HAMILTON COUNTY. 75 



of corn, and were it not for the annual river floods would be the most 

 valuable land in the county. The higher alluvial land skirting the 

 Little Wabash south of Carmi has a sandy soil, not quite so productive 

 as that on the low river bottoms but yielding fair crops of corn, wheat 

 oats and grass, and easily cultivated. On the uplands the soil is gener- 

 ally a clay loam, similar to that of Wayne and Edwards, but more 

 variable in its productive capacities, in consequence of the inequalities 

 of the surface. On the oak ridges the soil is thin and yields only light 

 crops of corn, but is better adapted to small grains and grass, while the 

 valleys and the level stretches of laud between them have a deep loamy 

 soil that is very productive, yielding good crops of all the cereals usually 

 grown in this portion of the State. For a list of the trees of this county 

 the reader is referred to that already given in the report on Wabash 

 county. 



Hamilton County embraces an area of four hundred and twenty- 

 three square miles, and is bounded on the north by Wayne county, on 

 the east by White, on the south by Saline and on the west by Franklin 

 and Jefferson counties. There are no streams of any considerable size 

 in the county. The northern portion however is drained by the tributa- 

 ries of Skillet Fork, the main stream intersecting the north-east corner 

 of the county, and the southern by the North fork of Saliue, several 

 branches of which take their rise near the center of the county and 

 coalesce near the south line to form the main stream. The surface is 

 generally rolling, and was originally mainly covered with timber, though 

 there are two or three small prairies within is borders. 



Superficial Deposits. — The alluvial deposits in this county are limited 

 to the valleys of the small streams mainly tributary to the North fork 

 of Saline, and are seldom more than a mile in width. They are very 

 heavily timbered with several varieties of oak, hickory, elm, linden, ash 

 hackberry, black and white walnut, poplar, sugar maple, etc. The 

 drift deposits on the uplands range from ten to thirty feet in thickness 

 and consist of yellow and buff gravelly clays, with small bowlders of 

 northern origin varying in size from a few inches to a foot or more in 

 diameter. Branches of trees and sometimes the stems also, of consider- 

 able size, are met with in sinking wells through the drift in this county, 

 as well as nearly every other portion of the State, and very frequently 

 the ancient soil in which they grew remains in situ beneath the gravelly 

 clays and hard pan of the drift. 



Stratified Roclcs. — The rock formations of this county belong to the 

 upper Coal .Measures, ranging from the horizon of coal No. 10 to coal 

 No. 13, and including a total thickness of one hundred and fifty to two 

 hundred feet of rock strata, but affording but little coal thick enough 

 to be worked to advantage. 



