GG AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



It appears from the aboYC that scarcely half the area is included in farms and 

 about one-scveuth in actual cultivation. A great variety of products is shown, 

 embracing almost everything cultivated in temperate latitudes. It seems liter- 

 ally a land of milk and honey, ^vine and oil. 



The organization of West Virginia as a free State will give a great impetus 

 to enterprise when industry resumes its wonted channels. The salt and iron, 

 and coal, and coal oil, which exist in almost fabulous abundance, will occupy 

 the ready capital and willing labor of tens of thousands of thriving citizens ; 

 and manufactures will flourish, and agriculture advance, and the wilderness of 

 the past, full of floral beauty, and lavish with wild profusion as it has been, 

 will blossom with a sweeter fragrance and a richer magnificence under the 

 magic touches of the hand of free and intelligent labor. 



With coal at forty-five cents per ton, iron in almost equal, cheapness, the 

 best of timber for the cutting and hauling, coal oil defying facilities for cooper- 

 age, abundant harvests from fertile soils, and a magnificent river to float the 

 products of industry to a market — what a region in which to manufacture the 

 sugar mills and reapers and other iniplcraeuts of western agriculture ! 



The Department of Agriculture, which has been interested in witnessing and 

 fostering the spirit of improvement now s})riuging into activity in this valley, 

 has received gratifying assurances of promised success in sorghum and in cot- 

 ton and other prominent products of industry. It is a soil and climate pecu- 

 liarly favorable to those products which now claim especial prominence. 



A letter received at the department from a correspondent in this valley re- 

 ports a prevalent absorbing interest in the development of its resources. He 

 is interested in manufacturing, and says that nowhere in the United States can 

 steam power be so economically obtained. So abundant is the coal, in such 

 proximity to the factory, that it can be run into the engine-house at a cost of 

 forty-jive cents per ton. Of this coal there are " four seams above water level, 

 within a vertical distance of 240 feet, giving an aggregate thickness of 17 feet, 

 or 2-5,000 tons of coal to the acre, consisting of gray splint, rich bituminous, 

 block splint, birdseye cannel, steam and smiths' coal." This is within ten 

 miles of Charleston, on navigation. 



With such mines of undeveloped wealth, above and below the soil, and in 

 water power, and in facilities for a highly developed agriculture, what shall 

 hinder the progTCSS in population and wealth of this southern section of the 

 now free and regenerated West Virginia ? 



Greenbrier county has been settled for eighty-three years. It occupies a 

 depression of the Alleghany range, the mountain summits scarcely more than 

 two thousand feet high, and the mean elevation of the arable lands of the county 

 fifteen hundred. The soil is, much of it, strongly impregnated with lime, and 

 consists mainly of a rich, black, friable loam. Such soils, in the southern slopes 

 of hills and in the valley of the Greenbrier, produce abundant crops of maize, 

 ordinarily from thirty to fifty bushels per acre, with careless culture, aud seventy- 

 five to one hundred bushels on the best locations, with skilful management. 

 The soil and climate peculiarly adapt this region to the purposes of the grazier. 

 If a ray of sunlight can reach a spot in the densest forest, that surface soon 

 becomes green with the blue-grass sod. Thousands of cattle yearly depasture 

 those mountain plains and slopes. 



In Greenbrier are the famous "White Sulphur Springs," among the most 

 renowned of all the fashionable watering places of the continent. Their waters 

 are impregnaied with carbonic and nitrogenous gases, sulphates of lime, and 

 magnesia, aud carbonates of lime, iron, iodine, and phosphorus. This whole 

 region is inters'persed with fountains of high medicinal virtues. The " Blue 

 Sulphur" is also in Greenbrier. In the adjoining county, Monroe, are found 

 the " lied," " Sweet," and " Salt Sulphur." 



It is not alone to its mineral waters that the attraction of this region is due 



