Vigo County, Indiana - Chapter 1: Introductory, 1891

Chapter 1: Introductory

Vigo County Geology - Its Soils, Rocks and Waters - Most Ancient of all History - Its Importance as an Educator - Hints on Studying Greek and Geology - Hopeful John Wesley's Experi¬ ence - Civilization is Based on Agriculture - The Rocks are the Leaves in Nature's History Book - The Old Education - Mam¬ moth and Mastodon - Things Everyone Should Know of Their Own Locality - Great Earthquake - The Streams - First Boat.

YIGO COUNTY and its geology is not only an interesting but the most valuable study in practical life that can have the attention of the people. The earliest of all history of any locality is found in the records kept by the rocks. Here are locked up and stored away secrets often so old, occurrences that took place in such long reaches of times past, that we can not reckon them by our usual mode of counting time in years, decades and centuries, but they are spoken of as eons by scientific investigators. The great leaves of the rocks, then, are Nature's history book, fashioned into our round, wheeling globe. In reading this account of the earth's formation and changes within the county's limits we can no more than go back to what is so very recent - the surface facts, as it were, that we finally end our investigation with the conviction that even the expression of the eras by eous is but little aid to the mind in attempting to grasp the reaches of time that are past and gone, or what or who has been here, lived their time, and then passed away. We pick up a fossil rock - in nearly all the rocks, except granite and its family, are more or less fossil remains - we can investigate by the remains we there find something of the original of which the fossil was once a part, and then from the rock and the surroundings we can estimate, though vaguely, the time when the rock enclosed within its keeping this memento of the past. But we can not tell by millions of years when the rock itself became a rock. W e can only assign it to a certain geological age, with no fixed idea at all as to time in years. Hence, in geological history we make no mention of centuries, but simply speak of geological periods, and in that easy way we make dates that are both satisfactory and relieve the mind from bothering itself about things impossible to know.

Geology is the most ancient of all history, and, therefore, the history of man is the most modern of all history, because man was the last to appear upon earth.

The time, or rather the order of the existence of the extinct ani¬ mal and vegetable forms is a part of the secrets of the past that we can trace no where else than in the rocks. Turning over, therefore, these pages of the book of Nature, we to-day read much of what was going on here so long ago that the mind can form no idea at all on that part of the subject.

The brain is so developed that we are strangely interested in the remains or marks of even a leaf, a bird's track or a crawling worm that we know is so ancient as to baffle thought. Almost any hour you can see in the coal you may use for fuel marks of some vege¬ table growth. Even of the age of the coal you can form no idea. How young and fresh its formation must be compared to some of the rocks, and yet with what interest you look upon the outlines there seen of the leaf, and try to think of the time when on its stem it swayed and bent to the breezes and was kissed by the dew and the sunshine; decking the forest its brief summer life and dying of old age in the early fall, it sways and circles to the earth, the very expression of an ephemeral existence, and yet, all this vast time intervening, you have come into the world to look upon the traces left by this leaf - thus are standing face to face the inconceiva¬ ble dead past and the living present.

But you must not think that because this is the most ancient of all history that it therefore has no other importance. It is interesting because it is ancient, but in a practical point of view it is full of that knowledge beneficial to know.

From the rocks comes about all that we possess. Here at least are the foundations of material life. The soil comes of the decom¬ position of the rocks - it may be called the rocks' ashes, and the nature of the material fixes the quality of the vegetable and ani¬ mal life that will subsist thereon. The subjacent rocks then deter¬ mine the kind of civilization that will in time exist in the locality above them.

A few years ago some gentleman applied to the noted scientist, Agassiz, to tell them the secret of the Blue-Grass region, of Ken¬ tucky, producing such excellent strains of horses. They pro¬ pounded their inquiry and he brusquely answered: inquirers the whole force of his pregnant truth was plain enough. The secret of the Blue -Grass region is in the peculiar rocks beneath the soil s surface, and this determines the qualities of the grasses and the waters, and they in turn enter into the blood and bones of those fleet-footed coursers that have so long been the boast and pride of Kentucky. The bone of a thoroughbred Kentucky horse was placed by the side of that of the cold-blooded horse of some other locality. One resembled in texture ivory and the other was coarse and porous. If the hides of the two animals had been dressed and tanned it is probable here would again have appeared another as marked a difference. Our animal part is similarly affected by the soil and water whence comes our food and drink. In my trav¬ els through Pennsylvania, I could easily fancy that I could tell something of the different iron regions of that State by the color noticeable in the bloom on the cheeks of the men and women I would meet on the street.

History points out plainly the influences on different civiliza¬ tions produced by the soils and climates. A certain belt runs round the world and within that zone has come all the great and distinctive peoples known to history. The northern temperate strip spanning the earth is the confine of the ability to think. The boundaries of this belt are not known, but it is known that to the north and to the south are the impassable barriers. Here human progress stops. Beyond these lines, either north or south, men cease to advance, becoming mentally weak and physically dwarfed.

There is then plainly a practical education in the geology of the locality in which we live, and the understanding of the elemen¬ tary facts of this science must therefore be the most important and useful education we can give the rising generation.

