A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY IN INDIANA. 95 



detailed for the service. The reports of Mr. Stansbury and his several as- 

 sistants, dated December 17, 18.3.5, were published in the House Documentary 

 Journal for 1835 and 1836, and are very full and exceedingly interesting, 

 containing many notes on the local outcrops of stone and surface topography 

 of the regions traversed. For example, the assistant in charge of the Madison- 

 Indianapolis Railway survey describes the country in the vicinity of Flat 

 Rock Creek in the following glowing terms : 



"In this rich and fertile country, which abounds with noble specimens 

 of stately white oak, the valleys of water courses are bounded by ranges of 

 sand and gravel hills running in parallelism with the streams, the bottom 

 lands of which in some instances, expand to a width of two or three miles, 

 and possess a soil, exuberant in a high degree, being noAvhere infested with 

 rocks or stones, and exhibit proofs of the greatest fecundity in the rankness 

 of their vegetable products, while the beautiful area between them is a uni- 

 form plain, having no rise perceptible to the eye, and admirably adapted for 

 the reception of a railway." 



Edward Watts, the assistant engineer in charge of Route 2, which proposed 

 either a railroad or a turnpike road from Crawfordsville to New Albany, 

 turned down the railroad end of it in the following brief paragraph : 



"By reference to the maps you will discover that a railroad, in order to 

 pass through the points prescribed by law, necessarily passes over undulating 

 country, crossing Avater courses nearly at right angles, thereby occasioning 

 ascents and descents entirely inadmissible upon a railway, which could only 

 be removed by long, deep cuts and heavy embankments, the cost of which 

 would be so enormous as to render any idea of the construction of the work 

 out of the question." 



Though rejected as impracticable by Mr. Watts, the railway between 

 New Albany and Crawfordsville was begun by private capital in 1847, com- 

 pleted to Lafayette in 18.54 and afterward to Michigan City, thus connecting 

 Lake Michigan and the Ohio River. It is now a part of the main line of the 

 C. I. & L. (Monon) Railway, extending from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky. 



The first two railways planned and completed within the State were thus 

 north and south lines having their southern terminals on the Ohio River, 

 which was then the main artery of commerce for all the states along its 

 borders. These roads were constructed mainly for the shipment of food 

 supplies and raw and manufactured products from their river terminals to 

 the consumers in the interior of a young and rapidly growing State. 



When the New Albany and Crawfordsville railroad was built it was pro- 

 jected along a crooked line which brought it close to important mineral 

 resources of which probably its builders had no knowledge, yet which have 

 been for years its source of greatest revenue. They were the Indiana oolitic 

 limestone and the French Lick Pluto Water. Take from that division of the 

 Monon these two things and it would go into bankruptcy tomorrow. 



Careful estimates by Mr. Stansbury were submitted, stating the cost of 

 each of the works above mentioned, the total being .15,538,031. The legis- 



