EAST TENNESSEE. 15 



that can be done with charcoal ten miles from the railroad, what shall be 

 said of mines equally rich and exhaustless lying where the railroad track 

 cuts the ore-bed and Avhere coal banks are as abundant as the iron?" 



"Along the line of the Knosville and Kentucky Railroad, not fifty 

 miles from Knoxville, are numerous properties now offered for sale at 

 moderate prices where iron and coal lie side by side in limitless quantities 

 and surrounded by beautiful forests of choice timber, with lime and sand- 

 stone, fire clay and water power close at hand, all waiting, as they have 

 waited for ages, for the magic touch of industry to convert them to use. 

 In some localities these iron beds are pierced for the first time by the cuts on 

 our railroads ; and yet, «uch is the blindness of our present policy, that 

 tec hring from heyond the Atlantic the iron rails to construct a road upon 

 our oicn iron heds! More than two million of dollars have been sent out 

 of East Tennessee since the war for iron and iron wares that should have 

 been produced at home. With such a fact before us there can be no 

 r|uestion of a home market for all we can produce. The foundry-men of 

 Knoxville have, until the present time, been compelled to purchase iron 

 brought from Scotland to produce a suitable mixture for soft, light and 

 thin castings. There are numerous places in East Tennessee where simi- 

 lar iron could be produced profitably at less than the cost of this freight 

 alone, sajdng nothing of the price of the iron. 



' ■ The ii'on of Carter county has borne a reputation for nearly seventy 

 years unsuriiassed by any in the United States for toughness and adapta- 

 bility to every use. The castings of this iron will bend before breaking, 

 and car wheels made of it have worn more than twelve years on our rail- 

 roads. _ And yet there is not a blast furnace in operation in that county at 

 this time, and we import from abroad, at vast expense the iron that 

 might be obtained from these mines at one-third the price we are now 

 paying. The Telico Iron Works of iMonroe county, more celebrated than 

 those of Carter, with iron equal in quality and much greater in quantity, 

 have been idle for years, producing nothing. ' ' Two fui-naces now carried 

 on by northern companies in Greene county and one recently established 

 by Gren. Wilder and his associates in Roane county, are now producing 

 three times the iron that is produced by all the old furnaces of East Ten- 

 nessee. 



Other Minerals. — Space forbids us to speak in detail of our other 

 minerals. Copper is found in vast quantities at Ducktown, Polk county, 

 and it is believed to exist in other parts of the mountains that skirt our 

 southern borders. It is sufficient to say, that, next after the Lake Supe- 

 rior mines, the Ducktown mines yield the most copper of any in the 

 United States. 



Zinc is abundant in East Tennessee, as the Zinc Works recently erected 

 at Mossy Creek have clearly estabhshed. There is a fine zinc bed or vein 

 in Knox county, within twelve miles of Knoxville, even better than that 

 at ]\Iossy Creek. 



Marble. — There is a great interest attached to the marble of East 

 Tennessee. In the columns and balustrades which largely contribute to 

 adorn the State Capitol at Nashville and the National Capitol at Wash- 

 ington may be seen specimens of the fine quality of our variegated marble. 

 We have in East Tennessee the variegated fossiliferous. grayish white 



