Dixie: Or Southern Scenes and Sketches

Excerpt: The chapters which make up this volume first appeared in harper's magazine and harper's weekly as a series of papers upon the development of what may well be called Our New South and its resources. The descriptions of scenery and present conditions are my own, but the state ments which are of the most value and importance to a student of the material resources of the country are such as were made to me, and then verified by others - by the most shrewd and skilled, and at the same time disinterested, residents of the localities to which they apply. It would have required years of residence and special training for me to gather such information from my own experience.
Perhaps the chapter upon St. Louis will not seem to be as wholly in place here as in the companion to this volume, called Our Great pvest. Truly, St. Louis belongs somewhere between the two sections, or more properly in both, for it is a Western city with a Southern and Southwestern trade. It is treated here because it is impossible to correctly con sider the Southern States without a knowledge of its forces and in uence, and because these studies, and the main jour ney for making them, were properly begun at that city the gate of the old way to the region bordering upon the Mississippi.