COTTON CULTURE. 77 



ginned cotton to the acre. The average product per acre 

 throughout the State, according to the census of 1850, is 

 six hundred and fifty pounds. 



Along the north-eastern limit of the State are lands 

 which drain into the Tombigbee. This is an excellent 

 cotton country, the climate being exactly suited to the 

 plant, and the soil remarkably soft and light. 



ALABAMA. 



This State and Mississippi are remarkably similar in 

 situation, and in the amount and quality of cotton which 

 they produce. Both extend to the Gulf on the south ; 

 both are bounded on the north by Tennessee ; both have- a 

 large extent of poor land occupying the south eastern angle 

 of their territory. The north-eastern part of Alabama is 

 rough and unproductive, except in a few valleys of limited 

 extent, but on the northern border is the most southern 

 curve of the Tennessee River, whose valley affords much 

 good, though not first-class, cotton land. 



As in Louisiana, the rich cotton lands of Alabama are 

 confined to an angle of the State. The bottoms of the 

 Tombigbee and Alabama, and the irregularly shaped tri- 

 angle that lies between the lower parts of these streams, 

 send by far the greater part of the cotton of Alabama to 

 market. With the exception of the limited region around 

 Huntsville and Tuscumbia, in the northern part, there is 

 not a great deal grown north of the thirty-third degree of 

 north latitude, or the line which, continued west, divides 

 Louisiana from Arkansas. The tenth degree west of 

 Washington, which corresponds nearly with a line con- 

 necting Decatur and Pensacola, divides the State about 

 equally, east and west. The south-western quarter of Ala- 

 bama as thus bisected in each direction, is equalled only 

 by the rich black prairies of Texas as cotton soil. 



The alluvions of the rivers are, of course very rich and 



