736 ON THE TIMBER LANDS TRAVERSED BY A 
Carr's Fork. It then turns up that stream, follows it for 
-about ten miles, crosses over the divide onto Rockhouse 
Creek, and strikes the Kentucky river again at Whitesburg, 
‘thirty-five miles from Hazard. The upland and lowland tim- 
bers between these two places are precisely the same, with 
‘the addition of wintergreen and white willow (Salzx candida), 
as those given in the Troublesome Creek region. The old 
forest walnut is scarce; but it is exceedingly large, and of 
good quality, on the heads of most of the streams, far up 
‘under the brows of the high hills. White linden and iron- 
wood are found. The former has not been met with pre- 
viously, but it abounds on the mountains to the southwest. 
In about ten miles of Whitesburg quite a marked change 
‘in the distribution of the hill timbers occurs. The formation 
‘remains coal-measure sandstone; but the surface soils of the 
hills are a thin, whitish shale detritus, very poor, and there 
-are no damp, dark, rich hill-sides, covered with splendid low- 
land timbers nearly to the top. The swamp timbers are nar- 
rowly confined to the margins of the streams and to the 
bottoms. In other words, the line of comparative moisture, if 
‘such line be imagined, has been removed down the hills; so 
that, to find a belt of given moisture, one would have to look 
much nearer the bases of the hills. A corresponding effect 
is, of course, produced upon the timbers. 
In passing over the divide between the head waters of 
Kolley’s Branch and Sandy Lick, within about seven miles 
of Whitesburg, the road circles around the head of a branch 
which flows from a deep ravine to the left (northeast) of the 
road. fust above the head waters of this branch, on the 
steep hill-side, grow some of the finest liriodendron and black 
walnut trees I have seen in Kentucky. One of the former 
reaches the enormous size of eighty inches in diameter, with 
fifty feet of clear, straight trunk. The walnuts are thirty- 
eight to forty inches, with fifty to sixty-five feet of beautiful 
body. White oak, white and pig hickory, buckeye, and other 
itimbers, are proportionately good and valuable. A few ‘“burn- 
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