In this day and age, any reasonably well educated man can readily tell by a
slight examination of the geology of a country, no matter how new and wild
it may be, what kind of a people it will someday contain, and almost exactly
what degree of enlightenment and civilization it will eventually possess.
When he knows its geological formation, he can forecast the future of its
people with nearly as much accuracy as can the patient and laborious
historian who plods along in the tracks of the generations that have passed
away. A warm climate and bread growing upon the trees, or abundant and
nutritious food springing spontaneously from the earth has always in the
world's history held back civilization and produced a listless, prolific and
inferior people. A continuously mild climate throughout the year and an
abundance of food readily produced by nature has much the effect upon a
people as the barren arctic regions, where the scarcity of food and the
severity of climate stunts and dwarfs the people and holds them securely
locked in primeval ignorance and barbarism. The tropics and the arctics —
the one oppressed with the profusion of nature's bounties that appall
mankind and produce enervation, is the antipodes and yokefellow of the bleak
north and its long winter nights and storms and desolation. The richest
country in the world in soil, perhaps, is Brazil, both in vegetable and
animal life. So profusely are nature's bounties here spread, so immense the
forests, so dense the undergrowth, all decked with the most exquisite
flowers of rarest perfume, they so teem with animal life, from the swarming
parasite up to the striped tiger, the yellow lion and snakes spotted with
deadly beauty, and the woods vocal with the songs of countless species of
birds, with the bird of paradise perched like a crowning jewel upon the very
tops of the majestic trees, and yet this wonderful country, capable of
supporting, if only it could be subjugated to the domination of man, ten
times all people that now inhabit the globe, is an unexplored waste, defying
the puny arm of man to subjugate or ever penetrate to the heart of its
forbidden secrets. For hundreds of years civilized man has sailed in his
ships along its shores, and in rapture beheld its natural wealth and profuse
beauties, and colonies, and nations and peoples have determined to reap its
treasures and unlock its inexhaustible stores. How futile are these efforts
of man, how feeble the few scattering habitations has he been enabled to
hold upon the very outer confines of all this great country! Brazil will, in
all probability, remain as it is forever, and it is well that it is so. For
could you by some powerful wand conquer all that country and place there
50,000,000 of the same kind of people that now constitute this nation, with
all our present advantages of civilization, it is highly probable that in
less than 200 years they would lapse into the meanest type of ignorant
barbarians, and degenerate to that extent that in time they would become
extinct. Thus an over -abundance of nature's bounties, both in food, dress
and climate, brings its calamities upon man more swiftly than do the rigid
severities of the arctics of northern Greenland or Siberia.
It is evident, therefore, that the two subjects of supreme importance in all
countries are those of soil and climate. Any ordinarily bright child between
the years of twelve and twenty could be taught these invaluable lessons of
practical wisdom in a few weeks rambling over the country and examining the
banks of streams and the exposures of the earth's surface along the
highways. How much more valuable a few weeks of such an education would be
than is much of the years now worse than wasted in the getting an education
from the wretched text books and the ding-dong repetitions of the
schoolroom! How easy to show them what the soil is, its varieties, and why
and from whence they come, namely, the rocks; and how eagerly the young mind
seizes upon such real education! How easy it is to show them (and such
education they will never forget) that where the soil and subjacent rocks
are profuse in the bestowal of wealth, and the air is deprived of that
invigorating tonic that comes of the winters of the temperate climate, that
there man is indolent and effeminate. Where effort is required to live, he
becomes enlightened and virtuous; and where on the sands of the desert, or
the jungles of Africa, or Brazil or Greenland's icy mountains, where he is
unable to procure the necessities or comforts of life, he lives a savage.
The civilization, then, of states or nations is but the reflection of
physical conditions, and hence the importance of an understanding of these
subjects by all people, but more especially the rising generation. Hence,
too, the importance of understanding the geological history of the county.