We send our children to school to prepare them for more useful lives; to help them in the struggle for existence when they go out from the roof-tree to battle for a place in the world for themselves. The average man lives for his children. Here are his hopes and ambitions, and they can not be better placed. If he could be abso¬ lutely certain in matters of education, then he would be simply not experimenting - filled always with hope and fear. In this age of the world he ought to be enabled to procede with the education of his children with the same certainty of results that he cuts, saws, planes and finishes the different pieces that when put together are exactly the house he had in his mind's eye when he felled the trees in the woods that finally entered into the structure. This much most assuredly the thousands of years' experience should have taught us all.

his boy to the school teacher and buys such books for him as he is told to supply. He is in time told his boy has triumphed over the Greek verb, and he is much rejoiced, and he and "mother" talk it all over with hearts full of pride. Their son has such blessed ad¬ vantages over anything they had, and in time who could help but envy their pride and happiness when John Wesley is the Latin vale¬ dictorian on graduation day. Bless their honest, credulous hearts, their cup of happiness at last is full to overflowing. John Wesley is a little bit affected himself at the rosy future just bursting upon him. In rather sfilted Virgilian measure, he recounts the past school days - commencing at " Ego " and with this final flourish of " veni , vidi, vici /" And the work is done. "The world is mine oyster and I will proceed to open it." But on an average, about ninety-nine times in one hundred, John Wesley's oyster knife some¬ how don't so readily open the succulent bivalve. Indeed it is often found that the mollusk petrified about the time Eneas was cutting the didos about which the poet sang so sublimely. There sometimes is but one certain thing the young man finds himself fully qualified to do - teach school. He can here put others successfully through the same grind that he experienced and was told was the highest and best attainable education - a classical education. He can read Latin and Greek and has learned that Hebrew is read from right to left. True he has constant use for his dictionary in reading any of the dead languages, but that is probably better for him. By the time his graduation suits are worn out, if lie is a very bright youth, he has made the discovery that there is some little difficulty in con¬ verting his classical education into cash in any of the ordinary walks of life. But this does not affect his faith. His teachers impressed it well upon him that the higher education is not mer¬ cenary, that it is above all that. But John W.'s nature is to get cold and hungry, the same as does poor Bill Stubbs, who never was at college.

In a few years you find the school boy has ripened into strong manhood and is a prominent merchant, lawyer, judge, doctor, farmer, hotel-keeper or in any other respectable and money-making business. He has forgotten his Greek verbs, and instead of his " veni, vidi, vici " of old, he is now found glibly expressing himself by the more expressive slang of "hustlers" and "rustlers."

The jolly benedict is passing it around. His boys will soon be old enough to fill the same place he once did in the schools and colleges. He intends to do the best he can for them. As for him¬ self he blushes to think about his graduating dreams and his actual life and how little they fitted into each other, and hopes that his boys may do better - may even some day be great professors in some old and noted university. He may possibly remember that after his classical days he read the illiterate Bobby Burns, or the common stock actor Shakespeare and was amazed at the discovery that there is in nature possibilities even outside of the " classical course " in college - these children of nature, with no more cramp¬ ing rules than the birds, caroled their immortal songs to the skies.

He, and so do we all, followed in the footsteps of his long line of predecessors - thought in the same rounds they did, and fashioned his life after theirs. And thus our youths grow up too dependent upon the aid of others to prepare them for the struggle for life. It would be far better for the rising generation that they be told the blunt truth; that they can be assisted, but not very much, in edu¬ cation. That pretty much all real, practical education is for each one to gain for himself and largely by himself; that the school must not be in theory a mental gymnasium, where the muscles, so to speak, of the mind can be developed by the professor, and that there is nothing for the student to do except keep his mind always in a receptive mood; his mental hopper open so the grists of knowledge may run in uninterruptedly. The boy on the farm is practically edu¬ cated to be a farmer, so is the boy in the store or bank or factory or mill, educated practically in those different things.

As the advances of our civilization are based upon the agricult¬ ural interests, so we come to see that the geological knowledge of the locality in which our lives are cast is of first importance in the education of our youths. All we possess even in our higher civili¬ zation comes primarily from this source. No matter therefore what your chosen avocation in life, an intimate knowledge of the earth's surface and what is under it must be of great advantage. It is a species of practical knowledge that assists in life. The boy at school can more easily learn how to analyze the soils than he can master the Greek verb. The child's mind is more interested in investigating a plant, flower or tree, the conditions of its growth and propagation, than he is in the Greek and Roman mythologies. In short, it is natural for him to be curious about nature and her ways and laws, and it is therefore better for him to know these things than to befog his intellect trying to comprehend those abstruse metaphysics that so often are mistakenly thrust upon him.

The ancient Egyptians, from whom come nearly all the rudi¬ ments of education, taught chiefly adults. Their schools were in their groves, gardens and conversations from the porches of their dwellings and public buildings. Three thousand years ago their schools, always in the open air, were places where the most vital and often practical questions of life were considered - the teachers being men eminent for their wisdom far more than their knowledge of the rules of the school room. They propounded questions and discussed them and the people attended at will. All teaching was oral, as much of our teaching in geology, botany and zoology should be. The successful farmer has learned much that is useful by ex¬ periment and the trials of his ancestors. His knowledge of geology and chemistry as well as botany and zoology is far greater than he himself generally supposes it to be. He has learned that certain soils have certain plant food and that under a certain treatment it will yield up its treasures. He has gained his knowledge at too great a loss of time and wealth . He should have been saved the expense of such a school by the school teachers who had in charge his education. He possibly was wasting his time on Greek roots when he should have been looking into the corn roots - especially since we are told that the number of marriages is at times regulated by the price of corn.

