218 TnAxsACTioxs of the American Institute. 



man J in height. These openings and the crevasses inwhicli the mine- 

 ral is found, generally run in straight lines, and contain more or 

 less of clay stained with oxide of iron, called ochre, and tumbling 

 rock. Sometimes it is found in large caves, mostly tilled with mine- 

 ral, which yield many millions of pounds. The opening mineral is 

 mostly found in junks of all sizes, some of many thousands of pounds 

 in weight. The yield from a good mineral deposit, vein or range, 

 would be from 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 pounds, and over. The 

 smelters are now paying at the diggings fifty-five dollars and fifty- 

 eight dollars per thousand pounds. There is a mine now being 

 worked near the city of Dubuque, Iowa, called the Kelley mine, 

 where they have raised from 15,000 to 25,000 per day, for many 

 days in succession, some days much more. I am credibly informed 

 it has turned out already over $500,000 worth of ore. The heavier 

 and richest deposits are still undeveloped, as the earlier miners mostly 

 looked for the surface or shallow mineral, and seldom reached the 

 true lodes or veins. They can be easily and certainly reached, in 

 many places, with some capital. Companies are mining in various 

 parts of the mining region, and there is room, on as good mineral 

 land as can be found anywhere, for many more companies to work. 



Fkom a Rich Country. 



George Whitcomb, Charleston, Mississippi county. Mo. — Raised 

 on a farm amid the bleak hills of liew England, I know what work 

 and cold fingers are, and neither of these suiting me, I concluded, 

 thirty years ago, to seek a location where the one was unknown, and 

 the minimum amount of the other would suftice. The selection was 

 Mississippi county, Missouri, opposite the mouth of the Ohio, and 

 my experience of thirty years proves the correctness of my selection. 

 The county is a rich alluvial soil, called in western parlance, " river 

 bottom," a soil every way as productive as the delta of ancient 

 Egypt. Owing to the peninsula sliape of the county, being nearly 

 surrounded by the river, and the fact that a large water-course 

 (James Bayou) runs through its center, almost the entire length, 

 having as much fall in twenty-one miles as the river has in seventy- 

 five, it is susceptible of being drained at a trifling expense. Proba- 

 bly there is not in all southeast Missouri an equal amount of land 

 that can be drained and made arable at so little expense. Being 

 entirely river bottom, of course, there is not a hill in the county, 

 unless some hundred Indian mounds are entitled to that appellation, 



