Florence (38 miles).  The Government has spent $4,000,000 in building a canal around the Shoals, and in 1889 the first steamboat traversed this avenue of commerce.
     The Climate of Alabama shows a mean yearly temperature of 65.2°  (and 53¼ inches of rainfall) at Montgomery, and 66.7° (and 64¼ inches of rainfall) at Mobile.  The variations are from 82° to 18° Fahrenheit in winter, and from 105° to 60° in summer.  This is the temperature of Sydney, Valparaiso and Algiers.  The autumn and winter winds

[Page 31]
are from the northeast and northwest; the summer winds from the southeast.  The picturesque hill-country is cool and healthy, with a genial and temperate climate.  The lowland counties sometimes suffer from summer heat, and from malaria along the Gulf and rivers, and intermittent and congestive fevers.  Snow is seldom seen, and the rivers never freeze over.
     Agriculture employs 400,000 Alabamians, on 140,000 farms, with $80,000,000 worth of land and buildings, $4,000,000 in machinery, and $25,000,000 in live stock, the yearly products being valued at $57,000,000.  The latter include 700,000 bales of cotton, 450,000 pounds of tobacco, 810,000 pounds of rice, 40,000,000 bushels of cereals (mainly corn and oats) and 52,000 tons of hay.  Cotton, the great staple of Alabama, grows mainly in the Black Belt and the Tennessee and Coosa valleys.  Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas alone surpass Alabama in this product.  There are 114,000 horses, 121,000 mules, 800,000 cattle, 350,00 sheep, and 1,400,000 swine.  The dairy products are 8,000,000 pounds of butter and 270,000 gallons of milk.  During the decade of the Session War, over 1,000,000 acres of Alabama farms

[Pictures of LANDS OF THE ALABAMA LAND AND DEVELOPMENT CO.]

relapsed into the wilderness, and the live-stock and farm-products were reduced by one-half.  The totals of production in 1860 have never been reached since.   The decadence of Alabama as an agricultural State is attributed by Dr. Hilgard to the exhaustion of her soil by improvident culture, and by Col. Milner to the dearth of labor, caused by the indolence of the negroes, now no longer compelled to work.  Latterly improved methods are being adopted, with increased willingness to labor and intelligence in adaptation.  Supplies are produced at home, crops are diversified, and increased attention is paid to stock-raising and grasses.  The soil is reach and productive, except in the south, much of which is sandy, and occupied by noble pine woods.  In the north and centre are large forests of oaks, pines, hickories, poplars, chestnuts, cedars, mulberries, elms and cypresses.  There are extensive areas of public lands. the land-office being at Montgomery.
     Along the borders of Alabama and Mississippi, from Aberdeen to the Gulf, extends a belt of 850,000 acres of land, traversed and owned by the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and controlled by the Alabama Land and Development Company, of Mobile.  Parts of this imperial domain lie in the prairie and flat-woods belts, but most of its Alabama section is in the long-leaf-pine belt of Washington and Mobile counties, a region of sandy loam, cultivated with extraordinary ease, and already largely devoted to truck and fruit farms.  The National Government, sells them at from $1.50 to $15 an acre, with long credits.  Large areas have already been thus disposed of in the Washington County, the oldest county in the State, and the seat of St. Stephens, its first capital; and other tracts have been taken up near Mobile, on the west.  The genial climate renders it possible to raise several crops yearly, with level and shallow cultivation, and skillful fertilizing.

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     In this beautiful and highly diversified Commonwealth there is about every variety of scenery, climate and product.  Thus immigrants and investors find interest in Escambia's great forests of yellow-heart pine; Blount's deep caverns and famous apple-orchards; the gray prairies of Bullock and Butler;

[picture of SPRING-HILL COLLEGE, NEAR MOBILE]

the hammocks of Conecuh; the Tyrolese scenery of Etowah and Marshall; the alluvial cane-brake region of Marengo; the corn-lands of Montgomery and Wilcox; the coal-fields of Walker and Jefferson; the gold mines of Talladega; and many other features of the mountain and plain counties.