These are some off-hand hints as to why so much importance should be attached in the history of any locality to the geology of the country, as this and the climate are the controlling factors in civilization. Where these are properly or best adjusted there will be found the best developed men - mentally and physically. They are a plea for a more practical education for the young and old. They are a general protest against the authority of precedent.

It can be no disadvantage to the school graduate to have learned well some of those lessons in the school room that his forefathers have had to learn by the sternest necessity in the conduct of their business. While experience is a hard teacher, she is the best one only because of the failure of our teachers to fully grasp the situa¬ tion. Where the young man returns with his Latin diploma to the old farm, it need not detract from his glory if he can go out and look over the fields and tell what will revive each soil here and there ; the fertilizing qualities that have been exhausted and what will best restore them. So of his father's mill, factory or store. In the economic problems here constantly presented, so knowledge on these subjects may enable him to begin to repay his parents for the sac¬ rifices they have made for his education. As true knowledge is the most practical thing in the world, so is it the most useful. It is simply understanding the natural laws. Our commencement is from the mother earth, to which in the end we will return. Why is this then not the natural point to commence the higher education of our children? Generation after generation we train each other to regard precedent as of the highest authority. Hence, because a few hundred years ago the English as well as other modern lan¬ guages were in the process of formation - all being then more or less jargons, and as at the same time there were the fewest scientific facts known to men, and that species of education was practically tabooed, it was as a matter of course that polite learning was esteemed to be the dead languages of Athens and Rome, and to these ambitions students turned with a sincere devotion. This cir¬ cumstance has brought even down to our day a widespread notion that a classical education is the highest and best attainable. The martyrs to the world's advanced and better education it seems died in vain, so far as our great schools and teachers are concerned. Hence, the peasant at the plow handle, the grimy smith at the forge, the telegrapher at the key, and the shoemaker's bench are as quick to give the world its great thinkers, inventors and educators as the great State universities or the most noted schools in the world. The better instincts of men are in natural rebellion against the mistakes and ignorance of the Dark Ages. Happily is it indeed, that this is so.

Beneath your feet, wherever you may be, there are in the earth vast beds of rock. These, in the simplest division, are the igneous and stratified rocks. The first, as its name indicates, is a fire-rock, that is, melted by intense heat and cooled into its solid form. The other is the slow deposits in water, where layer is deposited on layer sometimes miles in thickness. Fossil remains of course are found only in the stratified rocks, or in petrifactions that are sometimes locked in stratified rocks or are separate and alone as when formed. The immense chalk bluffs of England are the remains simply of water insects, the little skeletons whitened and cemented in the process of time into the immense beds that were uplifted by the internal forces of the earth and no longer beds of the sea, are the tall white cliffs of the uplands, observed with so much interest by travelers and looked upon with such dull indifference by the hob-nailed peasants and the, ancient shepherds who turned their gaze in their long night-watches upon the rolling beauties of heaven, set as they sup¬ posed in the solid overarching firmament.

The ancient education tended to lead away from all practical subjects. Those who assumed the authority to speak, so taught their followers. They thought to control the movements of the mind as the king's wall would control their personal movements. They grievously mistook both their mission and the true nature of the mind. They were too slow to find out that though the body may be burned, the mind will fly free and can be arbitrarily con¬ trolled only by destroying it, and they proceeded to enslave the mind by the persecution of the body, and the misdirection of their thoughts and judgments. They thus brought the travail of the ages, when civilization languished and the human mind remained long stagnant. Thus earnest men's mistakes are often far more hurtful and grievous than their wildest vices. But this is a part of that old, old story of the struggle between truth and error, right and wrong.

square miles. Its surface is level or gently rolling, divided into prairie and timber land, mostly timber. There are three prairies in the county, namely Prairie creek prairie, Fort Harrison and Grand prairie, which will be more fully described in the township histories.

Streams. - The main artery in the drainage of this part of Indi¬ ana is the Wabash river that flows through Vigo county from north to south. The river has its rise in a small lake in Mercer county, Ohio, running in a westerly course through the counties of Adams, Wells and Huntington to the State of Indiana. The confluence of Little river is just below Huntington. From this point it continues its westerly course through the counties of Wabash, Miami and Cass. Here it turns more toward the south and passes through Carroll and Tippecanoe counties. It forms the boundary line be¬ tween Warren and Vermillion counties on the west and Fountain and Parke on the east. It turns still more directly south at Cov¬ ington. It enters Vigo County in Section 2, Township 18, Range

