Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada

As to its external appearance, it must be said that the city has grown so fast that city improvements do not keep pace with its assessable value. The inability of the city to go into debt is a wholesome provision, but under this limitation the city offices are shabby, the city police quarters and court would disgrace an indigent country village, and most of the streets are in bad condition for want of pavement. There are fine streets, many attractive new residences, and some fine old places, with great trees, and the gravelled pikes running into the country are in fine condition, and are favorite drives. There is a beautiful country round about, with some hills and pleasant woods. Looked at from an elevation, the town is seen to cover a large territory, and presents in the early green of spring a charming appearance. Some five miles out is the Montgomery race-track, park, and club-house—a handsome establishment, prettily laid out and planted, already attractive, and sure to be notable when the trees are grown.

The city has a public-school system, a Board of Education elected by popular vote, and divides its fund fairly between schools for white and colored children. But it needs good school-houses as much as it needs good pavements. In 1887 the tax of one and a half mills produced $54,000 for carrying on the schools, and $19,000 for the building fund. It was not enough—at least $75,000 were needed. The schools were in debt. There is a plan adopted for a fine High-school building, but the city needs altogether more money and more energy for the public schools. According to some reports the public schools have suffered from politics, and are not as good as they were years ago, but they are undoubtedly gaining in public favor, notwithstanding some remaining Bourbon prejudice against them. The citizens are making money fast enough to begin to be liberal in matters educational, which are only second to sanitary measures in the well-being of the city. The new free Public Library, which will be built and opened in a couple of years, will do much for the city in this direction. It is the noble gift of the late F. H. Cossitt, of New York, formerly a citizen of Memphis, who left $75,000 for that purpose.

Perhaps the public schools of Memphis would be better (though not so without liberal endowment) if the city had not two exceptionally good private schools for young ladies. These are the Clara Conway Institute and the Higby School for Young Ladies, taking their names from their principals and founders. Each of these schools has about 350 pupils, from the age of six to the mature age of graduation, boys being admitted until they are twelve years old. Each has pleasant grounds and fine buildings, large, airy, well planned, with ample room for all the departments—literature, science, art, music—of the most advanced education. One finds in them the best methods of the best schools, and a most admirable spirit. It is not too much to say that these schools give distinction to Memphis, and that the discipline and intellectual training the young ladies receive there will have a marked effect upon the social life of the city. If one who spent some delightful hours in the company of these graceful and enthusiastic scholars, and who would like heartily to acknowledge their cordiality, and his appreciation of their admirable progress in general study, might make a suggestion, it would be that what the frank, impulsive Southern girl, with her inborn talent for being agreeable and her vivid apprehension of life, needs least of all is the cultivation of the emotional, the rhetorical, the sentimental side. However cleverly they are done, the recitation of poems of sentiment, of passion, of lovemaking and marriage, above all, of those doubtful dialect verses in which a touch of pseudo-feeling is supposed to excuse the slang of the street and the vulgarity of the farm, is not an exercise elevating to the taste. I happen to speak of it here, but I confess that it is only a text from which a little sermon might be preached about “recitations” and declamations generally, in these days of overdone dialect and innuendoes about the hypocrisy of old-fashioned morality.

The city has a prosperous college of the Christian Brothers, another excellent school for girls in the St. Agnes Academy, and a colored industrial school, the Lemoyne, where the girls are taught cooking and the art of house-keeping, and the boys learn carpentering. This does not belong to the public-school system.

Whatever may be the opinion about the propriety of attaching industrial training to public schools generally, there is no doubt that this sort of training is indispensable to the colored people of the South, whose children do not at present receive the needed domestic training at borne, and whose education must contribute to their ability to earn a living. Those educated in the schools, high and low, cannot all be teachers or preachers, and they are not in the way of either social elevation or thrifty lives if they have neither a trade nor the taste to make neat and agreeable homes. The colored race cannot have it too often impressed upon them that their way to all the rights and privileges under a free government lies in industry, thrift, and morality. Whatever reason they have to complain of remaining discrimination and prejudice, there is only one way to overcome both, and that is by the acquisition of property and intelligence. In the history of the world a people were never elevated otherwise. No amount of legislation can do it. In Memphis—in Southern cities generally—the public schools are impartially administered as to the use of money for both races. In the country districts they are as generally inadequate, both in quality and in the length of the school year. In the country, where farming and domestic service must be the occupations of the mass of the people, industrial schools are certainly not called for; but in the cities they are a necessity of the present development.

