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H. C. HORNADY, ) EDITOR #4 PROPRIETOR. f IfOLTOHI. Alode. Inscribed h the Daughters of the South. BY MART A. McCRIMMON. I sit beneath the solemn pines, And watch their shadows/where Pale moonlight falls in ‘silver lines ' Upon tho summer air; And listen to their ceaseless moan. That sadly breathes ‘ Alone—alone ! ’ How like a humau voice it seenis A sighing, low lament, For blighted hopes and broken dreams, And ties asunder rent; A voice that seckt the Lethean shore, And murmurs oft 4 No more —no more !’ No inure, no more t and can it be Our hearts, like these sad pines, Must ever breathe their minstrelsy To memory, that entwines About them, like the ivy grown Upon a crumbling burial stone ? Yes, never more life's golden hour# Will come as once they came; The voice of Spring, the breath of flowers, Will be nomor© the same; For nature ? s charms can ne’er impart A balm to heal the wounded heart. And oh ! this wicked war has torn The light from every home, And many a noble form been borne To fill a distant tomb; And some that high in hope remain Will never more come back again. From eyes of light and cheeks most fair Sad tears unceasing flow ; And scarce a heart that does not wear Some badge of speechless woe; For all that’s dear in life is o’er When those we love return no more. But if tho ‘ loved ones’ ne’er return, Does there not yet remain Some high and holy thoughts that burn Upon the heart and brain— Somo noble duties which demand A willing mind and ready handl In truth there does. Then, heart, be still; Flow back, ye rising tears; An J, with a heaven-aspiring will, That laughs at doubts and fears, Let’* struggle with a purpose true, For that which duty bids us do. And while a heart that may be blest Is bowed with care and grief, And while a weary soul seeks rest Which wo might give relief, We’ll hush our spirits’ useless moan And weep no more ‘alone—alone!’ Our bleeding country calls us, too, To lend a helping hand To those who seek to drive the foe From out our cherish’d iahd— A fi>e whose dastard soul would wreak It* vengeance on the fair and weak. . Oh, Sisters ! let us heed that call, Since tears will not avail. Our life, our liberty, our all, Hang trembling on the scale ; And naught that we can do should be Too great a price for liberty. Then let us murve our hearts to bear The storms that o’er them beat; For ihough alone, we may, by prayer, Our strongest foes defeat ; For sweetest incense ’round God’s throne Are prayers of those who weep alone. Ml Mm her. years have flown since she folded her while hands upon her breast and quiet ly tell asleep in Jesus. Long years have passed since, onAhat bleak November Sab bath, we laid her to rest beneath the tall pine whose leaves, swept by the autumn blast, suug a melancholy requiem over her grave, Yes, time has passed rapidly by ; and yet so vividly is her form, her every gesture, word and look before me now, that it seems but y esterday 1 saw her. Sometimes, when the storms oflife sweepj rudely over me; when my little barque \ it‘nw almost shattered, and poor weak hu- j man nature, forgetting to look up, sinks nearly exhausted under its load ; how my aching brain sighs to pillow itself upon her breast, and my throbbing heart longs for her tender sympathy 1 At such times 1 feel as if 1 would give the world, were it min#, to have h#r com# in #nd go out aa of j old —to see her approving smile, and hear j her words of love and comfort. But when ! I think of the turmoils of life, its unceasing j rounds of care and toil and strife and sorrow [ —when I remember how often her weary ■ head was bowed beneath its weight of woe, how her loving heart was stricken with grief at the trials that beset those she fond iy loved, but could not aid ; when I think how uncomplaingly her worn feet trod the rough and thorny path of life —patiently, calmly enduring the many sorrows and tiials that ehequered her three-score years of existence, I look up and bless God that she is gone. Yes, with a full heart 1 thank my Ileavely Father for II is goodness in removing her ft pm this vale of tears. — Sweetly, quietly, her ashes rest beneath the green sod, while her glorified spirit makes one of the number around the Throne, who through much tribulation have entered into the heavenly Canaan. Who, oh! who would summon a freed spirit back to this sorrow-stricken and sin stained earth ? What pleasure would it afford one to see our beloved land surround ed by foes, and its once-smiling fields stain ed with the blood of thousands of our name and kindred ? Far better the mother to be sleeping her last sleep, than living to hear the death-cry of her loved. 4 Not lost, but gone before,’ is my own dear mother; and God forbid I should ever murmur at His will. Rather rnay I en deavor so to live that when with me life’s toilsome journey is over, and my weary frame sinks back to its kindred dust, my spirit may join hers in singing praises to Him who loved us and w r ashed us in His blood. AUNT EDITH. Life In the Country. 