9. Passing into Section 3, then nearly due south through Section 10 and into Section 15, where it turns abruptly west for six miles along the section lines between 15 and 16 and 21 and 22; then turn¬ ing nearly due south, passing nearly through to center of Sections 21, 28 and 33, and enters nearly the center of Section 4, Township 12, Range 9; passing diagonally through the northeast corner of Section 9 and into 8 and into Section 17, and bending toward the southeast meets the town limits of Terre Haute in Section 16; then running nearly due south along the entire city's front, where it turns and bears southwest into Section 31 and bends suddenly and runs east to the center of Section 32, and going nearly due south, enters the center of Section 5, Township 11, Range 9, when it bears southwest to where it nearly touches the State line at the northwest corner of Section 28, then goes due south to the south¬ west corner of Section 33, where it becomes the dividing line be¬ tween Indiana and Illinois. From this point to the southwest cor¬ ner of the county, the southwest corner of Section 35, Township

It is a navigable stream, and is the only one that touches the county of Vigo. To the east of the river in the southwest part of the county are several lakes and bayous. The latter are evidences that this was once a great river, from six to ten miles in width, pouring in its sluggish stream the vast accumulations of waters from the north to the divide where the drainage was through the chain of northern lakes. Time has dwarfed this mighty river which at one time might have carried abreast on its bosom all the combined armadas of the world, into its present insignificance. It was one of the great agencies in drying the continent and adjusting the earth for our habitation. Evidently all of Prairie Creek town¬ ship was once a part of the bed of the river, and in narrowing and deepening its bed it has left its footprints in those lakes as far east as Moore's Pond and Goose Pond. The bottoms, often from six to ten miles wide, are yet subject to nearly annual overflows by the spring freshets that crowd their accumulated waters upon it. Greenfield bayou, Grassy pond, Stone pond and Horseshoe pond are considerable bodies of water, that in the general drying of the face of the country will some day be dry land. Man's energies en¬ croach upon the waters wherever possible, and he extends his dominions over the waters and the waste places.

Within the memory of man there has been a marked change in the Wabash river, and its waters are becoming less and less. At one time all the commerce of the portion of the State through which it runs was carried on the river. The fleets of largest steam¬ boats easily ascended to Terre Haute, and above the north line in the early days of western steamboating.

The first steamboat that ever plowed the western waters came down the Ohio river, and passed on to New Orleans the same year, 1811, that Gen. Harrison marched up with his army to Fort Harri¬ son. The name of that historical vessel was the " Orleans," under command of Capt. Roosevelt. A remarkable coincident of that voy¬ age of the first steamboat was that just about the time it reached the mouth of the Wabash, where it empties into the Ohio, it was met by the first evidences of the greatest earthquake ever known to visit the continent - the New Madrid earthquake as it is called, because this was its severest point. The heavens and the earth manifested their wonders, not only in the great earthquake, but a total eclipse of the sun occurred at this time, and thus were the great powers and displays of nature to meet, the apparently so feeble, but yet the most extraordinary manifestations of man's genius. As though all nature rose up at the approach of the first steamboat in the wilder¬ ness to awe it back or welcome it, as one may choose to think. The same year the army of occupation under Gen. Harrison came to Vigo county. What tremendous events in the world's history! To the Indians and the pioneers, could they at all have comprehended these mighty things, how supremely awe-inspiring it all would have been. Capt. Roosevelt was a brave navigator, and not much affected by the common and general superstition of his times. The eclipse had aroused the people to a frenzy of awe and fear. They were ever ready to see the coming of the end of the world, when the heavens would be rolled together as a scroll and the universal conflagration begin. Then commenced the earthquake that shook the hills, burst asunder the granite rocks as though but sheets of wet paper, and the ground heaved, waved and trembled, and with great groans rose and burst in long cracks and openings, and spurted high sand and water and sulphurous smoke. The earthquake, lasted three months, the first three days being the most severe and active, and the third day the worst of all. It was on this third day, in December, 1811. that the " Orleans " rode out of the troubled waters of the Ohio into the yet more excited waters of the Mississippi. The boat had tied up the previous night at the foot of a low island just above Cairo. There was danger near the high river banks, as these would heave and swell, and great sections carrying trees would be detached and go plunging into the seething waters. Such was the force of the quick, high waves of the ground, that the great river would be turned back upon itself and rose and splashed over the .tops of the highest bluffs along the shore. New Madrid, on the river below Cairo, was then a prosperous town. It was destroyed by the earthquake. During these days the sun hung in the heavens, a dull red, like a great heated iron ball.

Thus the sun's eclipse, the great New Madrid earthquake, the coming to western waters of the first steamboat that ever wakened the long sleeping echoes of the wilderness, and the coming of the armed Anglo-Saxon to take possession of Vigo county, were, his¬ torically, contemporaneous events.

In such a meeting how feeble man - how overpowering nature! Of the earthquake nought remains save the great lakes that lie along west of the lower Mississippi. In places for miles the forest trees were killed though left standing in their natural position. But these have rotted away and other growths have taken their place. The bruised and torn earth has smoothed over its ravages, and the quiet grasses, clinging vines, the growing trees and the rainfall have been busy repairing damage and smoothing over the earth's scars. But on the other hand how is it? Fulton's steamboat was a human idea in battle it would seem with the wildest riot of nature. Not really much more significant in the performance then going . on than the cork upon the fretted ocean. Did it pass away like the eclipse? No, here was a great thought, an invention, and feeble as it appeared, it must live and go on forever, gathering force on its way. The revolving paddle-wheels of the boat were but the be¬ ginning of the drive-wheels of the railroad engine that now flies over the face of the earth and of the great steamships whose sails fleck every sea.

