ollars. But even this is inadequate to
the wants of its people and its stock. Its small farmers are diverted
from the cultivation of the soil. The conscript-law is drafting all the
able-bodied white men into the army.

The States from Tennessee and North Carolina to Texas have neither
pasture nor mowing; their feeble stock gains but a precarious livelihood
from the cane-brakes or weeds of the forests and Northern hay. Corn and
grain were transported by railway more than three hundred miles into the
interior. The writer has stood beside a yoke of Georgia oxen in Atlanta
so small that they might well pass for calves at the North. Two Illinois
steers would weigh down a half-dozen such animals. But, diminutive as
they are, they, as well as the people of the South, require Northern
supplies. And at this moment their last dependence is placed upon the
valley of Virginia and the valleys of East Tennessee. Let us hope that
the Union armies which now possess Nashville, Memphis, and Cumberland
Gap may soon occupy Knoxville.

In the language of the "Richmond Examiner," "the possession of the lead,
copper, and salt mines, and the pork, corn, and hay-crop of these
countries, Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia, is now vital to the
existence of the Confederacy. This section of the country is the
keystone of the Southern arch. It is now in great peril, as is the great
artery through which the life-blood of the South now circulates. Whether
the East Tennessee and Virginia railroad is to be surrendered, whether
the only adequate supply of salt is to be lost, whether the only
hay-crop of the South is to be surrendered, are questions of vast and
pressing importance."

The wall of fire to which allusion has sometimes been made in debate is
now closing in around the Southern Confederacy. The Mississippi is
closed. But a single point of contact, at Vicksburg, remains between the
States west of the Mississippi and the Atlantic States. Texas is
insulated. The blockade is daily becoming more stringent upon the
seaboard. One effort more, soon to be made, must sever the rich valleys,
mines, and furnaces of Tennessee from the cotton districts, and the
exhaustion of supplies of every description will soon become more and
more apparent.

It is undoubtedly true that an occasional cargo escapes the blockade,
that a few boat-loads of supplies are ferried by treason at the midnight
hour across the Chesapeake, and sold at extravagant prices; but w