'Gad made the country; man, the town.' Some sage politician has declared that oould he have the w riting of the national songs of a people, ho would ask no greater engine of popular influence. The position is a correot one, and it is not a little strange to note the vast power there sometimes is in a single lino or phrase, which, by being often quoted, becomes familiar to the mind ; how apt we are to receive a doctrine thus insiduoualy, and perhaps thoughtlessly con veyed, without once stopping to question eiaher the sentiment itself or the authority lying back of it. The quotation above, for instance, is one which is enstamped upon the minds of a majority of our readers, though, perhaps, not one in a hundred knows the author of it, or the circumstance under which it had its birth—oontent only to know that it has a sort of indefinite meaning, the purport of which is to invest with sacred dignity our rural homes, and to subdue or restrict the growing importance of the marts of trade. Is the sentiment a true one? This is a query which has rarely been put; but, to our thinking, a very proper one. What has God done for the country more than for the town ? In what sense is one the particular work of His hands more than the other? Man may have done more for the! town than the country, but the hand of the Great Artificer is alike displayed in each. It is all proper enough lor poets and senti-j mentalists to go into rhapsodies about the j charms of the country, and the sweet claims of rural life. But do we ever stop to think that these same ecstatic rhapsodies are like our fireside warriors, who cannot bear the smell even of villainous saltpetre, —or our sage doctors who prescribe nauseous po-1 tions for others, but never indulge in the ■ luxury themselves ? These overdrawn pic ture# of the country and country life are 1 got up’ with the narrow purlieus of some : six-by-nine city attic, in whose straitened j dimensions the breath of Heaven cannot enter, except as it is filtered through the I dust and poisonous vapors of an overpopu lated city; and these very poetical writers about 4 umbrageous forests, 4 sparkling rill*,’ and 4 dewy meads,’ will be found among the very last who would choote to j live in the country. The country has charms and advantages which can be appreciated only by those who have fully experienced them, and the want of them. The advantages of the country, however, are not of a poetical, but of a very practical and substantial character ; —such as pure air, healthy diet, invigora j ting exercise, quiet rest, absence of undue iexcitement, modest expectations, a calm "m BASHER oras" CS IS "1.0VH." ATLANTA, QA„ JULY 19, 1862. trust in the economy of nature, and a firm reliance upon the God of the harvest. — A life in the country should be the most peaceful and satisfactory of any n earth; and to that person whose tastes aftd habits so incline, there oan be no safer or more sensible investment than a ‘cot in the val ley,’ with all the trappings of nature and improvements of art. But we oannot all live in the country. — Theae must be towns, and people to inhabit them. God dwells also in the cities, and His hand is as manifest in the throbbing pulse of commerce and manufactures, as in the springing grass and the whitening harvest. Life in the country and life in the city have each their charms and peculiar advan-. tages, and he is the true man who is alive to those charms and makes a proper use o> thbse advantages. E. TIIE HOLY LAND. OT II ARKfKT MVRTINBAI'. The Jordan and the Dead Sea. This day (April 0) we were to visit the Jordan and the Dead Sea. In the morning about five o’clock, l ascended a steep mound near our encampment, and saw a view as different from that of the preceding day as a change of lights could make it. The sun had not risen ; but there was a tint of its approach in a gush of pale light behind the Moab mountains. The strip of woodland in the middle of the plain looked black in contrast with the brightening yellow' preci pices of Quarantania on the west. South ward, the Dead Sea stretched into the land, gray and clear. Below me, our tents and horses, and the moving figures of the Arabs, enlivened the shadowy banks of the stream. We were off soon after six, and were to reach the banks of the Jordan in r l . out two hours. Our way lay through the same sort of forest land as we had encamped in. It was very wild ; and almost the only tokens of habitation that we met with, were about Rihhah—by some supposed to be the exact site of the ancient Jericho. This is now as miserable a village as any in Palestine; its inhabitant are as low in character as in wealth. No stranger thinks of going near it who is not w'ell armed and guarded.— Yet there is no need to resort to any means but honest and very moderate industry to obtain a comfortable subsistence here —if only honesty were eneouraged, and industry protected by a good social state. The fine fig trees that are scattered around, and the abundant promise of the few crops that are sown, show that the soil £fnd climate are not to blame. At this place there is a square tower, conspicuous from afar above the trees, which some suppose to be the sole remnant of the great city ; but it can hard ly be ancient enough to have belonged to the old Jericho. On a hillock in the midst of the brush wood, we saw a few birds of such a size that one of the party, In a moment of for gerfulness, cried out 1 Ostriches ! ’ There are no ostriches iu this country ; but these cranes looked very like them, while on their 1 feat. One by one they rose, stretching out their long legs behind them—certainly the largest birds 1 ever saw fly, or probably shall ever see. * Though we had been told, and had read, that the river could not be seen till the trav eller reached its very banks, we could notj help looking for it. Three broad terraces: have to be traversed ; and then it is sunk j in a deep bed, where it rushes hidden among, the woodland. Its depth of water varies j much at different seasons; though less now I than formerly. The Scriptures speak so{ much of the overflow of Jordan, and of the lion coming up at the swelling of Jordan, that it is supposed that formerly the river wis subject to inundations which may have' formed the three terraces above mentioned,! snd caused the extraordinary fertility of the; plain in old times; and that the wild beasts which then harbored in the brakes, came up to terrify the dwellers in the fields. How-j ever this may have been, it is not so now. j The channel is no doubt deepened; and the river now, in the fullest season, only brims over its banks into the brakes, so as to, stand among the canes, and never reaches the terraces. Though we were all on the look out, and i though we reached the river at the spot which is cleared for the approach of the Easter pilgrims, we could not see the water till we could almost touch it. The first notice to me of where it was, was from some of the party dismounting on the Pil grims’ beach. VV hen I came up— —’ O, how j beautiful it was !