What a noble immortality is here - a new thought, a new inven¬ tion, but great enough to bear aloft our highest and best civiliza¬ tion - to live forever. Here are the domains of real human great¬ ness. It is in the movements of the mind that the immortal records are made. A barbarous people can only understand or appreciate physical action - hunters and fighters. These are their highest types of men, while they would be apt to kill the man of thought as a dangerous or impious sorcerer - blaspheming their snake-gods, and conjuring eclipses, earthquakes or the nights of storms and darkness. Apparently the instincts of the ignorant barbarian is to fear and hate the man of thought, and to adore animal strength, courage and ferocity. It was this remnant of the old times among the pioneers that made them connect the coming of the first steam¬ boat as a part of the angry display of heaven's powers in the eclipse and earthquake at man's impious daring. They gathered on the banks of the river, saw the black thick smoke roll slowly up from its flues, they listened in awe at the hot escaping steam, and the In¬ dians and most ignorant white men fled in terror to the deep woods, only to be met by the ominous rumbling of the earth, the swaying of the trees, the sulphurous vapors filling the air, and the solid earth began to heave and swell, and all this was the unmistakable wrath of God. Angry, yes, why not angry? Had not man pre¬ sumed to " bile the water " in order to change God's ways of doing this thing. The waters had always run on softly singing their way to the sea - carrying on their bosom the swift bark canoes, the pirogue, the raft and finally the keelboat, happily man's hand¬ maiden so long as the water was left as nature made it, but it must be heated over the fire into angry hissing steam, and then God's patience was exhausted. Thus ignorance warred up the true, and .wrong thus has ever placed itself in the pathway of advancing in¬ telligence.

If Terre Haute had been here in 1811, Fulton's boat could and probably would have ascended the Wabash and amazed the people greatly. But there was nothing here except Fort Harrison and the little garrison it contained. All transportation, however, to this part of the world was by way of the Wabash, in canoes, pirogues, keelboats, flatboats and rafts. The latter were used until recent times to float out the Wabash and down to New Orleans, carrying great cargoes sometimes, and there the raft would be broken up and the logs sold to be made into lumber. The keelboat looked something like a "caboose" to a railroad train. These floated down stream carrying all that could be put on them, and then, lightly loaded, they had to be pulled up stream by long ropes and men on the shore. A great deal of commerce of the west was thus carried on in the early days. To the youths of this age, with the fast freight trains, it looks almost incredible to be told that the keel¬ boat was the best our pioneer forefathers had at command. A trip from here to New Orleans and back in those times was commenced early in the spring and ended late in the fall; six or eight miles a day was fair progress in the upstream trip. The men toiled and tugged against the current from sunrise to sunset, and in the south ' were oftep so beset with insects as to make life a burden.

The first steamboat that ascended the Wabash and passed through Yigo county was the " Florence " in the spring of 1822. What a great day was her arrival at Terre Haute. The people turned out with intensest curiosity and welcomed it with great joy. They were not certain it was a thing of any practical value, but at all events it was a great curiosity. The young and hopeful be¬ lieved it was all or more than claimed for it by its builders, but some of the old sober-heads entertained the gravest doubts, and con¬ tinued to put their faith in the canoe or raft as the reliable trans¬ port. The " Florence " returned after her visit, and there was no other steamboat arrival for a year. The next spring, 1825, the " Plow Boy" (her owners were no doubt admirers of Henry Clay) came up the Wabash, bringing a large cargo of merchandise and discharging it near the foot of Main street. This practically ended all head-shaking of the doubters, as from this time on people learned to depend for all needed supplies on the expected coming boat that began to arrive regularly.

Other Streams. - As remarked, the Wabash is the only navigable stream that touches Yigo county. The water sheds of the northern part of the county lie east and west of the Wabash and flow into it. In the southern part of the county the waters all flow toward the west and a divide running east and west along the north line of Township 10, where the streams on one side start north and on the other toward the south. Commencing at the north line of the county, the streams from the east side into the river are: Spring creek, which rises in Parke county and enters in two branches in Sections 5 and 6, Range 8. These join in Section 6 and flow south¬ erly to near the center of Section 7 and then turns west and north¬ erly, passing diagonally through Sections 12, 1 and 2, Range 9 into the river. Going south the next is Otter Creek. This comes in several branches that join in Section 36, Township 13, Range 9. The principal northern branch rises in Section 12, Township 13, Range 8 and flows southwesterly and the other principal branch rises on the east line of the county in Sections 29, 13, 7 and flows nearly west. These main branches are fed by many small arms ex¬ tending in every direction. Where all become one large stream the flow is westerly into Sections 35, 13, 8, and thence northwest to the river in Sections 22, 13, 9. The next stream, Lost creek, empties into the Wabash about four miles south of the mouth of Otter creek. The principal heads of this stream are in Sections 10, 7 24 and 22 in Township 12, Range 8. These flow westerly in Sec¬ tion 13, Township 12, Range 9, and then the main stream goes through Sections 14, 11, 10 and 3 to the river. Running due east of Terre Haute is a divide, where the waters flow north and on the other side start south. It was along this ridge or divide that the

