WEST VIRGINIA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



195 



the beginning of the bottom, above the junction of the rivers, 

 and at the mouth of the branch of the east side, I marked 

 two maples, an elm, and a hoop-wood tree, as a corner of 

 soldiers' land, if we can get it, intending to take all the bottom 

 from hence to the rapids in the Great Bend in one survey. I 

 also marked at the mouth of another run, lower down the west 

 side, and at the lower end of the long bottom, an ash and hoop- 

 wood tree, for the beginning of another of the soldiers' surveys, 

 to extend up so as to include all the bottom in a body on the 

 west side. In coming from our last encampment up the 

 Kanawha, I endeavored to take the courses and distances of the 

 river by my pocket compass, and by guessing. * * No- 

 vember 4th: Just as we came to the hills, 

 we met with a syacmore about sixty yards from the river, of a 

 most extraordinary size; it measuring three feet from the 

 ground, forty-five feet around, lacking two inches; and not 

 fifty yards from it was another, thirty-one feet round. * * * * 

 ,* * * *M ^^^ovember 5th: TJie growth in most 

 places, beech intermixed with walnut, but more especially with 

 poplar, of which there are numbers very large. The land 

 toward the upper end is a black oak, and very good. 



Ten different kinds of trees are referred to in the above 

 quotations from Washington's journal, and the two distinct 

 types of land — ^the rich valley and the poor hill land, — are de- 

 scribed according to the forest growth that each produced. 



In answer to an inquiry concerning original timber con- 

 ditions, etc., in Mason county, Hon. Virgil A. Lewis, State His- 

 torian and Archivist, gives the following interesting account: 



**I remember something of the forest conditions in Mason 

 county fifty years ago, that is to say, about the beginning of 

 the Civil War. The entire county was a remarkable forest 

 region. At that time there were clearings" or improve- 

 ments" throughout all the hill country. Along the two rivers, 

 Ohio and Great Kanawha, the county has a frontage of ninety- 

 two miles; and it may be said that there are about ninety- two 

 square miles of level bottom land. This was then, as now, the 

 chief agricultural region of the county; but there were still 

 magnificent forest preserves belonging to large estates along 



