OHAPTEE VII. 



WAYNE AND CLAY COUNTIES. 



Wayne county embraces an area of seven hundred and twenty square 

 miles, and is bounded on the north by Clay and Richland counties, on 

 the east by Eichland and Edwards, on the south by White and Hamil- 

 ton, and on the west by Jefferson and Marion. It is located on the 

 southern border of the prairie region, and at least three quarters of its 

 surface was originally timbered land. The prairies are mostly small, 

 the largest being that in the northern portion of the county between 

 Elm creek and Skillet Fork. The principal streams in the county are 

 the Little Wabash, and Elm creek, its principal western affluent, which 

 drains the eastern division, and Skillet Fork, with its numerous small 

 branches which flow through the south-western part of the county. 



The surface is generally rolling and elevated from fifty to a hundred 

 feet above the beds of the streams. The bottoms on Skillet Fork and 

 Little Wabash are rather low and flat and heavily timbered. 



The geological features of this county are very similar to those of 

 Wabash and Edwards, the drift deposits and upper Coal Measures 

 being the only formations exposed. In the southern portion of the 

 county the drift clays seldom exceed a thickness of fifteen to twenty feet, 

 and in sinking wells the bed rock is often found at a depth of ten or 

 twelve feet below the surface. Towards the northern boundary of the 

 county they are somewhat heavier, and on Elm creek there are bluffs 

 thirty feet or more in hight that seem to be composed entirely of drift. 

 Here the lower portion consists of the bluish-gray hard-pan that has 

 been more particularly described in the report on the more northerly 

 counties, where it is sometimes found from fifty to seventy-five feet or 

 more in thickness. The upper portion of these superficial deposits may 

 be represented along the bluffs of the Little Wabash by a few feet of 

 loess, but generally it consists of yellowish brown gravelly cl.iys and 

 sand, with numerous rounded pebbles and occasionally bowlders of 

 metamorphic rock of moderate size. Locally the grav. by clays are 

 tinged a reddish-brown color, with the red oxyd of iron, derived proba- 

 bly from the decomposition of a ferruginous sandstone that forms the bed 



