49S 



FARMERS* REGISTER-GEOLOCilCAL REMARKS, &c. 



millions of people which the valley of the Missis- 

 sippi, that pap of mother earth, is inviting from 

 other extremes to those parts. Standing at such a 

 point, your admiration would be excited, that 

 amidst such a boundless view of masses beyond 

 masses, of high parallel and irregular mountains, 

 the rivers should all find their way to their desti- 

 nations, without falls or other impediments to navi- 

 gation, which the skill and energies of man, at 

 trifling expense, may not remove, thus adding vi- 

 gor to the giant heart, the Estuary of our thousand 

 rivers, which is to receive, commercially cherish 

 and return, as it were, the vitalized fluids to all 

 the extremities. Witli amazement still heighten- 

 ed, would you behold from the great AVhite Top, 

 (the neutral ground of North Carolina, Virginia 

 and Tennessee,) the Spinal Alleghany and the 

 Blue Ridge, with its granite cliffs and basaltic 

 rocks, running diagonally athwart each other, and 

 as if in the formative day of their creation, each of 

 these huge columns of uplifted matter had been 

 shot forward from the north and northeast; and 

 neither having the advantage of force over the 

 other, a contest terrible commenced, in which the 

 champions both discomfited, glanced; each tak- 

 ing its own path southwardly, le-aving their cast 

 away remnants piled fearfully " Ossa upon Pe- 

 lian, and Pelian upon Ossa," rolling confusedly 

 into thousands of rude shapes. But in Ihis field of 

 old warring elements are every where, as you 

 would also perceive, evidences presented, that the 

 principle of order has been passing and nestling, 

 has changed and given new capacities; striking 

 the waste " rocks with the rod," millions of springs 

 of purest water gushed forth ; the uplorn hills be- 

 came verdant, and all the glories of redundant ve- 

 getation do more than honor to the silent moun- 

 tains; thousands of choicest animals browse and 

 revel on the spontaneous herbage ; and man in- 

 vited last, has made his home in these high places; 

 and being far removed from the great commercial 

 haunts of luxury and vice, hope may long rest in 

 security, that here at least, some share — a large 

 share, of health, happiness, independence and free- 

 dom will be enjoyed? Why do the inhabitants of 

 these regions, so bounteously fitted tor their use, 

 desert them for Eldorado's in the great and labor- 

 ing, and slave holding and money grasping west.'^ 

 Too many have quit, have left their mountains, 

 but the day of reversion is commencing in our fa- 

 vor; it was not so with those who listened to the 

 song of William Tell; for deeds of arms when 

 necessity calls; or for hearth-talks 'in piping 

 times of peace,' there is no ' place like a home in 

 the mountains and in the valleys.' You have no 

 doubt seen the surprise of strangers on the high- 

 way, when reaching in some parts of this country 

 (as Burk's garden with its ten thousand elevated 

 level acres) the first view of valleys below^ in fog- 

 gy mornings; whilst on the mountain the sun is 

 brilliantly beaming, the stranger's eye will be ar- 

 rested with what he supposes is a broad and length- 

 ened lake below. The deception is perfect, the 

 very waves are seen rolling and tempest tossed, 

 nor will the appearance of islands and of trees 

 breaking through the mist as it evaporates, nor 

 the sounds of ploughmen, the screaking of iron 

 works, or the monotonous beat of the forge ham- 

 mer, issuing from the gulph below (till then un- 

 heard of,) dispel the optical illusion — the rolling 

 mist must be dispersed before he tan believe the 

 deception. 



Let the James River improvements have an arm 

 extended towards the Tennessee, and the latter be 

 improved with that spirit which has characterized 

 Tennessee for the last twelvemonths ; or let a Mac- 

 adam road be constructed through this natural de- 

 pression of all the mountains, from the Atlantic to 

 the Mississippi; and it requires only the slightest 

 knowledge of things, to be convinced, that in in- 

 ternal resources no part of the union can vie with 

 this, especially in minerals. Preston's salt-works 

 are in Smyth County, and King's in Washington, 

 and the same counties abound in innnense banks of 

 iron ore. In the adjoining county of Carter, are 

 above twenty iron making estaljlishments now in 

 operation, some of which are small bloomeries, 

 and in some places solid masses of ore, containing 

 seventy-five per cent, of metal, are exposed thirty 

 or forty feet high, like cliffs of rock. Tiie coun- 

 ties of Green, Washington, Svillivan, Campbell, 

 Claiborne, Anderson, Knox, Rhea, Hamilton in 

 Tennessee, Harlan Ky., Ash, Buncomb, Ruther- 

 foord and other counties of North Carolina, and 

 Monroe, Giles, IMontgomer}-, Floyd, Grayson, 

 Preston, Wythe and other counties in Virginia 

 abound in exhaustless quantities of iron, and many 

 of those counties have quarries of various sorts of 

 stone coal and innumerable seats for water power. 



In Grayson and Wythe are large bodies of rich 

 copper ore, not yet fully tested, and in the latter 

 county, lead ore of the best quality, and worked by 

 Col. James White and Alexander Pierce; what 

 amount of lead could be made is unknown, as the 

 ore bank seems inexhaustible, and coal in abun- 

 dance, as near as Graham's forge and iron furnace. 

 The capacity of the soil to produce different sorts 

 of timber after the first is cut off is very remarka- 

 ble in this country — those acquainted with the soi? 

 and first growth of limber can foretell what will 

 be the second and third growth on land once culti- 

 vated or on new land. 



Preston's Saltville land contains a description of 

 millstones, easily quarried, which are equal to the 

 best French burr stones for flour mills; and at 

 various points in the vicinity, and in Russell county 

 are quarries of various marbles. In the valleys, 

 buried in the soil, are innumerable rounded sand- 

 stone rocks, some of which are flinty, others of 

 marly ingredients, and many such loose stones, oc- 

 cupy the shoaly beds of the streams ; but the chan- 

 nels of all streams are chiefly bedded by limestone^ 

 mica, sandstone, and slaty formations, whose lamella 

 or divisions are seldom horizontal, until you arrive 

 at the level of the great western rivers. You may 

 here find ledges of rocks extending hundreds of 

 miles in a perpendicular posture, occasionally 

 broken where ridges transverse each other; but 

 in the general, these ledges are either massive and 

 of waving configuration and striated irregularly, 

 or are inclined at angles whose medium may be 

 45 degrees of the horizon, and it wovdd seem, that 

 they had perpetually sought to reach that angle, 

 notwithstanding such prominent failures so to do. 

 The declining direction is continuous through the 

 body of the hills and ridges generally, and the 

 upper plane is facing the south, as far as parallelism 

 with the general course of the ridges will permit ; 

 and in consequence of this southern exposure of 

 the planes of the rocks in all the mountains west of 

 the Alleghany to the verge of those mountains east 

 of the Mississippi, chemical nature has not the 

 same variety of surface to work upon, that it has 



