34 
streets were erected two very plain triumphal arches, in ho¬ 
nour of General La Fayette. I was made acquainted with Colo¬ 
nel Pickens, friend of Colonel Wool. He had formerly served 
in the army, was afterwards governor of South Carolina, and now 
a planter in Alabama. He carried us to the state-house, where 
the legislature was in session. * He introduced me to Gover¬ 
nor Murphy, in whose office we passed half an hour, in con¬ 
versing very pleasantly. The governor gave me several details 
concerning the state. The greater part of it had been bought 
from the Indians, and settled within ten years. It was first re¬ 
ceived by congress as a state of the union in the year 1819. All 
establishments within it, are of course very new. The staple 
productions are Indian corn and cotton, which are shipped to Mo¬ 
bile, the sea port of the state, and sold there. The bales of cot¬ 
ton average about forty dollars. About forty miles hence, at the 
confluence of the Black Warrior and the Tombigbee rivers, lies the 
town of Demopolis, formerly called Eagleville. It was located 
by the French, who had come back from the much promising 
Champ d’Asyle. This place attracted my curiosity in a lively 
degree, and I would willingly have visited it. The governor and 
the secretary of state, however, advised me strongly against this, 
as there was nothing at all there worthy of observation. They 
related to me what follows: 
Alabama, as a territory, was under the especial superinten¬ 
dence of congress. At that period a number of French arrived 
from the perishing Champ d?Jlsyle to the United States. At the 
head of them were the Generals Lefebvre-Desnouettes, Lalle- 
mand and Rigaud; congress allowed these Frenchmen a large 
tract of land upon a very long credit, almost for nothing, under 
the promise that they would endeavour to plant the vine and 
olive tree. Both attempts miscarried, either through the neglect 
of the French, or that the land was too rich for the vine and the 
olive. Some of these Frenchmen devoted themselves to the more 
profitable cultivation of cotton; the most of them, however, dis¬ 
posed of the land allotted to them very advantageously, spread 
themselves through the United States, and sought a livelihood in 
a variety of ways. Some were dancing and fencing masters, 
some fancy shopkeepers, and others in Mobile and New Orleans, 
even croupiers at the hazard tables, that are there licensed. Ge¬ 
neral Rigaud betook himself at the time of the Spanish revolu¬ 
tion to Spain, there to contend against France, and may now 
be living in England; General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, also went 
* Accommodation is here so difficult to procure, that the senators are obliged 
to sleep three upon one mattress laid upon the floor : their food consists, it is 
said, almost without exception of salted pork. 
