Mr. Ford pointed out corn and cotton fields where the corn and cotton was still ungathered and told me that he had trot lines set out all through these fields last spring and caught hundreds of pounds of fish--it hardly seemed possible as the water was then fifteen of twenty feet below the banks of these fields. But in December when it began raining nearly every day, and the water rose so suddenly that I was obliged to leave many of my traps where I had set them around ponds and banks of streams and in the swamps, I could then readily see that it was perfectly possible for the fish to get out into the corn and cotton fields to feed.
The rainy season set in nearly a month earlier this season than usual, causing the rivers and streams to rise so as to flood the whole bottoms (it is called the tide by the people in Alabama).
I will not give my views of the country and conditions in northern Alabama--it would not look well; it is sufficient to say that the greater part of the land is owned in large tracts by a few men and leased out at from $3.00 to $4.00 per acre. Corn and Cotton are the main crops. Any land lying above the overflowing sections requires heavy fertilizing in order to make a crop. The fertilizer is the commercial sort, and all the crop will sell for is put onto the land in the way of fertilizers. These lands are mostly leased to colored people--in fact, I was told that the landlords did not care to lease to white men.
The poor white man in northern Alabama is worse off than the colored man, for he is looked upon as neither white nor black. In this section the population is largely of the colored class. All of the landlords have a store, so as to furnish their tenants with goods of an inferior quality at exorbitant prices.
There is no good water to be found in that part of Alabama. The water that the people use is something fearful--of course the wealthy class have cisterns. The soil is mostly red clay, and terrible to get about in when the least damp. The roads are only names for roads.
South of the Tennessee River is what is called the Sand Mountains; the soil is of a sandy nature, freestone water, and the people are all white--in fact, it is said that they will not allow a colored man to live there. I heard it stated that they would not even allow a negro to stop over night in that section.
The Sand Mountain region is a piney country with a sandy soil. The land is not as fertile as the bottom lands along the Tennessee River, but they produce a finer grade of cotton, which brings a cent or two a pound more than that of the bottom lands.
As to game in north Alabama, there is but little large game to be found. In the extreme northern part of Madison county, well up to the Tennessee line, there are a few deer and wild hogs; it was said that there were some bear, also plenty of wild turkeys. There were plenty of ducks, and a good many quail.
There is still some lumbering being done, mostly in oak of different kinds, though a good part is white oak. The logs are cut and hauled to the Tennessee River and taken by steamboat to Decatur in Limestone County, and worked up into lumber and manufactured articles. There is still quite large bodies of cugalo gum left in the swamps, though this timber is not yet used to any great extent.
I wish to say that if the trapper expects to ship his camp outfit by freight to any part of the South, he should start it from four to six weeks in advance of the time that he will arrive at the place where he will use it. The trapper, as a usual thing, is too shallow in the region of the pocket book to afford to ship an outfit of camp stove, cooking utensils, tent and a hundred traps or more of various sizes, by express. Of course, he can take his bed blanket and extra clothing as baggage in his trunk.