and grass. Nearly one-third of the county has an elevation of two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the river. Good fruit, particularly apples, grows on all these lands. The grass crop of the county may be noted as a specialty, particularly the blue grass. Prof. Collett exhibited for our inspection a sheaf which had been gathered off his farm, which measured four feet nine inches.

Newport, the county seat, has an elevation above the ocean. of five hundred and twenty feet, and the Wabash river opposite four hundred and sixty-two feet.

COAL RESOURCES OF VERMILLION.

The coal supply of this county is beyond the comprehension of the most calculating. Prof. Bradley, after making only a partial survey of the county in 1869, says:

"The first subject to which the seeker for mineral wealth in this county would turn his attention is the coal supply. The first impression of even a superficial observer would be, that there is a great abundance for all future demands; and the final conclusion of the scientific explorer must be that good coal can now be mined profitably under at least one-half of the area of the entire county, and ultimately under probably two-thirds of the remainder. A thickness of eight feet would probably be a small enough estimate for the coal underlying every foot of the county. This would give, by the usual estimate of one million to the square mile, for every foot of thickness, the amount of 1,950,000,000 tons, or 48,750,000,000 bushels, as the supply of the county!"

A county so rich in soil as Vermillion, and so beautiful and romantic in scenery; so well watered and so productive in all

the healthy esculents of the West, and so unlimitedly wealthy in its resources of rich bituminous and block coal, must have before it ages of prosperity which no mathematician may calculate or financier define.

The coal is here as an extra or surplus revenue, and although the working of mines is yet in the infancy of its developments, the time must soon arrive when furnaces, forges, rolling mills and every other conceivable establishment which works in iron, and which uses coal, must see that such counties as this afford facilities for manufacturing which can not fail to bring fortunes such as other distant portions of the country can never possess. The very freights such localities have to pay for ores and for coal to run their machinery with, would soon amount to a fortune if it could be saved. The coal resources at the Horse Shoe Bend of the Little Vermillion, furnish the highest coal measures of any other part of the country. At this point manufactories might be established, communities of industry be organized, whose products would enrich themselves and give a life of enterprise through all these grand valleys. This is the language of advice and counsel given by nature itself, and if followed out with any ordinary perseverance, would give employment to thousands who could and would make honest and happy livings for themselves and families, and thereby increase the wealth of the country and enrich the State, which would be a far more economical system, both of morals and finances, than the present condition of inactive and useless monopolies.

Indeed it may be safeiy said that the coal, iron ore, and fire brick clay, as it is commonly called, of this county of Vermillion alone, would give employment, if the proper manufactories were established, to a hundred thousand people. The crime of

inactivity-for it is a crime-lies at the doors of men of wealthmen who have capital, but who hoard it in lands, stocks, bonds and banks, instead of making it active in the way of industrial enterprises. These beautiful valleys might be peopled with happy communities of artizan industry, where peace and plenty would serve as protectors of the public virtue, and this grand Vermillion valley be made the Andalusian garden spot of the State.

The coal fields of Clay, Green, Owen, and other counties of the southern part of the State, may be fully equal, or even superior to those of Vermillion, but none of these counties have the topographical and physical advantages of this beautiful Wabash county, and therefore they would not be as pleasant and sightly for thickly populated homes, for industrious artizans, as Vermillion presents in a hundred different localities.

Hitherto this Wabash valley, with the exception of a few scattering and modest villages, has been wholly given up to agricultural pursuits, and until the building of the Evansville, Terre-Haute & Chicago Railroad, the Wabash River was their only resource of transportation. Hence the country all along

this beautiful little river, for years remained almost in statu quo. Farms, it is true, were improved, and agriculture was conducted on a pretty fair line of progress; but still in many respects the country stood still. But the opening of the coal trade, and the institution of splendid railroad facilities, have now brought them to a new era of enterprize and progress, and it might be said that the sun of their prosperity has just now risen above its eastern horizon-that their day of action has just come-albeit there are still many of the old "pod-auger" denizens living along the valley, who have eked out a tolerably fair living by raising a

patch of corn and a little "garden sass," while there are others in the villages dwelling in content with the mere meagre show of "independent poverty "—who perhaps do not know that they have around them a country, built by Nature, far richer than the lands of Ophir or the gold regions of Golconda. With as good soil as can be found in the United States, and as lovely valleys as are seen in the West, with their vast coal fields underlying almost every acre of land in the county, they have only to wield the resources which God and nature have given them, to exhibit to the industrious and commercial world as extensive and productive manufacturing establishments, and as large and prosperous commercial enterprises, as may or can be realized in the country.

To depend on making money and building up the country by the poor policy of shipping all their coal to other points to sustain manufactories elsewhere, can only be compared to the folly of another Western policy, viz: the shipping of all our wool to Eastern markets and then buying all our clothing, ready made at that, from the Eastern manufactories.

But we need not argue the question of Vermillion county enterprise here. This is not the place for it. We are only aiming at brief histories and the presentation of the resources of the county, and the matter of future activities and of future home manufactories we must leave in the hands of the leading, wealthy men of the county, and to the general enterprize of the capitalists of the whole country.

The geological explorations of Professors Cox, Bradley and Collett, have brought before the eyes of the State and of the world sufficient knowledge of the vast mineral resources of this county, to show that Vermillion has in it, over it and under it

as many of the rich gifts of nature as any other county within the limits of the State.

FIRE BRICK CLAY.

The fire brick and terra cotta works of Messrs. Burns, Porter & Co., of this county, located at Hillsdale, on the line of the Evansville, Terre Haute & Chicago Railroad, one mile west of Montezuma, deserve to be classed among the wonderful productive and artistic operations of the west.

These works have only been in operation a few years, and already they have demonstrated the fact that the fire brick made. here are the very best manufactured in the country. They have been thoroughly tested by being placed in a bridge wall of a puddling furnace along with the justly celebrated Mt. Savage fire brick, and they withstood this trying test during a period of more than seven weeks, in a state of perfect preservation, after which time they were no longer noticed, as the wall appeared to be sound. The average duration of time which the best known fire brick stand in a similar situation is nine weeks, consequently we may expect from this deposit a fire brick which will successfully compete with any article made in the United States.

This clay has the rare and desirable quality of drying without cracking or warping, and with but little shrinkage. A crucial test was made in the hottest fires possible, with a common furnace, to glaze or melt it, but without success, which indicates that it is clear, or nearly so, from alkali and other objectionable substances. These tests with brick rudely made by hand were deemed so satisfactory that the proprietors felt justified in beginning operations for manufacturing fire brick, etc., on a large scale.