Ever since Memphis took itself in hand with a new kind of municipal government, and made itself a healthful city, good-fortune of one kind and another seems to have attended it. Abundant water it could get from the river for sewerage purposes, but for other uses either extensive filters were needed or cisterns were resorted to. The city was supplied with water, which the stranger would hesitate to drink or bathe in, from Wolf River, a small stream emptying into the Mississippi above the city. But within the year a most important discovery has been made for the health and prosperity of the town. This was the striking, in the depression of the Gayoso Bayou, at a depth of 450 feet, perfectly pure water, at a temperature of about 62°, in abundance, with a head sufficient to bring it in fountains some feet about the level of the ground. Ten wells had been sunk, and the water flowing was estimated at ten millions of gallons daily, or half enough to supply the city. It was expected that with more wells the supply would be sufficient for all purposes, and then Memphis will have drinking water not excelled in purity by that of any city in the land. It is not to be wondered at that this incalculable good-fortune should add buoyancy to the business, and even to the advance in the price, of real estate. The city has widely outgrown its corporate limits, there is activity in building and improvements in all the pleasant suburbs, and with the new pavements which are in progress, the city will be as attractive as it is prosperous.

Climate is much a matter of taste. The whole area of the alluvial land of the Mississippi has the three requisites for malaria—heat, moisture, and vegetable decomposition. The tendency to this is overcome, in a measure, as the land is thoroughly drained and cultivated. Memphis has a mild winter, long summer, and a considerable portion of the year when the temperature is just about right for enjoyment. In the table of temperature for 1887 I find that the mean was 61.9°, the mean of the highest by months was 84.9°, and the mean lowest was 37.4°. The coldest month was January, when the range of the thermometer was from 72.2° to 4.3°, and the hottest was July, when the range was from 99° to 67.30. There is a preponderance of fair, sunny weather. The record for 1887 was: 157 days of clear, 132 fair, 65 cloudy, 91 days of frost. From this it appears that Memphis has a pretty agreeable climate for those who do not insist upon a good deal of “bracing,” and it has a most genial and hospitable society.

Early on the morning of the 12th of April we crossed the river to the lower landing of the Memphis and Little Rock Railway, the upper landing being inaccessible on account of the high water. It was a delicious spring morning, the foliage, half unfolded, was in its first flush of green, and as we steamed down the stream the town, on bluffs forty feet high, was seen to have a noble situation. All the opposite country for forty miles from the river was afloat, and presented the appearance of a vast swamp, not altogether unpleasing in its fresh dress of green. For forty miles, to Madison, the road ran upon an embankment just above the flood; at intervals were poor shanties and little cultivated patches, but shanties, corn patches, and trees all stood in the water. The inhabitants, the majority colored, seemed of the sort to be content with half-amphibious lives. Before we reached Madison and crossed St. Francis River we ran through a streak of gravel. Forest City, at the crossing of the Iron Mountain Railway, turned out to be not exactly a city, in the Eastern meaning of the word, but a considerable collection of houses, with a large hotel. It seemed, so far in the wilderness, an irresponsible sort of place, and the crowd at the station were in a festive, hilarious mood. This was heightened by the playing of a travelling band which we carried with us in the second-class car, and which good-naturedly unlimbered at the stations. It consisted of a colored bass-viol, violin, and guitar, and a white cornet. On the way the negro population were in the majority, all the residences were shabby shanties, and the moving public on the trains and about the stations had not profited by the example of the commercial travellers, who are the only smartly dressed people one sees in these regions. A young girl who got into the car here told me that she came from Marianna, a town to the south, on the Languille River, and she seemed to regard it as a central place. At Brinkley we crossed the St. Louis, Arkansas, and Texas road, ran through more swamps to the Cache River, after which there was prairie and bottom-land, and at De Valle’s Bluff we came to the White River. There is no doubt that this country is well watered. After White River fine reaches of prairie-land were encountered—in fact, a good deal of prairie and oak timber. Much of this prairie had once been cultivated to cotton, but was now turned to grazing, and dotted with cattle. A place named Prairie Centre had been abandoned; indeed, we passed a good many abandoned houses before we reached Carlisle and the Galloway. Lonoke is one of the villages of rather mean appearance, but important enough to be talked about and visited by the five aspirants for the gubernatorial nomination, who were travelling about together, each one trying to convince the people that the other four were unworthy the office. This is lowland Arkansas, supporting a few rude villages, inhabited by negroes and unambitious whites, and not a fairly representative portion of a great State.