[picture of EAST LAKE: HOWARD COLLEGE]

     The Minerals of Alabama are of great interest, and their development seems likely to change the State from an agricultural region to a manufacturing and mining country of almost limitless resources.  The Black-'Warrior, Coosa and Cahaba coal-fields and iron-beds are capable of enormous development.  The iron ore in sight is of an incalculable amount, the Red-Mountain vein alone being 30 feet thick, half a mile wide and 100 miles long.  The close proximity of inexhaustible supplies of bituminous coal makes this region, with its genial climate and rich agricultural valleys, the cheapest place in the world to manufacture iron.  Within 15 years the output of pig-iron in Alabama has increased twenty-fold, and the State now ranks next to Pennsylvania and Ohio.  The strata are from six to 150 feet deep, and include red hematite and brown ores.  There are 50 blast-furnaces in operation, producing yearly 1,000,000 tons of pig-iron.  The coal yield has risen to 3,380,000 tons.  Among other mineral products are granite, white and colored marble in great quantities and variety (near Talladega), flagstones, roofing-slate, lime, soapstone, asbestos, porcelain-clay, ochre, and manganese.  Gold, copper, graphite, lead and corundum are also found  The State contains many mineral waters, such as the Blount, Shelby, Bladon, Talladega, Jackson, White Sulphur and St. Clair Springs, all of which are sulphurous.  There are also chalybeate and saline springs.  At these points stand hotels for health-seekers, open all the year, and much visited by the aristocracy of the Gulf cities.  Bladon Springs are in the Piney Woods, four miles from the Alabama River, with carbonated alkaline water; Blount Springs, in the triangular valley, 1,580 feet above the sea; and Bailey Springs, on the highlands near the Muscle Shoals, nine miles from Florence.  The Hotel Monte Sano, near Huntsville, and 1,691 feet above the sea, has valuable iron and alum waters, with beautiful scenery and invigorating air.  The Hygeia Hotel is a sanitarium at Citronelle, 30 miles north of Mobile, in the pinewoods; and Spring Hill, overlooking Mobile and the bay has a similar institution, together with many delightful villas,

[Picture of MOBILE: HIGH SCHOOL]

Anniston, Verbena and Mountain Creek are popular vacation-resorts in the hill-country; and many health-seekers visit Evergreen, in the great pine-woods.  The foremost of the salt-water pleasure-resorts is Point Clear, near the blue waters of Mobile Bay.

     Government. - The governor is elected for two years, the president of the Senate succeeding in case of removal.  The secretary of State, treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, commissioner of agriculture, and superintendent of public instruction also hold for two years.  The General Assembly, composed of 33 senators and 100 representatives (126 Democrats

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and seven others), has biennial sessions, of not more than 50 days.  The civil divisions of the counties are called "beats" or precincts, instead of townships or parishes.  The judiciary includes the Supreme Court, with four justices; the ten districts of the circuit courts, with judges elected by the people for six years; the five chancellors of the courts of chancery in equity cases (established in 1839),

BIRMINGHAM:  UNION DEPOT.

and the probate courts.  There are United States District Courts at Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile.  The Capitol, at Montgomery, is a substantial building with a many-columned Grecian portico, and a high dome.  It stands on Capitol Hill, at the head of Dexter Avenue, and dates from 1849.  Here the Confederate Government was organized, Feb. 6, 1861, and the Confederate Congress held its earlier sessions.  The Alabama State Troops have shown great efficiency at different times, when called out to support the civil authorities.  They are armed with Springfield breech-loaders, the artillery including Gatlings, Napoleons and three-inch rifles.  The First Regiment has its headquarters at Mobile; the Second, at Birmingham; and the Third at Selma.  There are four batteries and two troops attached to the regiments.  Mobile and Montgomery have colored companies.  The State Troops hold regimental encampments, for a week in summer, and are inspected by United States army officers.

BIRMINGHAM:  COURT HOUSE

     Charities and Corrections - The Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, at Talladega, was opened in 1860, and has 53 inmates (whites).  The Alabama Academy for the Blind, formerly united with the above-named, became independent in 1887.  It has 30 pupils (whites).  The State Insane Asylum was opened at Tuskaloosa, in 1861, and has 340 inmates.  The State Penitentiary at Wetumpka dates from 1841.  The county convicts are farmed out to contractors, and kept in private prisons and convict camps, where they formerly suffered incalculably from cruel punishments, vermin and sickness, until, in many cases, death set them free.  Recently, marked improvement has been made in this system.  The Rev. F. H. Wines of Illinois pronounces Alabama's to be the best example of the lease system in the Union.  The majority of the able-bodied convicts work in the mines near Birmingham.  The report of the State health officers for 1889 showed a mortality of 20 per cent. in the Coalburg prison camp.  Alabama has 1,500 insane persons, 2,200 idiots, 1,400 blind, 700 deaf-mutes, 700 paupers, and 1,400 prisoners.

