On the 12th day of January, 1861, we left Freeport, Illinois, with our family, for Galveston, Texas; making that port on the Gulf of Mexico the 23d of the same month, eleven days on the passage. Galveston lies in north latitude, twenty-nine degrees, while Freeport is nearly forty-three degrees north, making about fourteen degrees difference, or one thousand miles. The distance traveled by us was about eighteen hundred miles. Just before leaving Freeport the thermometer had registered thirty degrees below zero. In Galveston it was as much above zero. A stiff norther' was blowing the day we landed, and while it was pleasant to us, just from a high northern clime, we observed that the Galvestonians, as they were passing on the streets, had overcoats on, and were muffled to the ears, hurrying to their business places and homes with the same shivering rapidity that would characterize people in a climate where the cold ranged twenty to thirty degrees below zero, and a stiff wester' or nor'wester' were beating cold music out of the icy keys of the weather.

We took the Illinois Central Railroad to Cairo, thence the fine steamer "Champion," Captain Moore. She was afterward transferred to the war service of the United States. We landed at New Orleans on the 21st of the month, which was the day before the vote on Secession was to be taken in the State of Louisiana. When time is not an important consideration with the traveler, we know of no more delightful voyage than by a first-class steamboat down the "Father of Waters" to the Crescent City—a palace on the waters, in a delicious climate, through a magnificent country in the "Sunny South," sweeping from thirty-seven to thirty degrees north latitude, but ten hundred and forty miles by the meandering river.

But the times lent an increased and somewhat fearful enchantment to the novel voyage, in January, 1861. Standing as we did, for the first time in our life, on the Ohio levee at Cairo, and still on free soil, though in sight of slave territory, just across the river in old Kentucky, where the great Henry Clay lived, and whence radiated his greatness over the world, the steamer standing at her wharf with a capacity of two thousand tons, her state-rooms taken by Southern-bound travelers, and having on board eighteen thousand bushels of corn from Egypt, we confess, as we stood there, at the hour of seven in the morning, ready with our company to take passage, and be borne away from all our free-soil associations, imagination stood on strained wing for a thousand miles down the river, essaying to divine the possible events of the next few days, and of that novel trip.

Already before committing us and ours to the atmosphere and destiny of the Southern clime, did the darkness of the future pass over us and compel imagination to fold her wings. And then again, faith in progress, faith in Christian America, faith in Providence, struck that darkness from the sky, and bid us hope for peace. Up to that time, with thousands of others, we had indulged the pleasing and prominent thought that Christian civilization had progressed too far in this country to allow the people to plunge themselves into a fratricidal war. But events since have demonstrated to the contrary; and one is reminded that the reasons still exist that called forth the utterance from the Son of God: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

The steamer left the wharf at Cairo, steamed down the river and passed Columbus, Kentucky, and the islands in the river. They had no special histories then, such as stirred the whole country a few months later, not even Island Number Ten, where commenced the first rebel blockade of the river. Nothing of special interest transpired to mar the general pleasure of the voyage. Sometimes one would hear the question of secession quietly mooted; but no excited or angry discussion. There was obviously a terrible thinking going on generally, with all on board; but the passengers seemed indisposed to become much acquainted. They would not converse unless they could do so on the subject uppermost in their thoughts. And all plainly saw, and deeply felt, what that subject was. But lips were sealed, they were in the bondage of the country, and the riveted fetters of silence were upon all.

We remember a Southern gentleman came on board at Memphis. His personal appearance was imposing, his presence commanding, and would have been more so if he could have divested himself of that peculiarly haughty air that he wore as a sort of "martial cloak wrapped round him." He probably stood six feet and two to four inches in hight, had a military build, and looked as though he was born to command, at least, as if he wanted to command, and thought he was born for that purpose. And the probability is that he enjoyed the misfortune of having been born on a plantation, the "heir apparent" to five or six hundred negroes. We were sitting near his dignity, one evening, in the gentlemen's cabin, others were sitting around, conversation was at low tide, when we made some remark about secession, at which his majesty took umbrage, and he contradicted us with an emphatic "No sir." He then eyed us in momentary silence, as though canvassing the question mentally, whether we were not a live Yankee, and spying abolitionist, from the land toward the "north star," coming down South to steal negroes, or incite them to insurrection. And though he did not give us the benefit in words of his cogitations on the subject, we thought words were needless to convey to the mind what he thought and how he felt.

We knew nothing then of the existence of the organization known as the "S. S." or "Sons of the South;" but probably it was then in operation, and for aught we know our name and personal description went down on the books of that secret organization. We were probably spotted about that time. No other collision happened between the Memphis gentleman and ourself, as we avoided further contact with him, observing that he was so agonized with self-importance that we judged he would be happier without intercourse with us than with it; and, vice versa, we felt in the same way toward him. The nearest approach to sociability afterward between us was by a mutual exchange of leering glances of the eye.