At Argenta, a sort of railway and factory suburb of the city, we crossed the muddy, strong-flowing Arkansas River on a fine bridge, elevated so as to strike high up on the bluff on which Little Rock is built. The rock of the bluff, which the railway pierces, is a very shaly slate. The town lying along the bluff has a very picturesque appearance, in spite of its newness and the poor color of its brick. The situation is a noble one, commanding a fine prospect of river and plain, and mountains to the west rising from the bluff on a series of gentle hills, with conspicuous heights farther out for public institutions and country houses. The eity, which has nearly thirty thousand inhabitants, can boast a number of handsome business streets with good shops and an air of prosperous trade, with well-shaded residence streets of comfortable houses; but all the thoroughfares are bad for want of paving, Little Rock being forbidden by the organic law ( as Memphis is ) to run in debt for city improvements. A city which has doubled its population within eight years, and been restrained from using its credit, must expect to suffer from bad streets, but its caution about debt is reassuring to intending settlers. The needed street improvements, it is understood, however, will soon be under way, and the citizens have the satisfaction of knowing that when they are made, Little Rock will be a beautiful city.

Below the second of the iron bridges which span the river is a bowlder which gave the name of Little Rock to the town. The general impression is that it is the first rock on the river above its confluence with the Mississippi; this is not literally true, but this rock is the first conspicuous one, and has become historic. On the opposite side of the river, a mile above, is a bluff several hundred feet high, called Big Rock. On the summit is a beautiful park, a vineyard, a summer hotel, and pleasure-grounds—a delightful resort in the hot weather. From the top one gains a fair idea of Arkansas—the rich delta of the river, the mighty stream itself, the fertile rolling land and forests, the mountains on the border of the Indian Territory, the fair city, the sightly prominences about it dotted with buildings—altogether a magnificent and most charming view.

There is a United States arsenal at Little Rock; the Government Post-office is a handsome building, and among the twenty-seven churches there are some of pleasing architecture. The State-house, which stands upon the bluff overlooking the river, is a relic of old times, suggesting the easy-going plantation style. It is an indescribable building, or group of buildings, with classic pillars of course, and rambling galleries that lead to old-fashioned, domestic-looking State offices. It is shabby in appearance, but has a certain interior air of comfort. The room of the Assembly—plain, with windows on three sides, open to the sun and air, and not so large that conversational speaking cannot be heard in it—is not at all the modern notion of a legislative chamber, which ought to be lofty, magnificently decorated, lighted from above, and shut in as much as possible from the air and the outside world. Arkansas, which is rapidly growing in population and wealth, will no doubt very soon want a new State-house. Heaven send it an architect who will think first of the comfortable, cheerful rooms, and second of imposing outside display! He might spend a couple of millions on a building which would astonish the natives, and not give them as agreeable a working room for the Legislature as this old chamber. The fashion is to put up an edifice whose dimensions shall somehow represent the dignity of the State, a vast structure of hall-ways and staircases, with half-lighted and ill-ventilated rooms. It seems to me that the American genius ought to be able to devise a capitol of a different sort, certainly one better adapted to the Southern climate. A group of connected buildings for the various departments might be better than one solid parallelogram, and I have a fancy that legislators would be clearer-headed, and would profit more by discussion, if they sat in a cheerful chamber, not too large to be easily heard in, and open as much as possible to the sun and air and the sight of tranquil nature. The present Capitol has an air of lazy neglect, and the law library which is stored in it could not well be in a worse condition; but there is something rather pleasing about the old, easy-going establishment that one would pretty certainly miss in a smart new building. Arkansas has an opportunity to distinguish itself by a new departure in State-houses.