National Road was constructed. Still going south on the east side, the next and one of the important drainage streams of the county is Honey creek. The principal head of this is nearly east of Terre Haute and the east line of the county, and it flows west and south¬ erly entirely through the county. Many branches from the northeast and the southeast join in Section 14, Township 11, Range 9, thence westerly the main stream passes to Section 24, Township 11, Range 9, and then nearly parallel with the river and empties into the Wabash at Section 23, Township 11. The next stream, Prairie creek, does not empty into the Wabash in Vigo county. It comes from the northeast, with several branches through the west half of the county and on a parallel with Honey Creek and where all join and form one stream about seven miles south of that creek and flow¬ ing in nearly a parallel course, passes out of the county on the south line in Section 31, two miles east of the Wabash. In the south and east part of the county are several drains that pass south into Sul¬ livan county. These constitute the county's drainage streams east of the river.

On the west side, commencing at the north line of the county, is a small drain entering the county about two miles west of the river, and from Section 4 passes into Section 3, where it strikes the river. Below this is Salt creek, which rises in Section 12, Township 13, Range 10, and runs east into a small lake, and thence by a bayou to the river in Section 10, Township 13, Range 9. This stream is about five miles long. The next in order is Coal creek and its north and south heads. The main head is in Illinois and enters the State of Indiana in Section 9, Township 13, Range 10, flowingsoutherly, and reaches the river in Section 8, Township 13, Range

9. There is East Little Sugar creek and also West Little Sugar creek. These join in Section 25, Township 12, Range 10, and form Sugar creek, which flows southeast into the river, south of Terre Haute, in Section 31. East Little Sugar creek rises in Sec¬ tion 26, Township 13, Range 10, and flows nearly south to its junc¬ tion with West Little Sugar creek. The latter rises just across the line in Illinois and enters the county in Section 16, Township 12, Range

10, and flows southeastly to the junction. Clear creek rises just across the State line and enters the county in Section 28, Township 12, Range 10, and flows southerly into the river in Section 11, Town¬ ship 11, Range 13.

These are the county's drainage, and altogether give it a com¬ plete and valuable system. They are a part of the great work of nature, preparing the home for civilized man. The sleepless en¬ ergies of nature cut these natural canals and waterways through every obstruction, even the granite walls that may be in the way. How little of these important preparations for the coming of the race could have been effected by the combined efforts of man!

The Wabash river was the highway for man in his coming here. It bore his commerce and gave him easy communication with the outer world and his fellow man - the artery of civilization. The larger creeks too had their value in the pioneer times in addition to the drainage they gave. They furnished the water power for the first mills and the beginnings of factories. They invited the white man's intelligence to appropriate and use their powers. To apply the water wheels to make bread and lumber instead of the unaided muscle at the mortar and pounding pestle and the primitive whip¬ saw to cut the great forest trees into lumber to build their homes. The water-mill, grist or saw, was the first imperative advance of our civilization. This was simply utilizing the powers furnished by nature. The important man to these early pioneers was he who came looking along the streams for an eligible mill-site, where, imi¬ tating the beaver, he could best build a dam and divert the flowing water to his water-wheel, that was the power to grind the corn and wheat and with the primitive upright saw cut the lumber.

These things, though mostly relegated to " innocuous desuetude" now, were of the greatest importance at one time. Man's advancing art has superseded these natural aids to the early people, yet of such overshadowing impotance were they once that they decided the question of the white man permanently occupying the country. They were the prime foundations to the great civilization in which we have been permitted to live. Do they not deserve a place in his¬ tory, even a niche in the memory of those born to all these better things and happier times?

The apparently appropriate place to tell of the canal that passed through the county would be here, but that was the work entirely of men, and is no part of the geological story of Yigo county, and therefore will be fully treated in its proper time in the account of the progress of the people.

One of the most noticeable changes in the topography of the country is in the drainage. The streams have cut narrower and deeper beds, and the disappearance of the forests, the wild prairie grasses, and these natural obstructions to the waters, have been fol¬ lowed by such general, artificial, open and underground sewer drains that the waters as they fall are carried off much more rap¬ idly now than formerly. The result is an apparent lessening of the streams in dry seasons, accompanied by ever increasing higher waters in. the large rivers of the west. In the Ohio river the past twenty years have been regularly divided into periods, when the February or March rise in the river has exceeded anything be¬ fore known in its history, and at this hour (March 16, 1890) the Lower Ohio and Mississippi rivers are again marking a higher reach than ever before known, and are overflowing the artificial embankments all the way down to the city of New Orleans. The swift current, swelling higher and higher, mocks at man's efforts, tearing down his barriers and carrying wild destruction to the country below Cairo. If there is truth in the theory that increased rainfall follows the settlements of civilization, then the streams really carry off more water during the year than they did when the country was first known, but carrying them so much faster that now runs off in a few days what before would be distributed over many months. Yet the first and even the second bottom lands to the bluffs or high land running parallel with the rivers unmistakably mark what was once the river's bank at ordinary stages of water. In that age the Mississippi river was from ten to fifteen miles from bank to bank. The Wabash river there was from six to eight miles wide. Both rivers and land and water animals of that age were on a gigantic basis. All, it is supposed, were immense and sluggish of movement.

