40 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

excellent building-stone—a fine-grained, compact sandstone. Lime-
stone also exists in abundance on the higher grounds. About twenty
miles beyond Salina, where we stopped for an hour or two on our way
- down, I saw on the opposite side of a small creek, about half a mile
south of the road, a bold rocky bluff. I walked across the intervening
prairie, which was like a flower-garden, as near to the bluff as I could
get for the stream. I found it to be a solid mass of rock—lI think it
was sand—of straight and beautiful cleavage, thirty or forty feet
thick. It was building-stone of excellent quality. Beyond that is the
brown sandstone of which I spoke in a former letter, and which
abounds about Fort Harker and Ellsworth. Professor Mudge, of the
Kansas State Agricultural College, and State Geologist for 1864, speak-
ing of this beautiful stone, told me that it belonged to the same geo-
logical era as the red sandstone of Connecticut, so largely used for
architectural purposes in New York, and is, like that stone, often found
marked with the tracks of large birds of a former period.

Limestone is found in many places far beyond Fort Harker, and is
probably‘abundant in all parts of the State. The lime made of that
of which I have spoken more particularly is white and of excellent
quality.

Marble, white, black and variegated, exists in many places and in
boundless quantity in the southern parts of the State. The white
is said to be pure, of an excellent quality and susceptible of tine
polish. I saw no specimens; but at Lawrence a polished specimen, of
black marble, taken from a quarry near Fort Scott, near the south-
eastern corner of the State, was shown me, which for lustre and fine-
ness of grain I have never seen excelled. It is somewhat harder than
any other American marble I have seen except the Potomac variety,
which is rather a conglomerate than a marble. For mantles, time-
pieces, &c., this Fort Scott marble would be admirable. There will
soon be a connection by rail between Fort Scott and its circumjacent
region and the Union Pacific.

But why, it may be asked, have I dwelt so long upon the single sub-
ject of the stone of this country that there is no room in this letter
for the coal, the salt, the gypsum and the metals? I have done so,
because stone is now and must ever be the principal building-material
in Kansas. The cities of Leavenworth and Lawrence are mainly
built of brick; but beyond these, where stone becomes more excellent
in quality, and the clay less suitable for brick-making, but few brick
buildings are seen. Even at Topeka the few brick houses to be seen
attest that the business of brick-making is a failure. AtSalina a few
brick have been made; but when thoroughly burned they more