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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