TUSCALOOSA A Capital That is Yet Hardly Built But Has Many Beauties- Manufacturing Center— Schools and Various State Institutions Special Correspondence of the Leader Tuscaloosa Ala March 22 — Toward the western line of Alabama and north of the center of the State on the railroad leading from New Orleans to Chattanooga and at the head of navigation on the Black Warrior River on an elevated plateau of red clay loam well mixed with sand and resting on a thick substratum of gravel lies the interesting old town of Tuscaloosa once the capital of Alabama. I hesitate to write it down as a town-for throughout the South it is always spoken of as the City of Tuscaloosa but it is a town nevertheless according to the nomenclature of Ohio having including its suburbs somewhat less than five thousand inhabitants. In some respects it recalls the language of the great prophet Nehemiah who remarked concerning a city of his day that the city was indeed great though the inhabitants were few therein and the houses were not yet builded.
The site for this contemplated city was exceedingly well chosen and the fathers are entitled to credit perhaps I should say the father for our Uncle Samuel selected the locality and engineered the city reserving from private entry or public sale upon the usual terms a goodly tract of land which was sold off only in town lots to people who were sagacious and farseeing and desired a pleasant and salubrious locality in which to drink their mint julips and entertain their friends while their faithful retainers toiled in the cotton fields far down the fertile valley below the town. They were good people as the world went then, those planters of the olden time, albeit they differed from us of the North as to some essentials of a Christian life and they are good people today such of them as are left and very creditable representatives of the great American nation and I think they were never so bitter at heart toward their brethren of the North as were some others in less favored localities who had really less to lose by the upsetting of old usages and the liberation of the slaves.
The town was regularly laid out by competent engineers who had an eye to the picturesque and magnificent and the streets were plotted with reference to the requirements of a to be renowned seat of government. Since land was of no great consequence in those days it was allowed that 132 feet was none too wide for the streets and now that the sidewalks are bordered with rows of mighty water oaks from two to three feet in diameter with a central row down the middle of each principal street it does not appear that the fathers of the city miscalculated matters nor were otherwise than level-headed folks. Brick buildings arc conspicuous and as the ground hereabouts can assume the out much have been of their bricks eipal street and ilceii w ells st ut rope passing over au iron wheel suspended under the apex of a sheltering roof hnd terminating at each end with a eluiu and an oaken bucket enables the freedman who still officiates in his old capacity to fill the pail which he lo'es homeward on his head or to water the thirsty ox or the travel-woiu and mud-bespattered terse A lofty mus e stand towers at the intersection of two main ihoroughfmes and near it piwses with spacious curve the one street-car track of the town which leads from the railroad depot a mile below to this point its terminus in front of the principal hotel of the place a commodious wide-balconied s rueture where com mercial travelers are nt heme 1 he streets are well graveled with while and yellow pebbles and the most frequented sidewalks ure flagged with sandstone slabs quarried tn the distant hills or with bnek over which a great many people have already walked I am sorry to say— for it doesn’t improve it briek sidewalk any to have people tramping over it all the time! When not paved at all the sidewalks here are reasonably satisfactory for within an hour a ter the heaviest shower they a are dry enough for feminine feet and au hour later they are ofteu seamed with cracks and fissures and ready to atsoib the next shower which by the way is not long delayed at this season of the year at least Last summer it is true they had a seventy days’ bake without any considerable moisture and the rain-clouds went astrav and the crops suffered but this was an anomaly Usunl'y it- rains here and all through this gulf-coast region on very slight provocation and fertile lands along water courses are subject io frequent aud disastrous overflows The Black Warrior arid kindred streams are even more uncertain thau the Ohio but as for this town it is high and dry above all overflow a hundred feet at least As the business of this ithalready appearance ot brick with-labrieatiou the builders liberal as to the size In the coaler of the pt-in-at intervals are large st oitgly curbed where a in of to ' establish-' ! ox-I ! ’ di-’ ’ ' Clevc-! ' ‘ J.