Our concern in regard to this subject and our desire to impress its value
upon the rising generation at least, must be our excuse for these extensive
references to it in different chapters of this work. A painful realization
of the defects in the education of our young farmers and of their great
kisses, disappointments and even disasters in the pursuit of their
occupation of tilling the earth, that come of this neglect in their early
education and training prompts this seeming persistence that so many readers
will at first flush consider a dry or uninteresting subject. The most
important subject to all mankind at this time is how to get for the young
people the best education; how to fit our youths for the life struggle that
is before them. For 2,000 years, the schools have believed that Latin and
Greek were the highest type of information and knowledge, and next to these
dead languages, were metaphysical mathematics and the theories of so-called
philosophy. It is time these long drawn-out mistakes were rectified, and the
truths that are revealed in the investigation — the experimental facts of
the natural laws that govern us — be made known and taught to those who soon
will bear along the world's highway its splendid civilization. Here and
there are to be found an intelligent machinist, or a farmer, who understand
the simple scientific principles that govern their work or occupation. Their
knowledge is power. In every turn of life they stand upon the
vantage-ground, and their lives are successful in the broad sense of the
term. They understand the soil they till, or the implement or industry they
are called upon to make or use. They know where ignorance guesses, doubts
and fears, and by not knowing so often fails and falls by the wayside. It is
told that at one time Agassiz was appealed to by some horse-breeders of New
England in reference to developing a certain strain of horses. He told them
it was not a question of equestrianism, bitt one of rocks. To the most of
men this reply would have been almost meaningless, yet it was full of
wisdom. It signified that certain rock formations that underlay the soil
would insure a certain growth of grasses and water, and the secret of the
perfect horse lay here.
In order that the youths who read this may gather here the first lessons in
the knowledge of the rocks that are spread over the earth, we give, in their
order, the different ones and in the simplest form we can present them as
gathered from the geologists. These explanations will, too, the better
enable the reader to comprehend what is said in other chapters upon this
subject. We only deem it necessary to explain that all rocks are either
igneous (melted by fire) or stratified (sediment deposited in water). Their
order, commencing with the lowest stratified rocks, and ascending, are as
follows:
The Laurentian system is the lowest and oldest of the stratified rocks. From
the great heat to which the lower portion of them were exposed, has resulted
the beautiful crystals that are often found in the rock. The Laurentian
system was formerly supposed to be destitute of organic remains, but recent
investigations have led to the discovery of animals so low in the scale of
organization as to be regarded as the first appearance upon the earth of
sentient existence. This important discovery extends the origin of life
backward through 30,000 feet of strata. This is an American discovery in
geology, and for the first time renders the descending scale of life
complete, and verifies the conjectures of physicists that in its earliest
dawn it should and did commence with the most simple organisms.
The Huronian is the next system above the Laurentian. Here, too, are found
the beautiful natural crystals. Then the Silurian, or the age of fire and
water, earthquakes and volcanoes came to the world. Daring this age, nearly
all North America was submarine except, perhaps, the elevation of the
Alleghenies, which were subject to frequent elevations and depressions.
During this age was added to the first dry land on our continent, New York,
Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The St. Peter's sandstone, a
rock found in Union, Alexander and Pulaski Counties, was formed. It is often
almost a pure silica and nearly free from coloring matter, and is the very
best material for the manufacture of glass.
The Devonian system next follows, and is distinguished for the introduction
of vertebrates and the beginning of terrestrial vegetation. The vertebrates
consisted of fishes, the forerunners of the reptiles so numerous and some of
them of such gigantic size that it has sometimes been styled the age of
fishes.
The Carboniferous age opens next with the deposition of widely extended
marine formations. In this age, the whole earth was warm; the temperature
near the poles was 66°. The prominent feature of this age was the formation
of coal. The process of forming coal is exactly the same as practiced in the
formation of charcoal by burning wood under a covering of earth. In addition
to this age forming coal, it also formed the Burlington, Keokuk and St.
Louis limestones, which, to this part of the country, are most important
formations.
Then came the Reptilian age, the Mammalian age, and finally the age of man.