—how much more beauti- Ifui than all pictures and all descriptions had led me to expect! The only drawback was that the stream was turbid j not only whitish, from a sulphurous admixture, but muddy. But it swept nobly along, with a strong and rapid current, and many eddies, gushing through the thick woodland, and flowing in among the tail reeds, now smiting the white rocks of the opposite shore, and now winding away out of sight behind the poplars and acacias and tall reeds which crowded its banks. It is not a broad river; but it is full of majesty from its force and loveliness. The vigorous, up-springing cha racter of the wood along its margin struck me much; and we saw it now in its vivid spring green. The pilgrims rush into the sacred river in such numbers, and with so little precau tion as to the strength of the current, that no year passes without some loss of life : and usually several perish. This year only one was drowned. Whatever superstition there* might have been among our company it was not of this wild sort, and we bathed in safety. The ladies went north and the gentlemen south. I made a way through the thicket with difficulty, till I found a lit tle cove which the current did not enter, and over which hung a sycamore, whose lower branches were washed by the ripple which the current sent in as it passed! On these branches the bather might stand or sit without touching the mud, which lay soft and deep below. The limestone preci pice and wooded promontory opposite made the river particularly beautiful here ; and sorry I was to leave it at last. It is useless to attempt to make out where the baptism of Jesus took place, or where His disoiple* and John administered the rite. And on the spot one has no pressing wish to know. The whole of this river is so sacred and so sweet, that it is enough to have saluted it in any part of its course. One thing more we did: we remembered friends faraway, and carried away some water for them, having provided tin cases for the purpose. The Queen’s children are baptized in Jordan water; and I brought away a easeful for the baptism of the chil dren of a friend who lives further away from the Jordan than our Queen does. — This business done, we were summoned to horse, and rode away southward to the Dead Sea. The belt of woodland soon turned away eastward, and we found ourselves exposed to extreme heat, on a desolate plain crusted with spit and cracked with drought. There had been a closeness and murkiness in the air, all the morning, which was very op pressive ; and now it was, at our usual slow pace, almost intolerable. I put my horse to a fast canter, and orossed the plain as quickly as possible, finding this pace a re lief to my horse as well as myself. The drift of the beach of the sea looked dreary enough ; ridges of broken canes and willow twigs washed up, and lying among the salt and the little unwholesome swamps of the shore; but - the waters looked bright and clear, and so tempting that our horses put their noses down repeatedly, always turn ing away again in disgust. 1 tasted the water—about two drops —and I almost sup posed that I should never get the taste out of my mouth again. And this is the water poor Costigan’s coffee was made of! Costigan was a young Irishman, whose mind was possessed with the idea of ex ploring the Dead Sea, and giving the world the benefit of his discoveries. It would ■ have been a useful service, and he had zeal and devotedness enough for it. But he wanted either knowledge or prudence; and he lost his life in the adventure, without having left us any additional information whatever. lie had a small boat carried overland by camels; and in this he set forth (in an open boat in the monih of July!) with only one attendant, a Maltese servant. They reached the southern end of the lake, not without hardship and difficulty ; but the fatal struggle was in getting back again.— The wihd did not favor them, and once blew such a squall that they had to lighten the boat, when the servant stupidly threw over board the only cask of fresh water that they had. They were now compelled to row for their lives, to reach the Jordan before they perish with thirst; but the sun scorched them from a cloudless sky, and the air was like a furnace. When Costigan could row no longer, his servant made some coffee from the water of the lake, and then they lay down in the boat to die. But the man once more roused himself, and by many efforts brought the boat to the head of the lake. They lay helpless for a whole day on the burning shore, unable to do more than throw the salt water over each other from time to time. The next morning the servant crawled away in hopes of reaching Rihhah, which he did w ith extreme diffi culty. He sent Costigan’s horse down to the shore, with a supply of water. He was alive, and was carried to Jerusalem in the coolness of the night. He was taken car# of in the Latin convent there, but he died in two days. Not -a note relating to his enterprise was ever found, and during his illness