LIBKARy 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



The progress of the civilization of a people or of a country is marked 

 by the development of its industry. In this century, the active power of 

 industry is steam. Man is no more a machine — an instrument. His 

 mind has subdued matter, has moulded it into the most complicated and 

 diversified forms, has truly animated it, giving it power, strength — indeed 

 life, by the wonderful application of steam. The true generator of steam 

 is coal. Thus, a country is more likely to take the lead in industrial 

 development, and therefore in civilization, if it be provided with a large 

 amount of this combustible mineral. No political economist now would 

 dare to estimate the present or future riches of a people, and their 

 resources, without taking for a basis of his calculations its facilities for 

 procuring a supply of coal. Even some of the most celebrated geogra- 

 phers and philosophers of our time have asserted that the Continent of 

 North America, and especially the great valley of the Mississippi, would, 

 at a future day, become inhabited by the densest and most civilized popu- 

 lation of the world, because it has, in its extensive coal-fields, the largest 

 amount of coal, that originator of industrial life. 



Everybody is now acquainted with the general distribution and extent 

 of the great coal-basins east of the Mississippi river. The great Appa- 

 lachian basin occupies part of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky; 

 its western limits being marked by a line running nearly due southward, 

 passing near the mouth of the Scioto river, in Ohio. The Illinois coal-fields 

 cover parts of Indiana, of Western Kentucky, of Illinois, throwing out 

 spurs into Missouri, Arkansas, and farther west. The more the spurs 

 are removed from the centre of the coal-basin, or from its most productive 

 part, the more the coal which they contain becomes valuable, from the 

 scarcity of the combustible mineral. This shows the great value of the 

 coal strata of Western Arkansas, and the advantage that would result to 

 the State from an extensive and rich coal-deposit. Not only the naviga- 

 tion of the Arkansas river would, at a future time, depend upon it; but it 

 would supply with combustible material the inhabitants of the western 



