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agriculture, than that lying along the Elkhorn. It cannot be long before the great depot of supplies will be transferred from the Missouri to this stream. The best opportunity I have seen for emigrants, is for 15 or 20 families to locate on that stream, establish a ferry, raise provisions and build up a town. Where we crossed they have ferried about 6000 wagons this season at $2.50 to $3 and that with one old scow and, perhaps, five men. A few Yankees settling at that point would draw all Kanesville there in two years, and make twenty fortunes for those who adventured.
How far the absence of timber will prevent or impede the settlement of this grand country, is, of course, mere conjec- ture but it seems impossible that with all its other advantages, it should be allowed to remain long, as it is, a desolation. The construction of the Pacific railroad, by which the Platte country will be admitted to Oregon, and the opening of the great coal bed that is supposed to extend from the Iowa river to the Rocky Mountains, will have much to do with the solution of the question what is to become of this great region.
Since crossing the Nishnabatony, 25 miles beyond Kanes- ville, we have not seen more than a rock in a place nor indeed do I know that we have seen one at all. The soil everywhere lies on a formation of clay and fine sand, such as fills the waters of the Missouri. The bluffs and hills about that stream, are mere prominences left by the powerful denuding forces to which the country has been exposed. I was told that there was coal on the west side of the stream below Kanesville but I should not expect it there, and think it doubtful. Coal, in the Missouri country, is probably very deep having at least the sand-stone in place, and this great bed of clay, the depth of which no one knows, above it. 170 miles east of Kanes- ville, near Pleasantville, and 240 miles near Montezuma, the coal appears in all the ravines, and the indications are that the supply is inexhaustible. With the opening of the railroad to the Mississippi, it must become an important source of revenue to the country.
