General Murray was succeeded by Caleb W. West, born at Cythiana in 1844. He had served in the Confederate army, studying law after returning home. While serving as county judge, President Cleveland appointed him governor of Utah territory in 1886, and seven years later he was reappointed to the same position, again by President Cleveland. He later became a special agent of the United States treasury. He died at San Francisco He died at San Francisco in January, 1909, beloved and mourned by all who had ever known him.

Joseph C. S. Blackburn was born in Woodford county, Kentucky, October 1, 1838. He served in the Confederate army, and after the war, while practicing law at Versailles, was elected a representative in the legislature in 1871, and re-elected in 1873. In 1875 he was elected to congress, serving in either the house or senate three terms in the latteruntil 1907, with the exception of a short period. On April 1, 1907, President Roosevelt appointed him a member of the Isthmian Canal Commission in charge of the department of civil administration in the Canal Zone, and it was Governor Blackburn for the

next three years. At the expiration of that period he resigned and returned to his home in Woodford county.

To succeed Governor Blackburn, President Taft appointed Maurice K. Thatcher, who had the misfortune to have been born in Chicago, but he atoned for this mishap by coming, at an early age, to Butler county where he grew to a useful manhood. He has been assistant United States attorney for Kentucky, state inspector and examiner of public offices, and is at this writing Governor Thatcher of the Canal Zone. It has been charged that Governor Thatcher writes poetry, but this he denies. At any rate, he is a useful young man and a good citizen.

An inclination to publish herewith a list of those Kentuckians who have represented other states in the national senate and house of representatives, had to be resisted on account of the limitation of space. It is enough to say that in the matter of senators and representatives for other states, Kentucky has been even more generous than in that of gov

ernors.

[This chapter, bearing upon the geology of Kentucky, is from the pen of Professor C. J. Norwood of the State University, the accomplished Director of the Geological Survey and Chief Inspector of Mines for the State of Kentucky.]

The precise area of Kentucky is yet to be determined; according to the computations last made by the State Geological Survey, the area closely approximates 41,283 square miles, including about four hundred square miles of water. With the exception of the southern border and about one hundred and forty miles on the southeast, the boundary is formed by rivers the Big Sandy and its Tug Fork for approximately one hundred and twenty miles, the Ohio for six hundred and forty-three miles, and the Mississippi for fifty or sixty miles. The southeastern border follows the northeastwardly trending crest of Cumberland. Mountain for thirty-five or forty miles, then crosses to Pine Mountain, by way of the Big Black and associated ridges, and follows the ridge of Pine to the Breaks of Sandy; from the latter point it pursues an arbitrary northeast line to the Roughs of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy. As was aptly stated by the late N. S. Shaler, these boundaries give the state the form of an irregular pentagon, four sides of which are natural boundaries of river or mountain range, the fifth being a conventional

line. While the reasons for the irregularities seen in the southern border, and for the extension of the northern one by arbitrary line from the Breaks of Sandy to the Tug Fork, may be of some historical interest, it does not seem necessary to discuss them here.

THE TOPOGRAPHY

Save for a small area in the southeast, which has true mountain structure, Kentucky is essentially a table-land, with subordinate peneplains, sloping to the northwest and, in the main, broken only by stream excavations. Perhaps no general description of the surface more suitable for these pages can be presented than one based in part on emendation of that given by N. S. Shaler in Vol. III of reports of the State Geological Survey, issued during his administration as director of the Survey: The Ohio river, so prominent a feature in the map of the state, is the key to most of its surface. All except about one-eighth of its area, situated in the southeast corner of the state, may be regarded as a part of the valley table-lands of the Ohio, varying in character according to the underlying rock, but owing their form almost entirely to the cutting action of the rivers, acting upon rock which has never been thrown into great mountain folds. In the formation of this surface there have been, with comparatively few exceptions, no other factors than the hardness of

