Mobile

Mobile, the principal city and only seaport of Alabama, is situated on the west side of Mobile River, and at the head of Mobile Bay, which opens into the Gulf of Mexico, and is defended by Fort Morgan. It is 141 miles by rail ENE. of New Orleans, and is built with broad shaded streets on a sandy plain, rising gradually from the river. It has a fine custom-house and post-office (1859), a city hall and market-house (1857), a Roman Catholic cathedral and over thirty other churches, several asylums and hospitals, a medical college, a Jesuit college, and a convent and school. Mobile contains a floating dry-dock and several shipyards, foundries, cotton and cottonseed-oil mills, a tannery, a manufacture of chewing-gum, numerous cigar-factories, &c. Before the war the chief business was the export of cotton; but since then this trade has shrunk almost to one-third of its former proportions, while the export of timber has increased. Mobile was settled by the French in 1702, and was a Spanish town until 1813, and its population still shows traces of this Latin origin. In 1879 the city limits were curtailed somewhat. Pop. (1870) 32,034; (1890) 31,822.