In the city are several of the State institutions, most of them occupying ample grounds with fine sites in the suburbs. Conspicuous on high ground in the city is the Blind Asylum, a very commodious, and well-conducted institution, with about 80 inmates. The School for Deaf-mutes, with 125 pupils, is under very able management. But I confess that the State Lunatic Asylum gave me a genuine surprise, and if the civilization of Arkansas were to be judged by it, it would take high rank among the States. It is a very fine building, well constructed and admirably planned, on a site commanding a noble view, with eighty acres of forest and garden. More land is needed to carry out the superintendent’s idea of labor, and to furnish supplies for the patients, of whom there are 450, the men and women, colored and white, in separate wings. The builders seem to have taken advantage of all the Eastern experience and shunned the Eastern mistakes, and the result is an establishment with all the modern improvements and conveniences, conducted in the most enlightened spirit. I do not know a better large State asylum in the United States. Of the State penitentiary nothing good can be said. Arkansas is still struggling with the wretched lease system, the frightful abuses of which she is beginning to appreciate. The penitentiary is a sort of depot for convicts, who are distributed about the State by the contractors. At the time of my visit a considerable number were there, more or less crippled and sick, who had been rescued from barbarous treatment in one of the mines. A gang were breaking stones in the yard, a few were making cigars, and the dozen women in the women’s ward were doing laundry-work. But nothing appeared to be done to improve the condition of the inmates. In Southern prisons I notice comparatively few of the “professional” class which so largely make the population of Northern penitentiaries, and I always fancy that in the rather easy-going management, wanting the cast-iron discipline, the lot of the prisoners is not so hard. Thus far among the colored people not much odium attaches to one of their race who has been in prison.

The public-school system of the State is slowly improving, hampered by want of Constitutional power to raise money for the schools. By the Constitution, State taxes are limited to one per cent.; county taxes to one-half of one per cent., with an addition of one-half of one per cent, to pay debts existing when the Constitution was adopted in 1874; city taxes the same as county; in addition, for the support of common schools, the Assembly may lay a tax not to exceed two mills on the dollar on the taxable property of the State, and an annual per capita tax of one dollar on every male inhabitant over the age of twenty-one years; and it may also authorize each school district to raise for itself, by vote of its electors, a tax for school purposes not to exceed five mills on the dollar. The towns generally vote this additional tax, but in most of the country districts schools are not maintained for more than three months in the year. The population of the State is about 1,000,000, in an area of 53,045 square miles. The scholastic population enrolled has increased steadily for several years, and in 1886 was 164,757, of which 122,296 were white and 42,461 were colored. The total population of school age (including the enrolled) was 358,006, of which 266,188 were white and 91,818 colored. The school fund available for that year was $1,327,710. The increased revenue and enrolment are encouraging, but it is admitted that the schools of the State (sparsely settled as it is) cannot be what they should be without more money to build decent school-houses, employ competent teachers, and have longer sessions.

Little Rock has fourteen school-houses, only one or two of which are commendable-The High-school, with 50 pupils and 2 teachers, is held in a district building. The colored people have their fair proportion of schools, with teachers of their own race. Little Rock is abundantly able to tax itself for better schools, as it is for better pavements. In all the schools most attention seems to be paid to mathematics, and it is noticeable how proficient colored children under twelve are in figures.

