58 INNS OF SOUTHERN STATES. [CHAP. XXIV. 



travelers, and the daily and periodical press of Great Britain, 

 were brought together in one view. It is at least instructive, as 

 showing that a disposition to run down our transatlantic breth 

 ren was quite as marked, and perhaps even more conspicuous, 

 before any of the states had repudiated, than after the financial 

 crisis of 1841. So long as such an unfriendly and disparaging 

 tone is encouraged, England does well to keep up a larger mili 

 tary force in Canada, and a larger navy than would otherwise be 

 called for. It is only to be regretted that the Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer can not set down as a separate item, the charge for 

 indulging in anti- American prejudices, for it is possible that John 

 Bull, patient as he is of taxation, might doubt whether the lux 

 ury was worth its cost. When the landlord saw me making an 

 extract from Walsh, he begged me to accept the book ; the 

 second occasion in this tour in which mine host had pressed me 

 to take a volume out of his library, which he had seen me read 

 ing with interest. 



There is a considerable uniformity in the scale of charges in 

 the country inns in the southern states. Great hotels in large 

 cities are more expensive, and small inns in out-of-the-way places, 

 where there were few comforts, considerably cheaper. We never 

 made any bargains, and observed that the bill was always equit 

 ably adjusted according to the accommodation provided. 



From Claiborne we crossed the Alabama River, and were hos 

 pitably received by Mr. Blount, to whom I had a letter of intro 

 duction from Mr. Hamilton Couper. While my wife staid 

 with Mrs. Blount at Woodlands, he took me in his carriage 

 through the forest, to the county town of Macon, where he had 

 business as a magistrate. Macon (Alabama) happened to lie 

 . directly in my way to Clarkesville, where I wished to examine 

 the geology of the region where the fossil skeletons of the gigantic 

 zeuglodon had been procured. The district we passed through 

 was situated in the fork of the Alabama and Tombeckbee rivers, 

 where the aboriginal forest was only broken here and there by a 

 few clearings. To travel with an accomplished and agreeable 

 resident proprietor, who could entirely sympathize with my feel 

 ings and opinions, in a district so recently deserted by the Indians, 



