70 ABSENTEEISM IN SOUTHERN STATES. [CHAP. XXV. 



leaves of Aster ophyllite, and in other beds the characteristic root 

 called Stigmaria, not uncommon.^ 



According to Professor Brumby, this coal-field of the Warrior 

 River is ninety miles long from north to south, and from ten to 

 thirty miles in breadth, and includes in it some coal-seams not 

 less than ten feet thick. It forms a southern prolongation of the 

 great Appalachian coal-field, with which I was unacquainted when 

 I compiled my map, published in 1845, of the geology of North 

 America.! Its geographical situation is peculiarly interesting ; 

 for, being situated in lat. 33 10 north, it constitutes at present 

 the extreme southern limit to which the ancient carboniferous 

 vegetation has been traced in the northern hemisphere, whether 

 on the east or west side of the Atlantic. 



Continuing our route into the upland country, we entered about 

 thirty-three miles N.E. of Tuscaloosa, a region called Rooke s 

 Valley, where rich beds of ironstone and limestone bid fair, from 

 their proximity to the coal, to become one day a source of great 

 mineral wealth. At present the country has been suffered to re 

 trograde, and the population to grow less numerous than it was 

 twenty years ago, owing to migrations to Louisiana and Texas, 

 and partly to the unthriftiness of slave labor. 



We traveled in a carriage with two horses, and could advance 

 but a few miles a day, so execrable and often dangerous was the 

 state of the roads. Occasionally we had to get out and call at a 

 farm-house to ask the proprietor s leave to take down his snake 

 fence, to avoid a deep mud-hole in the road. Our vehicle was 

 then driven over a stubble field of Indian corn, at the end of 

 which we made our exit, some fifty yards on, by pulling down 

 another part of the fence. In both places the labor of rebuilding 

 the fence, which consists simply of poles loosely placed together 

 and not nailed, was entailed upon us, and caused no small delay. 



One of the evils, tending greatly to retard the progress of the 

 southern states, is absenteeism, which is scarcely known in the 

 North. The cheapness of land, caused by such rapid emigration 



* See &quot; Quart. Journ. of Geol. Soc.,&quot; vol. ii. p. 278, and for a list of 

 the plants, by Mr. C. J. F. Bunbury, p. 282. ibid, 

 t See &quot;Travels,&quot; &c. vol. ii. 