The most important school in the State, which I did not see, is the Industrial University at Fayetteville, which received the Congressional land grant and is a State beneficiary; its property, including endowments and the University farm, is reckoned at $300,000. The general intention is to give a practical industrial education. The collegiate department, a course of three years, has 77 pupils; in the preparatory department are about 200; but the catalogue, including special students in art and music, the medical department at Little Rock of 60, and the Normal School at Pine Bluff of 215, foots up about 600 students. The University is situated in a part of the State most attractive in its scenery and most healthful, and offers a chance for every sort of mental and manual training.

The most widely famous place in the State is the Hot Springs. I should like to have seen it when it was in a state of nature; I should like to see it when it gets the civilization of a European bath-place. It has been a popular and even crowded resort for several years, and the medical treatment which can be given there in connection with the use of the waters is so nearly a specific for certain serious diseases, and going there is so much a necessity for many invalids, that access to it ought by this time to be easy. But it is not. It is fifty-five miles south-west of Little Rock, but to reach it the traveller must leave the Iron Mountain road at Malvern for a ride over a branch line of some twenty miles. Unfortunately this is a narrow-gauge road, and however ill a person may be, a change of cars must be made at Malvern. This is a serious annoyance, and it is a wonder that the main railways and the hotel and bath keepers have not united to rid themselves of the monopoly of the narrow-gauge road.

The valley of the Springs is over seven hundred feet above the sea; the country is rough and broken; the hills, clad with small pines and hard-wood, which rise on either side of the valley to the height’ of two or three hundred feet, make an agreeable impression of greenness; and the place is capable, by reason of its irregularity, of becoming beautiful as well as picturesque. It is still in the cheap cottage and raw brick stage. The situation suggests Carlsbad, which is also jammed into a narrow valley. The Hot Springs Mountain—that is, the mountain from the side of which all the hot springs (about seventy) flow—is a Government reservation. Nothing is permitted to be built on it except the Government hospital for soldiers and sailors, the public bath-houses along the foot, and one hotel, which holds over on the reserved land. The Government has enclosed and piped the springs, built a couple of cement reservoirs, and lets the bath privileges to private parties at thirty dollars a tub, the number of tubs being limited. The rent money the Government is supposed to devote to the improvement of the mountain. This has now a private lookout tower on the summit, from which a most extensive view is had over the well-wooded State, and it can be made a lovely park. There is a good deal of criticism about favoritism in letting the bath privileges, and the words “ring” and “syndicate” are constantly heard. Before improvements were made, the hot water discharged into a creek at the base of the hill. This creek is now arched over and become a street, with the bath-houses on one side and shops and shanties on the other. Difficulty about obtaining a good title to land has until recently stood in the way of permanent improvements. All claims have now been adjudicated upon, the Government is prepared to give a perfect title to all its own land, except the mountain, forever reserved, and purchasers can be sure of peaceful occupation.

Opposite the Hot Springs Mountain rises the long sharp ridge of West Mountain, from which the Government does not permit the foliage to be stripped. The city runs around and back of this mountain, follows the winding valley to the north, climbs up all the irregular ridges in the neighborhood, and spreads itself over the valley on the south, near the Ouachita River. It is estimated that there are 10,000 residents in this rapidly growing town. Houses stick on the sides of the hills, perch on terraces, nestle in the ravines. Nothing is regular, nothing is as might have been expected, but it is all interesting, and promising of something pleasing and picturesque in the future. All the springs, except one, on Hot Springs Mountain are hot, with a temperature ranging from 93° to 157° Fahrenheit; there are plenty of springs in and among the other hills, but they are all cold. It is estimated that the present quantity of hot water, much of which runs to waste, would supply about 19,000 persons daily with 25 gallons each. The water is perfectly clear, has no odor, and is very agreeable for bathing. That remarkable cures are performed here the evidence does not permit one to doubt, nor can one question the wonderfully rejuvenating effect upon the system of a course of its waters.