     National Institutions - The Mount-Vernon Barracks occupy a high plateau 28 north of Mobile, with their massive buildings amid oak and magnolia groves, surrounded by heavy brick walls.  This is one of the handsomest posts of the army; and dates from 1829, when Andrew Jackson ordered an arsenal to be established here, on the site of one of his favorite camp-grounds.  In 1873 it was transformed into a barrack, now occupied by part of the 4th United States Artillery.  In 1889-91 Geronimo, Nana, Loco, and 380 other Arizona Apaches, prisoners of war, were quartered here, under active religious and educational influences.  The United States Marine Hospital is at Mobile.  Fort Morgan, 30 miles south of Mobile, was founded in 1819, on the site of Fort Bowyer, and cost $1,250,000.  Fort Gaines is a pentagonal work on Dauphin Island, three miles from Fort Morgan, across the channel.  Neither

MONTGOMERY:  COLORED SCHOOLS

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of these works is garrisoned.  The lighthouses are on Sand Island, Mobile Point (Fort Morgan), Dog-River Bar, Choctaw Pass and Battery Gladden.

     Education, in its higher forms, began with Greene Academy, at Huntsville, in 1812.  A good public-school system was inaugurated in 1854, but the war and reconstruction crippled it seriously.  The normal schools have all been founded since 1892, and contain 1,200 students.  The normal schools for whites are at Florence, Jacksonville, Livingston and Troy.  In 1880, Alabama, out of a population of 1,262,505, had 433,477 persons above the age of ten who could not write.  This appalling army of illiterates is mainly composed of negroes and rustics; and the local educators are making earnest efforts to secure more and better means to reduce the prevailing ignorance.  Alabama has a school population of 485,551, with an average daily attendance of 162,516.  The school age is from 7 to 21; the average duration of the school year, 155 days in the cities, and 70 days in the country; the yearly expense, $750,000.  The Teachers' Reading Circle, the Colored Teachers' Association, the State Teachers' Association (white), the Congressional (District) Teachers' Institutes, and other active agencies are achieving a good work in raising the educational standard.

HUNTSVILLE:  THE POST OFFICE

     The University of Alabama occupies an estate of 500 acres, at Tuskaloosa, with 18 professors and 240 students.  It was opened in 1831, and has an endowment of $300,000 from lands granted by Congress in 1802, and held in trust by the State, which pays eight percent. a year.  The National troops burned the building, in 1865; and there are now four new edifices, enclosing a quadrangle, with Clark Hall, containing the great hall and the library (of 9,000 volumes).  The three courses are classical, scientific, and civil engineering, with a law department containing 19 pupils.  Military training is a prominent feature.  The State Agricultural and Mechanical College, at Auburn, in the Cereal Belt, arose in 1872, as one of the National land-grant schools of science; and has 12 instructors and 250 pupils.  The Southern University, at Greensboro, pertains to the M. E. Church South, and has 12 instructors and 220 students.  Before the war it was a rich institution, and it is now slowly regaining its former dignity.  Howard College is a Baptist institution, founded in 1842, at Marion, and since 1887 located at East Lake, five miles from Birmingham, in the Ruhama Valley.  Spring-Hill College is a Catholic institution near Mobile, opened in 1830, and with 100 students.  The Medical College of Alabama was founded in 1859, at Mobile, and has 12 instructors and 100 students.  There are 35 academies, with 6,000 students, including the colleges for women at Anniston, Tuskaloosa, Tuskegee, Huntsville, Tuscumbia, Athens, Eufaula, Florence and Talladega.

HUNTSVILLE:  COUNTY COURT-HOUSE

     The colored people of Alabama have four normal schools, those at Huntsville and Mobile being older than the white normal schools.  The State Normal and Industrial School was founded in 1881, as an outgrowth of the Hampton (Va.) school, and has been very successfully conducted by Booker T. Washington, an eminent colored educator.  Its corn-fields, orchards, workshops and buildings occupy an old plantation near the patrician town of Tuskegee, in the Black Belt.  The State makes a yearly appropriation, paying part of the expenses of this school, which has 600 earnest and industrious students.  Talladega College was founded by the American Missionary Association in 1867, and has several buildings, and large tracts of farm-lands.  There are 427 colored students, none of them collegiate.  The theological school for Congregational ministers is at Talladega; that for Baptists is at Selma University; and the Presbyterian conduct an institute for training colored ministers, at Tuskaloosa.

[Page 35]

BIRMINGHAM:  SLOSS IRON AND STEEL CO.

     The State has 3,000 Sunday schools, with 20,000 teachers and 160,000 pupils.  The religious proclivities of the people incline toward the Methodist and Baptist sects, the first having above 200,000 members, and the second 175,000.  There are 12,000 Presbyterians, and 4,000 Episcopalians.

     Newspapers came to Alabama in 1812, when Pasham started the Madison Gazette at Huntsville.  St. Stephens followed with The Halcyon, in 1814; Mobile with The Gazette, in 1816; and Tuskaloosa with The Republican, in 1818.  The Florence Gazette, Montgomery Republican and Claiborne Clarion appeared in 1820.  Alabama now has 169 newspapers (15 daily, 144 weekly, and 8 monthly), with an average circulation of 681 copies.  Prominent among these are the Mobile Register (founded in 1820), Montgomery Advertiser (1828), Selma Times-Mail (1825), and Birmingham Age-Herald.

