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X 187

          Among the letters of introduction  I carried with me to Mem-

phis was one to the President of the Memphis + Ohio Railway He had just returned from a short stay at the Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas. He is one of those Gentlemen who is doing everything in his power to resuscitate the South by persuad- ing the people to turn their attention to the varied + inexhaus- tible resources they possess within their own territories. As instances of this he showed me two specimens; one of a creamy white stone he had lately brought from the Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas + which c.d cut steel as readily as a file does soft iron. Of this stone he was hailing hones + grandstones made which w.d probably be the best things of their kind anywhere to be had. The other specimen in he showed me was that of iron-ore from the Iron- Mountain in Alabama. It looked almost like iron itself. He said it contained sixty per cent of iron, + that the Con- federates had made use of it in the late war. This Mountain is sixty miles north of Montgomery, + there is in its neigh- bourhood plenty of lime stone + of coal. For this district he expected ( as who w.d not?) a great future; for not only is the con- sumption of iron in Agriculture every year increasing, in the form of new machinery as well as tools, of which the South now stands greatly in need, but the place itself, from its contiguity to several large navigable streams is admirably insert ^ situated /insert for a great manufacturing centre.