These are the order of the earth's formation, in the fewest and simplest
words, to the time of the coming of man. Though the absolute time of his
coming cannot be determined, he was doubtless an inhabitant of the earth
many hundreds of thousands of years before he was sufficiently intelligent
to preserve the records of his own history.
The present age still retains, in a diminished degree of activity, the
geological action briefly sketched above. The oscillations of the earth's
crust are still going on, perhaps as rapidly as the}' ever have. As an
evidence of this it is a well-known fact that the coast of Greenland, on the
western side for a distance of 600 miles, has been slowly sinking during the
past 400 years. Thus constantly have the bottoms of the oceans been lifted
above the waters and the mountains sunk and became the beds of the sea. In
the science of geology this "solid, too, too solid earth" and its fixed and
eternal mountains are as unstable as the 'fleeting waves of the waters. They
come and go like a breath, or
"Like the snow falls in the river, A moment white, then melt forever."
Pulaski County is bounded on the south by the Ohio River, on the west by
Alexander County, on the north by Union and Johnson Counties and on the east
by Massac County. It embraces an area of 192 square miles, of which nearly
115 are more or less elevated upland and the remainder low alluvial bottom
and swamp land, mostly situated along Cache River. All the county is
timbered, and the bottom lands very heavily.
The surface configuration and growth of timber are by no means uniform over
the whole county, but they vary considerably with the geological formations
and with the proximity of the main water-courses, the Ohio and Cache Rivers.
A. feature in this county not found elsewhere is represented in the yellow
loam region of the oak barrens in the central part of the county. These
lands are underlaid with Tertiary strata. This peculiar soil is very deep,'
and is just now beginning to be known for its rich deposits in plant food.
It is a porous loam, and is but little affected by drought or excessive
rains, and in many of the fruits and garden vegetables is not equaled in the
State. But we have spoken at length of the surface geology of this county in
Part II of this work, when all the region formed a part of Union County.
The people of Southern Illinois, and particularly those of Pulaski County,
have not fully comprehended the natural advantages of their soil and its
agricultural and horticultural advantages. Hence they have worked at cross
purposes here for many years, and the development of the country has fallen
behind what was its just due. Well may the farmers say " the fault, dear
Brutus, is with ourselves and not our sires, that were underlings." The
farmer will take his place among the earth's noblest and best only when he
forces his way there by the superior intelligence, culture and elegance with
which his mode of life is capable of surrounding itself. Understand your
soil, your climate, and master the art of care and cultivation of those
things for which it is best adapted, and at once your business will
deservedly take rank with the most exalted of the professions. The trades
called the professions in some degree cultivate the mind and train it to
think and grow, and as heretofore the pursuits of agriculture were supposed
to be the dull routine of physical exertion — the mere hewer of wood and
drawer of water — only for slaves and menials; whereas the truth is that an
intelligent farmer — one who investigates, studies and comes to know the
beautiful laws of nature, that are for his advantage and glory when
understood — has before him in his daily labors the great book of knowledge
to contemplate and study, and which, when studied, will, beyond any other
profession or pursuit in life, ennoble, exalt and expand the mind and soul,
and ultimately produce that line type of culture and polite society that is
the charm and glory of civilization. The plow handle and pruning hook, the
golden fields of grain, the sweet apple blossoms and the beds of fragrant
flowers, the trees, the rocks, the babbling brooks, singing the song of
spring time, and the unchangeable laws of God that produce, govern and
create all these things for the good and joy and greatness of man, are God's
school, college and university, that excel man's poor devices for the
education of men as the sunlight does the starlight.
Farmers and horticulturists who will comprehend these vital truths will soon
come to your county, and their coming will produce a revolution that will bo
an incalculable blessing. As an evidence that such men are here now, and
that these things are beginning to be talked about, we extract the following
from an address of Mr. Parker Earle, before the Mississippi Valley
Horticultural Society, in New Orleans, February 21, 1883: " The system of
trade in orchard and garden products, which is rapidly growing, with the
expansion of our railway interests, has already assumed great proportions.
