Alexandria Gazette

Orange and Alexandria Rail Road, &c.
[Correspondence of Washington Star.]
CULPEPER C. H. Va., Sept. 5, 1856.

I left Alexandria at half-past seven this morning, and reached this point, per Orange and Alexandria railroad—62 miles distant—in two hours and a half. We were blest with a remarkable absence of the usual annoyances of American travel by rail—cinder-dust and car-pedlars. I cannot account for the absence of the dust on this particular line, but certain it is, there is invariably less of it between Alexandria and Richmond than elsewhere. The car pedlars, I presume, are kept off the line by a regulation of the company, who thus save their patrons from what has come to be emphatically a nuisance further North, where homely and brazen faced old maids, in bloomer costume, thrust their wares, and gabble frequently, abolition tracts and anti-slavery slang-whang, in the faces and ears of all, whether in the humor to be pleased with such interruptions of the semi-stupor into which the gentle jolting of railway travelling so frequently rocks or shakes one, or not.

This road (the Orange and Alexandria) is capitally managed; (no balks jarrings or noise on the part of the company's machinery, agents or servants being things almost unknown,) while its running time is up to the mark of about thirty miles per hour. As it is a comparatively new road, but two passenger trains per day each way are run over it, which precludes the possibility of the occurrence upon any portion of its length of one of those awful catastrophes from a collision, by which of late the public sensibility has been shocked perhaps once a week. They result, in too many instances, from efforts to transact more business than the facilities of the roads warrant; most of the railroads in this country being single track ones, and such affairs never happening where from end to end the lines are laid with a double set of rails. But for the fact that the loss of life by railway accident is something almost unknown on lines laid down south of the Potomac, it would be fair to presume that the so rapid increase in the business of the Orange and Alexandria railroad will ere long place it in the catalogue of dangerous similar institutions.

Its passenger business has at least doubled in a twelve-month, while the hundreds if not thousands, of tons of guano, plaster, salt, &c., going up, and its thousands of bushels of wheat and corn going down daily—more than appeared to be traversing it at this season of the last year—tell the tale of its future business importance to those who reflect on what they see around them.

The company are pushing the construction of its extension to Lynchburg with great energy and success. They will not long hence open it formally to that point, where it will intersect the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, which will be finished, perhaps clear through from Memphis, by that time. In three or four years hence there will probably be a continuous line of rail travelling by this route to Mobile, New Orleans Louisville. St. Louis. Cincinnati, and Chicago. Who can foretell its coming business importance?

I remarked above that its passenger business has at least doubled in a twelve month. The severity of the past winter threw over it the great rush of the through southern travel, which, from its road's superior accommodations and the lovely region of country through which it is constructed. seems determined to stick to it, now that the absolute necessity compelling through travellers to patronize it, no longer exists. The public have discovered. too, that it is by far the shortest, easiest, cheapest, and most agreeable line of travel to and from all the celebrated Virginia watering places, sought in the summer months by untold thousands on thousands of searchers after relaxation and health. The number of passengers on one train of this road, in the course of the summer, has been as high as three hundred, most of them being spring-going wayfarers. A year since, if one should have predicted any such increase of its business, those most sanguine of its success as an industrial enterprise would have voted him a fit candidate for a straight jacket.

At a point some thirty miles from Alexandria, peaks of the Blue Ridge in the dim distance burst upon the eye, and the road gradually nears its base, until before reaching this point, though still twenty miles distant, their grim vastness gives those mountains the appearance of almost overhanging the traveller as he is being whirled rapidly along. At this season, their deep mantle of unbroken green, looming up in the clear blue sky softens the grand picture they make, so that one is soothed, rather than awe-stricken, by their appearance. To look on them from the car window, at such a time, puts a man with a clear conscience at peace with the world, and inclines him to imperturbable amiability.

THE REGION AROUND CULPEPER COURT-HOUSE.

As one ascends to this altitude, the soil gradually becomes better for agricultural purposes, until here, with the imperfect system of culture in vogue, embracing what, in the vicinity of Washington, one would term a very slight dressing, indeed, of guano, the wheat crop averages twenty bushels per acre. The corn crops, on fallow, yield from thirty to forty bushels without stimulation of any sort, and with plaster alone, the yield of clover is very fine indeed. If sown in clover and left in grass, in four years this soil seeds itself with blue grass, making as fine perpetual pasture as the celebrated Kentucky blue grass farms afford, or those of Fauquier or upper Loudoun. As yet, the farmers of Culpeper do not generally appear to be aware of the enormous profits in store for them through the business of fattening cattle for the neighboring markets on tide-water. Stock cattle range from $15 to $20, here in June, and with the run of their almost natural pastures and winter feeding with wheat-straw and corn blades and stalks, command in July and August following an average of $33 per head. "Indeed, those who have gone systematically into the business do not think it paying unless yielding one hundred per cent— upon the investment in the purchase of the stock. low in flesh. driven hither to be sold for this purpose.

The scenery, for many miles around this point at this season, is the most captivating my eyes ever beheld; so picturesque and yet so harmonious is its blending of the sublimity of nature with the subdued aspect of man's handicraft in husbandry visible everywhere here, turn as one may. I rode around the country this afternoon for a dozen miles, or so—diving into the valleys and climbing mountain spurs, from which in all directions, one can distinctly discover objects thirty miles distant—the Blue Ridge fading away in the midst of the clouds, the Rappahannock ten miles off on one side, and the Rapidan as far distant on the other, each wending its course amid checkered fields of bright red soil, studded with the plough-men, cottages, groves, and here and there a stately mansion. Such a sight is to be seen nowhere else in our country except in this Piedmont region of Virginia, to be reached in two hours and a half from Alexandria, and at a cost of but two dollars and a half for the trip up.

w.

TRIMMINGS -Just received an assortment of Fringes and other Trimmings, together with a full supply of Tassel and Fancy Buttons, including Glass Jet, Gilt, Silk. &c., &c.
BERRY & BLAKEMORE,
sep 9
No. 72, King-street.

JUST RECEIVED AT RICHARDS'-
Crowley's Patent Gold Inlaid NEEDLES,
superior to all others now in use.
We invite the
attention of the ladies.
sep9

FAMILY FLOUR,-20 bbls. " Patapsco
Family Flour, (new) for sale by
Sept 1
WHEAT & BRO