The Coal Measures. - The rocks of the coal measures are found in the counties of Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick and Spencer, the western parts of Perry and Crawford, in Gibson, Pike, Dubois, Martin, Sullivan, Greene and Clay, the western parts of Owen, and in Vigo, Parke, Vermillion, Fountain and Warren.

The lower silurian being the oldest rocks brought to the sur¬ face, underlie all the more recent rocks which in succession have been deposited during the different ages of the earth's existence. A shaft or bore put down in the western part of Gibson would pierce iu succession all the geological formations of the State and show the approximate depth to be as follows:

General Section

The Soils. - The entire surface of Vigo county is covered by quaternary deposits, which rest immediately on the coal measures. The latter formations, as penetrated by artesian wells bored in the city of Terre Haute, are about 450 feet thick. The first coal reached is referable to " I," and if to this is added the strata found at Seeleyville mines, eiglity-six feet less the drift, it will give 536 feet as the thickness of the coal measures of the county. At the east part of the city of Terre Haute where the first and second wells were bored, the drift and alluvial is 150 feet thick, and the well reached probably as low as the Niagara beds. These wells give us authentic information of the strata which underlie the coal measures.

Saturated With Oil

A better record so far as it goes is that of the coal shaft known as the Seely ville shaft. M. Hough superintended the sinking and gives the following section:

The olcl Perrin shaft is a quarter of mile south of Arbuckle & Budd's, given above. In this it is forty-three feet to the bottom of " N," which is here nearly six feet thick. The Seelyville shaft from a topographical horizon, 100 feet by railroad levels, above the mouth of the bore at Terre Haute, "Coal N" crops out on Lost creek, on Alexander McPherson's place, Section 16, Township 12, Range 8, which is forty-two feet above Terre Haute and therefore gives a dip of twenty-seven feet in a horizontal distance one and one-half miles.

A singular fact is noted in Vigo and Clay counties that nearly all the coal seams along the streams conform to the rise and fall of the beds of the stream. This fact is quite observable along the branches of Lost creek and Otter creek. The coal strata as a general rule rise and fall with the topography of the country, and in the longer stretches of nearly level land the seams of coal and other strata are found nearly horizontal.

West of the river the glaciers have evidently removed some of the upper veins of coal, as in no other way can we account for them either disappearing or their places being marked by mere traces.

At the Arbuckle & Budd shaft at Seelyville the vein is 6^ feet thick. It cokes finely, and 1 of coal will convert 12.31 pounds of water from 0° C into steam at 150° C.

The I. & St. L. Railroad on Sections 8 and 9, Township 13, Range 7, made two entries that penetrate this coal on opposite sides of the road and only a short distance apart. The seam lies a little below the level of the railroad track, is six feet thick, and has a shale parting similar to what is seen at Seelyville, three and onehalf feet below the top. The south mine was opened by a man named Daniel Webster, and became in time the Litchfield Coal Com¬ pany. The north mine is known as the Webster & Brannel Company.

The place is known as Webster station, one-half mile west of the Clay county line at Lodi, and on the main bottom of Otter creek. The coal is raised on an incline trestle work tramway to the tip house. This is* one of the principal coaling places of the I. & St. L. Railroad.

Coals M and N, though not seen above L immediately at Web¬ ster, make their appearance farther up the stream on the sides of the hill at Lodi.

In 1871 Daniel Webster bored on his place, Section 5, Town¬ ship 13, Range 7, which is sixty feet above the level at Lodi, and the section there is reported as follows :

At Fountain station, one and one-half miles southwest of Web¬ ster, G. W. Moreland sunk a shaft to Coal L. It is on the south bank of Otter creek.

Section First Bore Section Second Bore

The record of the second bore is not considered reliable, as it is not confirmed by corresponding shafts or sections, especially in reference to finding limestone. A thin limestone, however, is some¬ times found over Coal N.

One of the old mines in the county is the Titcomb mine near Grant's station. Coal M here is on a level with the railroad and sixty feet above low water at Terre Haute.

The most southerly point where Coal M is worked is on Section 30, Township 12, Range 9, on the west side of the river. The shaft is thirty feet deep, and the coal four, six and five feet thick. It is on a level with the bed of the creek, and some trouble was ex¬ perienced from water.

At Mackelroys, three-quarters of a mile north of Barricks, this seam is reached in twenty-seven feet, and three-quarters of a mile farther north at McQuilkins, on Section 7, Township 12, Range 9, it is eighty feet to the seam. The coal in this shaft is above the level of the river. It is overlaid by a gray argillaceous shale that contains numerous thin bands of ironstone. These were picked up in great quantities in the beds of the streams and sold to the Yigo Iron Company and smelted into iron.

Some years ago a shaft was sunk on the Tan road west of the river, three miles, on Section 24, Township 12, Range 12, by Big¬ low & Co. It commenced on the side of the hill eight feet above the track of the railroad.