Every day in the year the tides of horticultural commerce are ebbing or
flowing over the great area of our country. Car loads and train loads of our
various products begin to move northward every year with the opening spring,
over our leading lines of railway, and this continues with the advancing
seasons until the time arrives for the great current to set the other way.
Hundreds of thousands of our people are directly engaged in producing or in
the distribution of the great harvests of horticulture. And yet no man
concerned in this vast production and traffic is guided in his operations by
any such carefully compiled knowledge of the changing facts he is dealing
with, as the merchant in cotton or the manufacturer of iron would consider
of prime importance to an enlightened management. We have no system of
collecting the statistics of our business, such as other industries employ.
Are they not equally important? We should know the amount of annual planting
of berries and vegetables, and the acreage of orchard and vineyard, and the
condition and promise of all these crops, throughout our entire valley not
only, but throughout the whole country. Without this knowledge, we
constantly work in the dark. Every producer who has sought to plant with
some reference to the probable demands of his available markets, and every
merchant who has tried to follow intelligently the natural laws of trade in
this season's transactions, has certainly felt a great want of knowledge of
a wide circuit of facts upon which his success or failure must depend. In
what way shall we meet this matter? We must in some way have a bureau of
horticultural statistics. If we have no machinery ready made for
accomplishing this result, then let us invent some. I venture the suggestion
that if there is no more effective way, that this society can itself
organize such a bureau with sufficient completeness to give us great relief
from our ignorance. If our Secretary could have a salary sufficient to
enable him to employ one or more assistants, he could, I think, make a
beginning at least of this work, which would demonstrate its great value.
"The question of an annual exhibition of fruits, flowers and garden products
by our society is one that some of you have given much thought to. You are
aware that we held such an exhibition in St. Louis in September, 1880, at
the time of our organization, which was more attractive and complete, I can
say with confidence, than any other similar exhibition ever made on this
continent. This magnificent collection was gotten together and managed by a
provisional committee to fitly inaugurate the birth of an organization
destined to wield a powerful influence, as we then hoped and do now hope and
feel assured, in molding the industries and the finer culture of human
society in the heart of this.
" Allow me in conclusion to call your attention to two or three
considerations of a general nature. I desire to have it impressed upon every
mind that horticulture is one of the most important agencies for the
enhancement of human welfare. Each branch of this profession is useful,
dignified and ennobling. It is altogether worthy of the devotion of the best
men of the world. It offers a field for the finest powers of the best
endowed of mankind. Its problems are sufficient for the best cultivated
intellect; its arts will occupy the most cunning mind. We should seek to
engage the noblest men and women in its interests. A great need of the ,
times is to make rural life so attractive and to make pecuniary profit in it
so possible, as to hold our boys and young men on the farm and the garden.
Very mistaken ideas of gentility, of ease of life, of opportunities for
culture or for winning fame, draw a large percentage of our brightest boys
into the so-called learned professions, or into trade. With proper
surroundings of the home, with a proper education at school ,^ with a proper
administration of the economies of the farm, with a sufficient understanding
of the opportunities for a high order of intellectual and social
accomplishment in the rural life of this country, this need not and would
not be so. A bright, high-spirited boy is not afraid of labor, but he
despises drudgery. He will work hard to accomplish a fine end when the mind
and heart both work together with the muscles; but he will escape from dull,
plodding toil. Let our boys learn that rural life is drudgery only when the
mind is dull; that the spade and plow and pruning knife are the apparatus
with which he manipulates the wonderful forces of the earth and the sky, and
the boy will begin to rank himself with the professor in the laboratory or
the master at the easel. There is, indeed, occasions that we should, many of
us, feel more deeply the glory of our art; that there is no occupation in
life that leads the educated man to more fruitful fields of contemplation
and inquiry. The scientific mind finds every day in our orchards and fields
new material to work upon, and the cultivated taste endless opportunities
for its exercise.