he never spoke on the subject. — Any knowledge that he might have gained has perished with him, and no reliable in formation could be obtained from his ser vant. Costigan’s grave is in the American burying-ground, and there I saw the stone which tells his melancholy story. He died in 1855. There appears to be no satisfactory evi dence as to whether any fish are to be found in the Dead Sea. Our guides said that some small black fish have been there; but others deny this. A dead fish has been found on the shore near the spot where the Jordan inters the lake, but this might have {TERMS : Two Dollars per annum, STRICTLY IN ADVANCE. been cast up by the overflow of the river. It is said that small birds do not fly over this lake, on account of the deleterious na ture of its atmosphere. About small birds I cannot speak; but I saw two or three vultures winging their way down it ob livuely. The curious lights which hung over the surface struck me as showing an unusual state of the atmosphere —the pur ple murky light resting on one part, and the line of silvery refraction in another.— Though the sky was clear after the morning clouds had passed away, the sunshine ap peared dim ; and the heat was very op pressive. The gentlemen of the party who stayed behind to bathe, on rejoining us at lunch-time, declared that they had found the common report of the buoyancy of the water of this sea not at all exaggerated, and that it was indeed an easy matter to float in it, and very difficult to sink. They also found their hair and skin powdered with salt when dry. But they could not admit the greasiness or stickiness which is said to adhere to the skin after bathing in the \ cad Sea. They were very positive about this; and they certainly did observe the fact very carefully. Yet I have seen, since my return, a clergyman who bathed there, and who declared to me that his skin was so sticky for some days after, that he could not get rid of it, even from his hands.—- And the trustworthy Dr. Robinson, a late traveller there, says : “ After coming out I perceived nothing of the salt cryst upon the body, of which so many speak. There was a slight pricking sensation, especially where the skin had been chafed; and a sort of greasy feeling, as oil, upon the skin, which lasted for several hours.” The contrast of these testimonies, and the diversity which exists among the analyses of the waters which have been made by chemists, seem to show that the quality of the water of the Dead Sea varies. And it appears reasona ble that it should ; for it must make a great difference whether fresh waters have been pouring into the basin of the lake, after the winter rains, or a great evaporation has been going on under the summer's sun.— In following the margin of the sea, w e had to cross a creek, where my skirt w’as splash ed and which turned presently to a thin crust of salt; and the moisture and sticki ness were as great a week after wards as at the moment. We wound among salt marshes and brakes, in and out on the desolate shore of this sea—this sea, w hich is not the less dead and dreary for being as clear and blue as a fresh mountain tarn. As we ascended the ranges of hills which lay between us and the convent where we were to rest, the Jordan valley opened northwards, and the Dead Sea southwards, till the extent tra versed by the eye was really vast. llow beautiful must it have been once, when the Jordan valley, whose verdue was now shrunk into a black line amidst the sands, wrs like an interminable garden ; and when the cities of the plain stood bright and busy where the Dead Sea. now lay blank and grey ! As I took my last look baok, from a great elevation, I thought that so mourn ful a landscape, for one having real beauty, I had never seen. .....- ——■' ■■.■■■■ i— n word Cotlon, w hich is adopted in all the modern languages of Europe, is derived from an Arab word. The origin of the use of fabrics made from this article dates very far back. In the time of Herodotus all the Indians wore them; in the first centuries before Christ there were manufactories of cotton tissues in Egypt and Arabia, but the Greeks and Romans do not appear to have used them much. The Chinese did not commence cultivating the cotton until after the conquest of the Tartars in the thir teenth century, and at the same period cot ton tissues formed an important article of commerce in the Crimea and Southern Rus sia, whither they were brought from Turk istan. From the tenth century the Arabs had naturalized the cotton plant in Spain; and in the fourteenth, the eottonades of Granada surpassed in reputation those of the East. The manufacture of cotton good* in Italy dates as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century, the first estab lishments being at Milan and Venice. It i* ■ presumed that there were at that period manufactories for cotton goods in England, as Deland, who lived in the time of Henry VIII, speaks of some being at Bolton on the Moor, and an act of Parliament of 1552, under Edward VI, mentions the cotton tis sues of Manchester, Lancashire and Che shire. The cotton manufacture did not acquire any importance in 1* ranee until 1787, when the French government estab lished spinning machines at Rouen ; but it was not, however, until under the empire that, thanks to the efforts of Richard Le noir, this branch of industry became flour ishing. ‘ The law should be to the sword what the handle is to the hatchet: it should direct the stroke and temper the force. There is no one else who has the power to be so much your friend, or so much your enemy, yourself. If you must find fault, do it in private if po-a Me, aid some time a r ter the offence rather than at tha time. NUMBER 3.5