380 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



iron air-tight heaters that are in common nse there. Such 

 a stove wonld be a novelty in Champaign connty, while 

 a load of cord-wood is seldom seen. 



The roads respond to the type of topography found in 

 the Piedmont by clinging persistently to the summits of 

 the upland ridges between the streams, an occasional one 

 following the ridge so continuously as to be known, lo- 

 cally, as ''the ridge road". In the rougher sections, as 

 in the vicinity of Willis Mt., where the road must cross 

 the narrow valleys, the frail wooden bridges are fre- 

 quently carried away by freshets, after which,, until the 

 bridges are repaired, travelers cheerfully ford the creeks 

 though they may be 10 to 15 feet wide and oifer a drop 

 of from 1 to 2 feet from the road to the stream bed. In 

 order to take advantage of the best grades, the roads are 

 very crooked, many of them requiring a drive of perhaps 

 17 miles to reach a point 12 miles distant. Some of the 

 roads are hard-surfaced for short distances near the 

 larger towns, but, for the most part, "dirt" roads pre- 

 vail. 



Travel over the roads is done in almost every con- 

 ceivable way. On Saturday afternoon when the country 

 people are returning from to^\ai, one can see people on 

 foot and on horse or mule-back, one and two-horse farm 

 wagons, single and double buggies, automobiles, and even 

 the faithful ox, driven sometimes single, sometimes 

 double, and attached to a f aiTii wagon, two-wheeled cart, 

 or, rarely, to the more aristocratic light buggy. The pos- 

 sessor of the ox is more often colored, that element form- 

 ing 55 per cent of the population of the county in 1920, 

 but many of the less prosperous whites find in the ox 

 their greatest help. It is easy to contrast with this the 

 many miles of nearly level hard-surfaced road of Cham- 

 paign county, extending over the -country in a straight 

 line for miles and traversed by little but the speedy auto - 

 mobile. 



The most conspicuous difference in soil between the 

 Virginia Piedmont and the Illinois plain is one of color. 

 The crystalline gneisses and schists of the former region 

 contain iron-bearing minerals which give rise to a bright 

 brick-red colored soil in the advanced stages of weather- 