"While I desire to see a taste for horticulture become universal in town and
hamlet and country, and believe that every cottage and every palace in the
land should have its flower garden and fruit garden, in the window or out of
the window, and something of the shelter and ornamentation of trees, yet I
would not encourage either amateur or commercial horticulturist to plant one
vine, flower or tree more than he expects to take some intelligent care of.
There has been too much planting in ignorance and reaping in disgust.
Especially should the planter on a commercial scale have a better knowledge
of the environment of his business. We all need to know more clearly the
conditions of great successes, and to understand what difficulties and
hindrances are avoidable and what unavoidable. We want more business mathod
in this business. We want scientific knowledge and accuracy instead of
empiricism.
"But this will come. American horticulture is only in its youthful years.
Its splendid maturity shall see every home in this maginficent country
sweetened and beautified by its blossoming and fruitful presence. Let us
labor cheerfully, my friends, until not only
"The guests in prouder homes shall see Heaped with the orange and the grape,
As fair as they in tint and shape, The fruit of the apple tree;'
but the table in every cottage in the land shall be daily filled with an
abundance of refreshing fruits and enriching flowers. And let us not rest
until we have checked the destruction of the great forests which God has
planted, and have restored to the hills and to the plains some portion of
that natural shelter without which no land can long be fruitful and no
civilization be permanent.
"Nothing is more true than the old saying of the philosopher that our lives
are what we make them. In the city, the village or the farm is this true,
but it is' pre-eminently true of the farm. If farming is only given over to
ignorant and unkempt boors, it will to that extent be forbidding to the
growing young men. If the rural population inform themselves and pursue
their business in the most ennobling way, their every movement guided by a
type of intelligence that brings the best results of the best adaptation to
the natural means surrounding them, it will become the most inviting pursuit
for the best of our men and women.
"There is no foolish notion that more urgently needs to be exploded than the
prevalent one which makes a country life below the ambition of a young man
of education and spirit, and which regards towns and cities as the only
places in which men rise to distinction and usefulness. Farming is called a
tame and monotonous vocation; indeed! but can anything better be claimed for
the plodding, exacting and exhaustive pursuits which nine-tenths of those
who live in cities are compelled to follow? It is a great mistake to suppose
that the population of a city is made up of great capitalists, proprietors,
merchants, manufacturers, and eminent lawyers and surgeons, and that it is
an easy thing for a young man endowed with the quality of "smartness" to
achieve wealth and distinction, or even independence, in the fierce,
pitiless whirl of city life. The wrecks to be encountered in city streets
every day disprove it Comparatively few persons amass fortunes in cities,
and fewer still retain them. So true is this that it is safe to predict, in
five cases out of ten, of a wealthy business man in middle life, that he
will die penniless.
“Farming is not subject to these rapid and ruinous chances. In this pursuit,
industry, economy and good management, aided by the increase which time
itself brings, will insure a competence in fifteen or twenty years; and it
is a property of substance accumulated in farming, that, unlike fortunes
acquired in mercantile pursuits, it lasts through life.
"Few thrifty, industrious farmers die poor; few prosperous merchants who
continue in business die rich. The farmer's profits come in slow and small,
it is true; and often he does not find himself in comfortable circumstances
till middle age. But it is in middle and old age he most needs the comforts
of independence; and if he is wise enough to keep out of debt the moderate
competency which he has managed to accumulate through his better years will
come unscathed through the storms and convulsions that sweep away towering
fortunes in the business world."
We trust the reader will not understand us as saying, in the common cant of
the flattering demagogue, when he prates about "the sturdy honest farmer,"
that it is of itself, intrinsically and inherently, the only one great
avenue of goodness and true nobility. 0n the contrary it is not. Indeed,
where ignorance rules, it is dull, hopeless drudgery, and there is nothing
more ennobling about it than there is in the routine life of a galley slave.
Stupidity and ignorance are punished here as well as in any and every other
place in life. In the struggle for existence it is overmatched, and its
superiors trample it most mercilessly under foot.
| Union | Johnson | |
| Alexander |
 |
Massac McCracken KY |
| Ballard KY |