the rocks and the energy of the wearing agents-running water and frost. This has given a surface in general, and broadly speaking, rather level, but elevated high above the plane of the main streams, which cut for themselves deep valleys with precipitous sides, often true canons in their form. The height of these elevated plains or peneplains above the sea, and above drainage, varies a good deal, according to their position in the state and the nature of the rock in which they have been excavated. At Hickman, on the Mississippi, the base of the topography may be placed at about two hundred and fifty feet above the sea. From From this section eastward there is a continual increase of height. This may best be represented by drawing radiating lines from the mountain area of southeastern Kentucky in every direction to the Ohio; this mountain section being the stream center of the south Ohio area, all its southern tributaries pointing toward that region. The drainage levels rise with great uniformity in that direction, the only great differences of level being caused by the change. in the height of the plateau between the streams. Whenever these lines cross the line of outcrop of the different formations, there is apt to be a sudden change in the character of the surface, and often a distinct cliff-like ridge occurs. Muldraugh hill and Big hill are good examples of this structure.

Proceeding eastwardly from the beforenamed base, we rise to about five hundred feet as we cross the Western Coalfield and to seven hundred and eight hundred feet as the Lower Carboniferous area east of that field is crossed, until an altitude of about nine hundred feet is reached at the Muldraugh Hill escarpment. Upon passing the escarpment, a drop to about six hundred feet occurs, but there is then a continuous gain in height to a line drawn southwestwardly approximately through Lexington, where the surface attains to heights of about nine hundred and one thousand feet above tidewater. Along this course, the table

land rises more rapidly than the stream-beds, so that the valleys of the stream-courses are deeper as we go towards this central region. Lexington occupies a position on the top of a low geological ridge, formed at a very early date by a broad folding of the rock strata, which crosses the state in a southwestwardly direction and rises to a height of somewhat more than one thousand feet at points of maximum altitude of its present surface. Formerly called the Cincinnati Anticline, and the Cincinnati-Nashville Axis, this fold is now known as the Cincinnati Geanticline; as the result of it, the central part of the state occupies a higher level than otherwise would be the case. Passing southeastwardly from Lexington, the general elevation of the surface increases as the Eastern Coalfield is approached and entered, reaching the maximum in the Black and Log Mountains that, with their valleys, occupy the region between the Pine and Cumberland Mountains, the latter being the only mountains of elevation within the state.

In some of the older discussions of the topography of the state attempts were made to present a notion of the form of the surface by means of statements giving "average elevations" for the state as a whole and for large divisions of it. After careful consideration of the matter, the writer believes that such statements are of no real value; they may mislead, and doubtless have misled and caused disappointment to persons who have sought residence within certain areas because of reported "average" altitudes. To say that the average elevation of the surface of the State is one thousand feet above the sea may prove misleading, since the average must include a large area in the extreme west where the average elevation is less than four hundred and fifty feet; larger areas to the east, including the Western Coalfield and reaching as far east as Muldraugh hill, in which the average will not exceed six hundred feet; the central part of the state, where the average will not exceed

eight hundred or nine hundred feet; and the Eastern Coalfield, which includes the highest portion of the state and where the elevations range from about five hundred feet on the Ohio river to about four thousand two hundred feet at the highest point on Big Black Mountain, in Harlan county, the more common of the extreme heights in the mountain ridges being two thousand five hundred to three thousand feet. And so many averages for sections of the area fail to convey correct impressions. In the more central part of the state, away from the rivers and excluding some of the knobs, elevations range from about seven hundred and fifty to one thousand and fifty feet; in the Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous) area fringing the Western Coalfield on the east and south, the range is from about three hundred fifty feet on the Ohio to six hundred and nine hundred and fifty feet in the southwest and southeast; in the Western Coalfield the range is from about four hundred feet above tide at the northwest, near the Ohio, to about eight hundred feet in the southeast, the more common heights varying from five hundred to six hundred feet; while in the Jackson's Purchase region, the elevations range from two hundred and fifty-six feet at low water of the Mississippi at Hickman and two hundred and ninety feet at the level of Reelfoot Lake, up to about five hundred and fifty feet on the higher lands.

