ALABAMA, ono of the southern United States of North America, is a flourishing scat of commerce and industry. The forest trees in the middle and north of the state, are post oak, white oak, black oak, hickory, poplar, cedar, pine, chestnut, and mulberry ; in the south, pine, cypress, and loblolly. Iron ore is found in various parts of the state, and coal is abundant on the Black Warrior river and the Cahawba river. Cotton is the staple produc tion of the state, but Indian corn, rice, wheat, oats, &c., are produced. The Alabama river is navigable for vessels drawing six feet water, GO miles above its junction with the Tombig bee, to Claiborne, and has four or five feet water for 150 miles farther, to the mouth of the Cahawba. The Tombigbee is navigable for small sailing vessels to St. Stephens, 150 miles, and for steam-boats to Columbus in Missis sippi State ; its total length is 450 miles, and it is navigable for boats nearly the whole length. Cotton is the great article of export. The city and port of Mobile is, next to New Orleans, the largest cotton-mart of the southern states, 320,000 bales having been exported in a year.
40,000 bales, of about 5001b. each, are annually shipped from Montgomery in this State.
Manufactures are spreading considerably in this state. Tanneries, iron-foundries, cut leries, distilleries, printing -offices, Sc., are rapidly increasing. Since the 'collisions of opinion between the northern and southern states respecting slavery, the latter have begun to erect cotton mills as a means of fostering their own cotton culture ; and Alabama, as one of them, is rising in importance. In the middle of 1850 there were in Alabama 12 cotton mills, with 12,580 spindles and 300 looms ; and there were then contracts in force for 20,000 more spindles and 550 more looms. The exports from Alabama in 1848 were valued at 11,927,749 dollars. The population of Alabama has risen from 20,845 in 1810, to 624,827 in 1845. The railways in Alabama at the beginning of 1849 were 113 miles in length, viz., from Montgomery to West Point, and from Tuscumbia to Decatur.