CHAPTER XVI. 



VERMILION COUNTY. 



This county lies on the eastern border of the State, about midway of its 

 length ; and is bounded on the north by Iroquois county ; on the west, by 

 Ford and Champaign counties; on the south, by Edgar county; and on the 

 east, by Warren and Vermilion counties, of Indiana. It is forty-two miles 

 long, and about twenty-one miles wide, giving an area of about eight hundred 

 and eighty square miles. 



The surface of the county presents considerable variety. The northern and 

 southern portions are high rolling prairies, the eastern arms of Grand Prairie, 

 more or less broken by the sloughs and small streams which gather from their 

 surface the main supply of the water which fills the Big and Little Vermilion 

 rivers. Through its center, Salt Fork, which drains a considerable portion of 

 Champaign county, runs in a general easterly direction, until, by its union with 

 Middle and North Forks, it becomes the Big Vermilion, and, near Danville, 

 turns southeastwardly to join the Wa'jash below Eugene, Indiana. In its en- 

 tire length within this county, it runs through a belt of timber varying from 

 two to four miles in width. Through the western third of the county, the Lit- 

 tle Vermilion is little more than a prairie drain ; but becomes of more import- 

 ance in the lower part of its course, where it is lined with from one to three 

 miles of timber. Both Middle and North Forks have considerable timber along 

 their banks for ten or twelve miles above their junctions with Salt Fork, but 

 only scattering groves farther up. Below the points where they enter the tim- 

 ber, all of these streams have high bluffy banks, with noticeably wider bottoms 

 where they have cut through the softer beds of rock, and narrower ones where 

 they have encountered the harder sandstones. The prairies have a dense, 

 black mucky soil of variable depth, underlaid in most cases by a tough, brown 

 clay subsoil. Along the streams the soil, and in many places, the subsoil, has 

 been removed by drainage, and the underlying more porous clays and gravels 

 have allowed of a heavy growth of timber. Upon the higher grounds, this 

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