from the May 24, 1871 Tuskaloosa Indepenent Monitor

 But most to a broad, extended plain lying just beyond the old town, carpeted with green, dotted here and there with a grove where Dryads would choose to dwell, or receding into a flower decked glen where Naiads would delight to sport, does my fancy often turn with fond and lingering gaze. The landscape is one that would honor the mellow light* of Claude Lorraine's evening skies.

As your footsteps seek to traverse this beautiful plain, you leave behind you the town hidden in its garb of natural foliage, save where here and there a glistening spire extends above the tail trees, you pass over a succession of gentle undulations of surface, on around by the marble slotted city of the dead up. to where the eastern hills begin their woods ascent, then skirting along whose edge rise in grand spectacle the massive dome and broad structure of the Insane Asylum; then until our plain abruptly terminates at the very cliff at whose foot the Warrior in sportive glee dashes its frolicsome waters. Hero are the same old beech trees, under whose welcome shade, and on whose tangled roots, for thirty seven years, many a young student, wearied with intellectual strife, has lain' himself down to listen to the music of the waters, has mused of home and friends and an ambitious future. These old beeches are records of the past, for in the soft bark are engraved, some skillfully, some rudely, the hundreds of proud youths of Alabama: Let the eye wander over those names, and what a story could be woven therefrom of individual fortunes for the last thirty "Where are their owners now?" Echo answers, "Where? " Many of them written their names on fame's eternal bedroll.

 from the February8, 1891 BIRMINGHAM POST HERALD

Everybody knows, or has heard of Alabama's old capital, the site of the State university, beautiful Tuskaloosa, with its stately mansions, its broad avenues lined with magnificent water-oaks, and its navigable river, the Warrior, not the largest, but the most valuable, and soon to be the most important of Alabama's splendid waterways. Many of the older residents, and not a few of the younger generation, have floated between its sloping, densely wooded banks from Tuskaloosa to Demopolis, and thence to Mobile, but very small is the number who have ascended the noble river above the most important city on its banks. It is generally known that Tuskaloosa is the 'head of navigation'* on the Warrior, but few are aware of the sudden and radical change, which not only the river, but the whole surface of the country presents above that point. Below, the valley through which the river has washed a channel, is from three to ten miles wide--above it is but a narrow, often sloping bench twenty to two hundred yards in width; but it is a region of exquisite beauty. That part of the Warrior river from Tuskaloosa bridge to White's landing, a distance of about three miles, including 4 ' University Shoals," and the picturesque expanse of river and valley at 'Big Island' is known to every old st student of State university, and o its rushing, turbulent waters in winter; the delicate lining of of its with the soft, pale green early spring, and the shallow, bubbling crystal stream, dotted with thousands of the most exquisite of water lillies in early summer, have surely left a pleasant recollection in the heart of every old Above 'White's Landing," however, river and country are almost as much of a terra incognita as the wilds of Africa.

With the exception of a few prospectors and geologists, or an occasional fishing and hunting party from Tuskaloosa or Northport, no one sees the beauties of that region except the scattered farmers, who, living on the hill u tops inland, climb down the steep slopes of the hills on almost impassable roads to raise a crop on the narrow strip of river bank, made fertile by annual inundations. Yet it is a country well not high, visiting, with bold outlines, rise sheer worth and seeing. Rugged hills, out of the water. Large, deep pools, interrupted by the rocky shoals, string themselves like a series of lakes for over 100 miles northward. Dark, frowning while pines crown the crests of the ridge, thin corn and cotton grow luxuriantly on the string of level or sloping bench, which takes the place of a valley, and beech, oak, gum, cypress, bay and other hardwoods fill the narrow gulches of the numerous small which empty into their parent, the streams glorious Warrior.

The scenery not unlike that on the celebrated Hudson river, though all is on a much smaller scale, but it would be truth to say that what the scenery loses in grandeur it gains in deliand tender beauty. Every one of the cacy many windings of the river presents a new and charming aspect. Now the hills rise, sheer and precipitous, out of the river, densely wooded from top to bottom-a turn and they slope away both sides, terraced and partly cultivated, with even here and there a modest log house with barn and stable clinging to the slope, another turn and a perpendicular rock wall 200 feet in height rises abruptly out of the channel of the rapid stream, while all 200 yards of valley are spread out on the other's side in the shape of a rich narrow a mile or more in length, with the tier of dark, rugged, pine clad hills for a background. AN UNKNOWN COUNTRY..