GENERAL ACCOUNT OF KENTUCKY.



seventy-five miles from the mouth of the Mississippi, and its
eastern boundary is within five hundred miles of the Atlantic
ports.
   The special features of position to be considered in meas-
 uring the importance of this Commonwealth are its central
 place wvith reference to the Valley of the Mississippi, and the
 aclvanta-es it has from its extended contact with the river
 system of thrat valley. Afore than any other State in America
 it abounds in rivers. Including the Ohio and Mississippi
 Rivers, where they bound its borders, the State has within its
 limits rather more than four thousand miles of rivers, which
 are more or less completely navigable. Improvements of
 small cost will give this amount of navigation with complete
 permanency, except for an average of about fifteen days per
 annum, wNlhmzl they are ice-bound.

                     GENERAL GEOLOGY.
  Just as the State of Kentucky is geographically but a part
of the Mississippi Valley, so it is geologically composed of a
series of rocks which extend far and wide fover the same
region. On the eastern line, between Cumberland Gap and
Pound Gap, it is generally in sight of the old crystalline rocks
of the Bluc Ridge, or original axis of the Appalachian Chain,
and is closely bordered by rocks of the middle Cambrian or
Potsdam age; but the lowest exposed rocks of the State are
those found at a point on the Ohio River, about twenty miles
above the Licking River, where we come upon Cambrian rocks
answering to the base of the Trenton period in New York,
and probablv to the Bala or Carodoc beds of England. This
series is about six hundred feet thick, and consists principally of
the remains of organic life laid down in a continually shallowing
sea, interrupted by occasional invasions of coarser sediment,
derived fromi the northward. At the close of this Cincinnati
section of the Cambrian, there came the invasion of a heavier
sand-flow, pr:obably coming from the southeast, that arrested the
life and formed some thick beds of rock, known in the reports



   It is 52S riles from Columbus to New Orleans by railroad, and 472 miles to
Mobile.



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