     The Chief Cities of Alabama (except Mobile) are modern, and some of them have risen with marvelous rapidity in the last 15 years.  Mobile, successively French, English, Span

BIRMINGHAM:  BLOSS IRON & STEEL CO.

ANNISTON:  ST. MICHAEL'S AND ALL ANGELS.

[Page 36]

BIRMINGHAM:  JOSIAH MORRIS BLOCK

ANNISTON:  THE ANNISTON INN.

ANNISTON:  NOBLE INSTITUTE FOR BOYS

[Page 37]

ANNISTON:  GRACE CHURCH

NOBLE INSTITUTE FOR GIRLS

THE SCHOOL AND DORMITORY

DECATUR:  THE MANUFACTURING QUARTER

[Page 38]

TUSKALOOSA:  UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

BESSEMER:  OFFICE OF THE BESSEMER LAND AND IMPROVEMENT CO.

BESSEMER:  DE BARDELEBEN COAL AND IRON COMPANY

[Page 39]

BESSEMER:  THE CHARLESTON BLOCK

BESSEMER: DEBARDELEBEN COAL AND IRON CO.

SHEFFIELD: THE SHEFFIELD HOTEL

[Page 40]

FLORENCE:  SYNODICAL COLLEGE.

THE TENNESSEE RIVER AT SHEFFIELD

SHEFFIELD LAND, IRON AND COAL COMPANY

SHEFFIELD LAND, IRON AND COAL CO.'S OFFICE

[Page 41]

dega, Stevenson, Attalla, Gadsden and other new municipalities, are fast coming into public view.

THE TENNESSEE RIVER AT SHEFFIELD.
 

[Page 42]

MONTGOMERY: HIGH SCHOOL

within the past decade, especially in iron and steel and the connected industries.  The largest cotton-mills are at Tallassee, 35 miles from Montgomery, at the great falls of the Tallapoosa, where 500 operatives are kept at work, in commodious stone factories.  The works were started in 1845, and the present mill dates from 1854, having been built at a cost of $400,000.  During the Secession War, fire -arms were made here, but now the products are sheetings, shirtings, duck, and cotton rope and yarn.

     The Finances of Alabama show an estimated valuation of $378,000,000, with a State bonded debt of $9,240,000 (besides $250,000 unfunded), and county and municipal debts of about $5,000,000.  The yearly State, county, and municipal taxes are above $2,000,000 yearly.  The first bank was founded at Huntsville in 1816.  There are now 21 National banks, with about $3,500,000 capital; and six savings-banks, with deposits of $1,300,000.  There are also seven State banks with a capital of $700,000.

MONTGOMERY: JOSIAH MORRIS & CO.'S BANK.

     The banking-house of Josiah Morris & Co. is the pre-eminent private financial institution in Alabama, and exercises an important and progressive influence in Montgomery, the capital of the State, as well as in the great mineral regions of Central and Northern Alabama.  Josiah Morris originated on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in 1818, and, after a number of years of active business in Georgia and Louisiana, in 1851 he settled at Montgomery, where his close attention to business and his keen insight have been the corner-stones of a wonderfully successful career.  The firm has helped the great railroad enterprises of this section with counsel and credit; and especially has contributed largely to the building of the South and North line, and the consequent development of Birmingham.  The large and increasing business of this house has compelled the erection of a new banking building, which is an ornament to the capital of Alabama.  Mr. Morris's associate is F. M. Billing.  Josiah Morris & Co. carry on a general banking business.

BIRMINGHAM: FIRST NATIONAL BANK

     The First National Bank of Birmingham, although established within a very few years, now occupies a proud position among the financial institutions of the South, and has the largest deposits and does the largest business of any bank in the State of Alabama.  With a paid-in capital of $250,000, this corporation already ahs a surplus exceeding $200,000; and its first class fund.  The efficient aid of such a powerful financial institution as this has been wisely exerted to advance the prosperity of Birmingham in many ways, and to build up and sustain the great industries which have risen here.  At once conservative and enterprising, the First National has continually developed its opportunities and resources, with an unwavering faith in the iron wealth of the Alabama hills as the true foundation for a powerful monetary institution; and the result has amply justified the sagacity of the undertaking.  Its building was the first three-story brick structure in Birmingham, erected for this bank in 1872, by Charles Linn, in an old corn-field, and then known all over Alabama as "Linn's Folly."  The First National was organized in 1884, by the consolidation of the National Bank of Birmingham and the City Bank.  Then there were two banks in the city, where there are now twelve.