THE RIVER SYSTEMS

The whole of Kentucky lies within the Mississippi basin, and nearly all of it within the Ohio valley; very nearly ninety-seven per cent. of its drainage is to the Ohio river, the remainder to the Mississippi. Among all others, it is notable for the large mileage of rivers within its confines; one of the largest tributaries of the Ohio, the Cumberland, has its origin within the state and receives a large part of its water here; another, the Tennessee, gathers a part of its water from Kentucky

slopes; and two other of the more important tributaries, the Kentucky and the Green, lie wholly within this commonwealth. It has been estimated that, exclusive of the Ohio and other bounding waters, there are more than three thousand miles of streams within the state that to a large or small extent are navigable. Most of these streams may be made to yield excellent water-powers. With few exceptions they occupy deep-sunken valleys with steep walls, occupy channels with good, firm banks, and have a relatively low and gradual rate of fall, notwithstanding the considerable height of the descent from their respective sources to the Ohio-the low rate of fall being due to the tortuousness of their courses and consequent long distance between head and mouth.

The economic importance of the fact that, excepting in a narrow strip immediately bordering the Mississippi, all the streams drain. to the Ohio is plain. Beyond question, the principal rivers of the state are, with their more important tributaries, susceptible of being so improved as to add a very large mileage of slack-water navigation to that which already has been obtained, and thus, through their connection with the Ohio, afford to the larger portion of the state cheap transportation to the Gulf of Mexico and thence to South American countries and the Panama canal.

THE SOILS

Away from the immediate regions of streams, and exclusive of some of the lands west of the Cumberland, the soils are all of immediate derivation-due to the decay of the rocks beneath them-and thus partake of the chemical nature of the beds that form the crust of the region in which they lie. A large part of the state, including the "Blue Grass" is characterized by underground waterchannels and caverns, and is thus provided with natural underdrainage. Underdrainage, as is well known, is a prime necessity for the

continued fertility of a soil, and where a system of underground water-channels is well developed, there soils derived from rock in place are thickest. The exceptional endurance and fertility, and the virtue of continuous renewal, possessed by the soils that mantle the central region and the wide belt of cavernforming limestones around the Western Coalfield are, therefore, due not only to the chemical constituents of the rocks to which they owe their genesis but to the natural underdrainage of the districts.

about one hundred years without apparent damage to the soil. No other land of the world is so fitted to withstand the evils of the utterly unscientific agriculture to which it has been submitted in former days. The area of second-class soils, those less fertile than the preceding, easily worn by careless tillage, still affording a good basis for agriculture, may safely be estimated at about twenty-two thousand square miles. The distinctly inferior soils, those not well fitted for any grains without fertilizing, or for other agricultural use, save

The following is taken from Shaler's "Kentucky, a Pioneer Commonwealth:" "The area of very fertile soil in the state-that which may be called of the first order-is about ten thousand square miles. This is equal in fertility to the best English, Belgian, or Lombardian lands, and surpasses any other region in this country or in Europe for its fitness for pasturage land. It lies on a limestone rock, which, by its rapid decay, constantly restores to the soil the elements removed by cultivation, so that there are fields in Kentucky which have been steadily cropped, with no attention to fallow or fertilizer, for

as low-grade pasture lands and for timber, include about seven thousand square miles. There are not over two hundred square miles of irreclaimable swamps and arid rocky fields; and not more than eight hundred square miles unfit for pasturage. It is doubtful if an equally good showing can be made for any other state in the Mississippi valley, and there are few regions in the world where so large an area with so little waste land can be found."

The lowlands west of the Tennessee river, comprising in the aggregate perhaps a thousand square miles, present some difficult problems in drainage and flood-control, but through