Section

A shaft was sunk at St. Mary's depot. It was 110 feet deep. It took fire in 1869, and was completely destroyed. The hill at St. Mary's is ninety feet above the bridge at Terre Haute.

Coal L is seen in so many localities west of the river that it may be found anywhere north of Sugar creek. It is readily recog¬ nized by the gray argillaceous shale with iron stone bands which overlie it. The upper part of the seam is jet black, glossy, contains numerous vertical joints filled with calcite, and in every respect resembles the coal at Seelyville. Bands of pyrites are also dis¬ seminated through the coal and require attention to keep it out.

In the south part of Vigo county, along the E. & T. H. Bailroad, Coal L is reached by bores and shafts. At Young's station, eight miles from Terre Haute, the elevation above the Wabash is 159 feet, and Coal L is reached at 100 feet. At Hartford, four miles beyond Young's, the elevation is four feet less and the coal is ninety feet. At Farmersburg, just south of the Vigo county line, the elevation is 135 feet, and the coal 130 feet.

" The roof shales contain an abundance of well preserved fol¬ licles and trunks of sigillaria, lepidodendron and calamites. It is a grand sight to go down into this well arranged mine and see the ceiling in the entries, from which the coal has been removed, covered with its diversified fossil flora. Immense trunks of sigillaria extend across this roof and are flanked by branching ferns that cover all the intervening spaces between the trunks of sigillaria and calamites with a rich foliage of glossy black leaves on a matrix of bluish gray argillaceous shale. Indeed, the fossil flora of this mine excels in variety and perfect preservation of the plants any place that I have ever visited. A trunk of sigillaria was measured and found to be eight and a half feet in diameter."

Quaternary. - This epoch includes the beds of alluvial, loess, marl, clay, gravel and bowlders, etc., which lie immediately over the paleozoic rocks of the State. In this county the boring in the deep or artesian wells points them out as being 150 feet thick. The bowlders which lie near the bottom of the glacial drift are mostly crystalline rocks, torn loose from the parent bed that are in situ far to the north of the State, and transported thither by the power¬ ful glaciers which covered the country in all the arctic and tem¬ perate regions following the close of the coal era. The gravel is a mixture of crystalline and sedimentary rocks.

At the hills east of Terre Haute, on land adjoining the farms of Joseph Gilbert and A. B. Pegg, where a branch of Lost creek cuts its way through the ridge, there is a fine exposure of glacial drift. The face of the exposure is almost vertical, and the deposit is sixty feet from the bed of the branch to the top of the bluff. Springs break out from the horizon of the bowlder clay in almost all localities where it is exposed. Near Mr. Pegg's, on Church run, a bore was once commenced, but was carried only twenty feet when flowing artesian water was reached. It has a slight chalybeate taste, but otherwise appears to be free from mineral matter.

Building Stone. - The sandstone above and below Coal L is sometimes found of good thickness and sufficiently firm and durable to be used for making foundations to small buildings. Good dura¬ ble building rock is found in the bluffs of Coal creek, Fayette township; it underlies Coal L. It is bluish-gray, fine grained sandstone, and was at one time quarried by Mr. McQuillan. The layers are thin, seldom reaching a foot in thickness. The stone has a fine ring under the hammer, and would look well in a building.

Brick and Fire Clay. - The clay found under the coal seams in the county is suitable for making coarse jugs, milk crocks, roof tile and drain tile.

Petroleum. - Three wells were bored for oil in the early seventies. Oil was found in the upper Niagara beds. The second well furnished from two to four barrels of moderately heavy oil in twenty-four hours. It did not flow from the top, and the low prices caused the well to be closed. The third well was on the bank of the river in the city limits, but little oil was found, but it discharged a vast column of sulphuretted hydrogen water, similar in quality to that which flowed from the first well in the yard of the Terre Haute House. The temperature of the well of Mr. Miller, on the river, was 81° Fahrenheit. It is a saline sulphur water, contains a large amount of common salt, some glauber and some epsom salts, lime, magnesia and iron. There is a copious escape of carburetted hydrogen, car¬ bonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen. It possesses fine medicinal properties, and is particularly beneficial in diseases of the skin and some forms of rheumatism.

Iron Ore. - The bluish-gray shales over Coal L, on the west side of Wabash river, have disseminated through them irregular layers of clay iron-stone. Where the stratas have been laid bare by the washing away of the soil on the sides of the hills, the iron-stone drops to the bottom of the ravines, where it is found in quantities. Iron-stone is very abundant. The old Indian furnace in Vermil¬ lion county, when in blast, obtained its supply of iron from these shales.

From Prof. E. T. Cox's geological reports we learn that the coal fields of the State cover an area of 7,000 square miles, with a total depth of twelve seams, ranging from nought to 300, and aver¬ aging eighty feet below the surface. Five of these seams, wherever met, are workable, varying from two and a half to eleven feet thick. Block or splint coal prevails in an area of 600 square miles. This coal is used in the blast just as it comes from the mine, no coking required. It is rich of carbon, free of sulphur and phos¬ phorous, and suited to making Bessemer steel and the highest metallurgic processes. It burns without coking, in a ruddy flame, much after the manner of hickory wood, to a minimum of white ash. The economical geology is more fully treated in the part of this work treating of the resources of Vigo county.