PAPERS ON GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 205 



duced the cliff and raised it bodily from the depths of the 

 earth to look out upon the advancing glacier as it wavered and 

 then retreated, leaving a thin sheet of drift and small boul- 

 ders, not, however, to be compared in size and numbers with 

 those of central Illinois. 



From this point south, through Hardin and Pope counties, 

 massive cliffs or ridges, usually the direct result of erosion, are 

 always in sight. In Hardin County, near Elizabethtown, an 

 extensive limestone region is honey-combed with subter- 

 ranean passages, as is evidenced by the many sink holes, some 

 of which are obstructed at the outlet and now form small lakes 

 or ponds. One such passage opens into the river bluff at 

 Cave-in-Rock and forms the famous cave about which clus- 

 ter much tradition and early history of the region. The en- 

 terprising manufacturers of St. Jacob's Oil, years ago, painted 

 their sign in six-foot letters above the entrance to attract the 

 eye of the traveler on passing boats. Though obstructed by 

 a sink hole, 150 feet from the mouth, its arched entrance and 

 rocky walls make it a wonder to those who do not read among 

 the names painted and carved on its interior, the deeper writ- 

 ten history of its origin. 



This is a country much as nature left it. Broad wheat 

 fields cover the level ridge tops, and fertile corn fields, the val- 

 leys. The iron deposits, worked in war times, lie too far 

 from railroads for exportation. The greatest fluor spar mines 

 in the land, at Roseclaire and Fairview, are only beginning to 

 be developed. Ranges of cement limestone and close textured 

 sandstones lie yet untouched. The two thick veins of coal in 

 Saline and Gallatin counties, now worked from nearly two 

 score mines, are scarcely disturbed as yet. Man can destroy 

 in centuries but a small fraction of what nature has already 

 destroyed of her own handiw r ork by the agencies of erosion, 

 as is displayed in the hundreds of canon-like valleys of these 

 counties. Grand Pierre Creek from its source to its mouth is 

 deserving of a week's study of erosion. In one corner of Sa- 

 line County, up the rocky stream bed of Mud Spring Hollow, 

 across the ridge and dow r n the bed of Beech Hollow, up Still- 

 house Hollow, and then down the Little Eagle Valley, in a 

 single day's hard tramping, the student may see within these 

 narrow cliff bordered valleys all the forces at work which have 

 made the mighty Rockies of the West. 



