In the year 1830, the total value of the importations to the port of Mobile was 1,044,135 dollars: the value of the exports for the same year was 1,994,365 dollars. In 1834, the value of the imports is stated at 3,088,811 dollars: the exports for the same year at 6,270,197 dollars. For the current year, I am credibly assured that an addition of one-third to these last amounts will not much overrate the enormous increase to which, should peace continue, each year must add for many seasons to come, since the influx of planters to Alabama is clearing the cane-brake with a rapidity unprecedented even in this country: the Indian reserves are all coming into cultivation as fast as they are vacated; and, in fact, Alabama at this day may be said to present a spectacle of successful energy and industry not to be surpassed. A railroad is now in progress, the prospectus for which was in circulation during my visit, which is to connect North and South Alabama, commencing in the valley of Tennessee, and running to some navigable point of the harbour of Mobile. A glance at a map of the States will at once render obvious the immense importance such a line of communication will be of to this city, concentrating on this point the trade, not only of North Alabama and the Tennessee valley, but some of the most fertile portions of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi.
By this railway the great obstacle in the way of the trade of the Tennessee valley, the muscle shoals, will be avoided, whilst, at a fair calculation, it is expected that the increase of cotton received into Mobile will amount to one hundred thousand bales: besides a vast quantity of pork, beef, bacon, flour, lard, whisky, &c. that now seeks a market at New Orleans, through those great natural channels, the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers: to the navigation of the first-named river the shoals have hitherto been a serious drawback, detaining laden craft of all kinds for weeks, and even months, until, late in winter or early in spring, a rise in the river enabled them to float over into the highway of the Western world, the Mississippi.
The grounds on which the vast and seemingly extravagant increase of the cotton crop of this State of Alabama may be justified, are to be found, not only in the great fertility of the virgin soil yearly brought under cultivation, but in the unprecedented increase of population. This very year, it is calculated, not less than twenty-five thousand slaves have been brought into this country from the older States on the Atlantic; this amount will, in all probability, be exceeded by the increase of next season, as there are many millions of acres of the most fertile land in the Union yet in the hands of Government for sale, lately conceded in exchange by the Indians of the Creek and Cherokee tribes.