.
Cotton at 50 cents per pound, and our capacity to produce five million
bales per annum, must dazzle the calculating Yankees. A single crop
worth $1,000,000,000! What interest or department of industry in the
United States can promise such results?

Letters were received to-day from Nassau, dated 12th December. Mr. L.
Heyliger, our agent, reports a number of steamers sailing, and about to
sail, with large amounts of stores and goods of all kinds, besides
_plates for our navy_. A Mr. Wiggs has several steamers engaged in this
business. Our government own some, and private individuals (foreign
speculators) are largely engaged in the trade. Most of these steamers
run sixteen miles an hour.

A Mr. Hart, agent for S. Isaac Campbell & Co., London, proposes to
clothe and equip 100,000 men for us, and to receive certificates for
specific amounts of cotton. This same house has, on this, it is said,
advanced as much as $2,000,000 on our account. This looks cheering. We
have credit abroad. But they are Jews.

Mr. Heyliger says he has seen letters from the United States, conveying
information that Charleston is to be attacked about the holidays--the
ensuing week--by four iron-clad gun-boats. Well, I believe _we_ have
three there; so let them come!

Every day we have propositions to supply the army and the country with
goods, for cotton; and they succeed in delivering stores, etc., in spite
of the vigilance of the Federal blockading squadrons. There is a
prospect that we shall have abundance of everything some of these days.
But there is some wrangling. The Quartermaster-General complains to-day
that Lieut.-Gen. Pemberton has interfered with his agents, trading
cotton for stores. Myers is a Jew, and Pemberton a Yankee--so let them
fight it out.

DECEMBER 25TH, CHRISTMAS DAY.--Northern papers show that there is much
distraction in the North; that both Seward and Chase, who had resigned
their positions, were with difficulty persuaded to resume them. This
news, coupled with the recent victory, and some reported successes in
the West (Van Dorn's capture of Holly Springs), produces some effect on
the spirits of the people here; and we have a merrier Christmas than the
last one.

It is said the Federal Congress is about to provide for the organization
of 100 regiments of negroes. This does not occasion anxiety here. The
slaves, once armed, would cut their way back to their masters. The only
possible way to restore the Union--if i