If the Southern man hate it is with a perfect hatred, and his wrath is more easily provoked than that of the Northern man. He speaks not to his enemy except with the fiery tongue of his revolver. The man of the North hates with a mental reservation, leaving room for reconciliation; but the man of the South is as hospitable and warm-hearted to a friend or guest as he is terrible in hate of an enemy. It was when we met his Memphis majesty that we began to appreciate the power of sectional prejudices, based on sectional differences—differences in institutions, customs, habits, climate and ways of thinking.

It is a fact, patent to the intelligent traveler, that the temper of a people partakes largely and inevitably of the isothermal character of the climate they live in. This is seen in the Southern States; and the further south one penetrates the more conspicuous the fact. Like the climate the temper of the people is hot, fiery, impetuous, and, on occasions, will burst out in volcanic eruption, submerging in utter ruin what has become obnoxious to its vengeful wrath. In the Northern States the temper of the people is like the climate, temperate, platonic, philosophical; they take things patiently, steadily, perseveringly, certainly, and herein may be seen—bating other modifying conditions—the causal reason for the disparity of temper between the Northern man and the Southern. One is steady, persevering and more reliable; the other unsteady, more easily discouraged and less reliable; can not brook contradiction or opposition without thoughts, at least, of his six-shooter. Not so with the Northern man, he would prefer sitting down with his opponent and arguing the difference out to legitimate conclusions and a good understanding.

Right here is one of the main reasons why the South, in the late war, was overwhelmed with defeat in four years. The commissarial department of army supplies lacked energy, integrity, perseverance. The armies, by consequence, suffered terribly the last year and a half of the war from desertion. Scores of thousands of men took leave of absence during that time—we will not stigmatize them deserters—went home and managed to keep out of the way of the ubiquitous conscript officer, or, by collusion with him, secured freedom from molestation by him. With naked feet and backs, and empty stomachs, they preferred to leave the field of active operations and let fat officers "fight it out on that line." Thus the impetus with which the South inaugurated the war, though tremendous in maddened enthusiasm at first, soon became exhausted, and the grand on-rush was left by the suicidal policy, or want of policy, without resources, and in four years died out and succumbed to the superior powers of the North.

The general drift of past history goes to show that North men have generally been victors in all wars with South men where the mutual conditions of the contending parties otherwise were anything like equal. The northern climes are sturdy and masculine, while the southern are enervating and effeminate. The people of these respective latitudes, as it were by an inevitable law of assimilation in nature, are conformed to them in physical and mental condition.

Without raising a question of the possible or impossible, but simply of the probable or improbable, as touching the adaptability of white labor to the South—for the white man can do anything possible to be done by human agency at all, and if challenged will do it for the sake of experiment, or pride, or some pet theory, if nothing more—and by white man we mean the Anglo-Saxon, headship of all the human species in physical symmetry and intellectual force—it will be sufficient to say that, "judging the future by the past," which is a safe general rule, making all due allowance for exceptional cases, it is not to be expected the Anglo-Saxon race will ever perform the common field labor of the Southern States of this country, the Gulf States in particular. An appeal to their history in past ages, and other countries, will show they never have done it in such extreme latitudes. The reasons appear to be those of constitution and Providence, and are inseparably dual in form and action. The constitutional make-up of the Anglo-Saxon is such, so fine and sensitive, and so elastic withal, as displayed in his more native northern climes that he will probably ever obey, in the main, the isothermal conditions of nature and climate, which affect and influence his activity, pro and con., and in and to which he was born. The temperate zone is unquestionably his center of gravity, and toward this his specific race will continue in the future, as in the past, to gravitate.

If we go round the globe, neither in present nor past history will be found this race doing the common out-door labor in any countries lying between the equator and thirty-five degrees north latitude; and the supposition is reasonable that they never will in the ages to come; unless in course of time a radical climatic transformation should take place, driving the south pole thirty degrees over into Asia, and bringing the north pole down thirty degrees nearer the equator. We would not advise movements or investments in anticipation of such an event.

The reader will please mark that we do not say the white man can not do it, but simply that he has not, does not, and hence probably will not. Not that the maximum heat of those latitudes is greater or more oppressive than of the more northern latitude, or as much so, where grateful winds come in and compensate, but the heated term instead of closing at the end of one, two, or four weeks, at the most, as in the North, continues four to six months in the South, and brings upon the human system at last an enervation of body and spirit inevitable, and in the end almost constitutional. Northern people would freely pronounce and denounce it as sheer laziness, not taking account of the climatic conditions of the country. Now in this state of the case it is an open question if, after several generations had come and gone, the Anglo-Saxon type would not almost disappear, or so far change as to fail of recognition. The Anglican tongue might preserve it if preserved itself. The more dusky races of mankind are the aboriginal inhabitants of those countries and latitudes, and they constitute the normal industrial agencies thereof. We noticed while in the South that the proportion of old people among the white population was small in comparison with their proportional numbers in the North; while with the blacks, despite the hardships of their enslaved condition, the proportion appeared much larger, thereby showing that the Anglo-Saxon's longevity there is less than in his native climate North. The violent probability is that correct tables of mortality, if they could be had, would confirm this view of the subject.