For the present, few persons should take their wives and children to the interior South, and none should do so on their first visit.  Many houses have been burned or stripped of their furniture, provisions are scarce and costly, and the general facilities for domestic happiness are far from abundant.  The conveniences for locomotion in that region are very poor, and will continue so for a considerable time.  A man can “rough it” anywhere, but he can hardly expect his family to travel on flat cars, or on steamboats that have neither cabins nor decks, and subsist on the scanty and badly-cooked provisions that the Sunny South affords.  By all means, I would counsel any young man on his way to the South not to elope with his neighbor’s wife.  In view of the condition of the country beyond Mason and Dixon’s line, an elopement would prove his mistake of a lifetime.

I have already referred to the resources of Missouri.  The State possesses greater mineral wealth than any other State of the Union, east of the Rocky Mountains.  Her lead mines are extensive, easily worked, very productive, and practically inexhaustible.  The same may be said of her iron mines.  Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain are nearly solid masses of ore, the latter being a thousand feet in height.  Copper mines have been opened and worked, and tin has been found in several localities.  The soil of the Northern portion of Missouri can boast of a fertility equal to that of Kansas or Illinois.  In the Southern portion the country is more broken, but it contains large areas of rich lands.  The productions of Missouri are similar to those of the Northern States in the same latitude.  More hemp is raised in Missouri than in any other State except Kentucky.  Much of this article was used during the Rebellion, in efforts to break up the numerous guerrilla bands that infested the State.  Tobacco is an important product, and its culture is highly remunerative.  At Hermann, Booneville, and other points, the manufacture of wine from the Catawba grape is extensively carried on.  In location and resources, Missouri is without a rival among the States that formerly maintained the system of slave labor.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE RESOURCES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

How the People have Lived.—­An Agricultural Community.—­Mineral and other Wealth of Virginia.—­Slave-Breeding in Former Times.—­The Auriferous Region of North Carolina.—­Agricultural Advantages.—­Varieties of Soil in South Carolina.—­Sea-Island Cotton.—­Georgia and her Railways.—­Probable Decline of the Rice Culture.—­The Everglade State.—­The Lower Mississippi Valley.—­The Red River.—­Arkansas and its Advantages.—­A Hint for Tragedians.—­Mining in Tennessee.—­The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.—­Texas and its Attractions.—­Difference between Southern and Western Emigration.—­The End.