MINERAL RESOURCES OF KANSAS. 41

resemble stone in color than ordinary brick. But as wood is scarce and
stone plenty, and good, and easily quarried, the latter must ever be
the cheaper material. Frame houses are costly, because much of the
lumber must be brought from St. Louis or Chicago. But the Great
Dispenser of blessings and benefits, if He has withheld some things
deemed essential to human comfort and well-being, has supplied with
a lavish hand other things even better. And when Kansas shall be
fully occupied, no people in this Union will have more beautiful or
more comfortable dwellings.

Of the other mineral resources of this State — which, in the language
of Professor Mudge’s Report, contains 78,418 square miles, is ten
times the area of Massachusetts, one-sixth larger than Missouri, and
about one-third larger than England—the extent and importance of
which astonished me, I shall speak more fully in my next letter.

 

LETTER X.— Mineral Resources of Kansas, continued — Coal —Salt —
Gypsum — Alum — Iron.

Sr. Louris, June 26, 1867.
COAL.

As no coal is yet mined in Kansas, except in a few places in the
southern counties, I cannot pretend to speak on this topic from my
own observation. I shall therefore draw largely from the report of
Prof. B. F. Mudge, State Geologist, printed in 1866. I had a long and
interesting conversation with that gentleman at the State Agricul-
tural College, near Manhattan, twenty miles this side of Fort Riley.
His views, as expressed in his report, have been but slightly modified
by his subsequent observations. Under the head of “ Coal Measures,”
he says:

“The lowest geological formation known in Kansas is represented
by the upper portion of the Coal Measures. It is a continuation of
the coal field which covers the northeastern part of Missouri and the
southern part of Iowa, and also extends into the Indian territory
south of this State. Like the deposits of those States, the dip of the
strata here is to the northwest, passing at a low angle of inclination
under the Permian, Triassic and other later stratifications. The Coal
Measures cover a larger area of the State than any other formation,
being nearly one-third of the whole. The fossils of this epoch are
formed all over the eastern part of Kansas, and exist as far as Fort
Riley.

“The line which separates the Coal Measures from the Permian
runs rather irregularly in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction.
Considering Fort Riley as on the line of average extent westerly, we