COTTON CULTTJEE. 175 



and wheat is largely raised. The titles to lands have been 

 considerably disturbed by the war, and there are a large 

 number of acres in every town that can be obtained at 

 moderate prices. Except in a few instances the lands of 

 Tennessee are divided into tracts of moderate size, seven- 

 ty-one acres being the average of improved land in each 

 farm, so that the man of moderate means who is looking 

 for a farm where he can, in a favorable season, raise a few 

 thousand pounds of cotton with most of the other Ameri- 

 can crops, need not pass south of the Tennessee River in 

 his search. The same remarks here made of Middle Ten- 

 nessee apply with some modifications to the north-eastern 

 counties of Mississsippi, and the northern pa^ts of Ala- 

 bama and Georgia. Much of the surface here is broken 

 and sterile ; in many counties wheat is the leading crop, 

 but nearly every farmer raises a little cotton. The land- 

 scapes are not so attractive as those of Middle Tennessee, 

 nor the water so good, there being, in this respect, wide 

 differences in adjoining counties. The northern and par- 

 ticularly the north-western counties of Arkansas are ad- 

 mirably adapted both as to soil, climate, and the degree 

 of moisture, to the wants of the cotton farmer as distin- 

 guished from the cotton planter. The present objection 

 of remoteness and difficulty of access is being rapidly 

 overcome by the building of railroads ; there is no part of 

 the entire South where the man of moderate means can 

 obtain, on better terms, a tract of, say two hundred acres, 

 on which he may grow corn, wheat, oats, potatoes of both 

 kinds, and send to market from ten to twenty bales of cot- 

 ton, from which to realize the principal part of his clear 

 income. As farming can be successfully combined with 

 cotton growing in the sections just mentioned, so the joint 

 production of cotton and beef is eminently practicable in 

 a wide range of counties in the northern part of Texas. 

 They are mostly prairie lands, where stock-raising is the 

 first and the natural occupation of the inhabitants ; but 



