HISTORY OF MISSOURI.

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INTRODUCTORY.

ISSOURI, the eighth State of the Union in size, the seventh in wealth, and the fifth in population and political power, lies in the very heart of the Mississippi Valley. Extending from the thirty-sixth nearly to the forty-first degree of north latitude, it has considerable diversity both of soil and climate.

Its eastern limit is marked from north to south by the great "Father of Waters," and the Missouri washes its western boundary, from the northwest corner southward about 250 miles to the mouth of the Kansas, and thence flows south of east through the heart of the State, and joins its muddy torrent with the waters of the Mississippi.

These two mighty rivers have many tributaries which are, to a greater or less extent, navigable for steamboats, keelboats and barges.

The extreme length of the State is 328 miles; the extreme breadth, in the southern part, is 280 miles; and the average breadth 250 miles. Missouri has an area of 65,350 square miles, or 41,824,000 acres. It has 18,350 more square miles than the State of New York, is nearly nine times the size of Massachusetts, and exceeds in extent all of the New England States combined.

There is no State in the Union which surpasses Missouri in respect to geographical situation and natural resources.

Other

NOTE. In the compilation of the State History the authors consulted, among others, the following authorities: "State Geological Reports;" "Charlevoix's Journal of a Voyage to North America in 1721;" Stoddard's Historical Sketches of Louisiana;" Schoolcraft's "Narrative Journal," Breckenridge; Pike's "Expedition;" Switzler's "History of Missouri;" Bradbury's "Travels;" "Liliman's Journal;" "American Cyclopedia;" Beck's "Gazetteer of Indiana and 'Missouri," 1823; Wetmore's "Gazetteer of Missouri," 1837; Shebard's "Early History of St. Louis and Missouri;" Parker's "Missouri As It Is in 1867;" Davis & Durrie's "History of Missouri," 1876.

regions may boast of delightful climate, rich and productive soil, abundant timber, or inexhaustible mineral deposits, but Missouri has all of these. She has more and better iron than England and quite as much coal, while her lead deposits are rivaled by that of no other country of equal area upon the globe.

The population of the State, according to the census of 1880, was 2,168,380, showing an increase of 25.9 per cent within the preceding decade.

GEOLOGY.

The stratified rocks of Missouri may be classified as follows, enumerating them from the surface downward:

I. Quaternary or Post Tertiary.—Alluvium, 30 feet thick. Soils-Pebbles and sand, clays, vegetable mold or humus, bog iron ore, calcareous tufa, stalactites and stalagmites, marls; bottom prairie, 35 feet thick; bluff, 200 feet thick; drift, 155 feet thick.

II. Tertiary.-Clays, shales, iron ores, sandstone, fine and coarse sands. III. Cretaceous.-No. 1, 13 feet, argillaceous variegated sandstone; No. 2, 20 feet, soft bluish brown sandy slate, containing quantities of iron pyrites; No. 3, 25 feet, whitish brown impure sandstone, banded with purple and pink; No. 4, 45 feet, slate, like No. 2; No. 5, 45 feet, fine white siliceous clay, interstratified with white flint, more or less spotted and banded with pink and purple; No. 6, 10 feet, purple red and blue clays. Entire thickness, 158 feet.

IV. Carboniferous.-Upper carboniferous or coal measures, sandstone, limestone, shales, clays, marls, spathic iron ores, coals. Lower carboniferous or mountain limestone, upper Archimedes limestone, 200 feet; ferruginous sandstone, 195 feet; middle Archimedes limestone, 50 feet; St. Louis limestone, 250 feet; oolitic limestone, 25 feet; lower Archimedes limestone, 350 feet; encrinital limestone, 500 feet.

V. Devonian.-Chemung group: Chouteau limestone, 85 feet; vermicular sandstone, 75 feet; lithographic limestone, 12.5 feet. Hamilton group: Blue shales, 40 feet; semi-crystalline limestone, 107 feet; Onondaga limestone, Oriskany sandstone.

VI. Silurian.-Upper silurian: Lower Helderberg, 350 feet; Niagara group, 200 feet; Cape Girardeau limestone, 60 feet. Lower silurian: Hudson River group, 220 feet; Trenton limestone, 350 feet; Black River and Birdseye limestone, 75 feet; first magnesian limestone, 200 feet; saccharoidal sandstone, 125 feet; second magnesian limestone, 230 feet; second sandstone, 115 feet; third magnesian limestone, 350 feet; third sandstone, 60 feet; fourth magnesian limestone, 300 feet.

VII. Azoic Rocks.

The Quaternary rocks, the most recent of all the formations, contain the entire geological record of all the cycles from the end of the Tertiary period to the present time; and their economical value is also greater than that of all the other formations combined. This system comprises the drift and all the deposits above it. There are, within the system, four distinct and strongly defined formations in the State, namely: Alluvium, bottom prairie, bluff and drift.

SOILS.

Soils are a compound of pulverized and decomposed mineral substances, mingled with decayed vegetable and animal remains, and containing all the ingredients necessary to the sustenance of the vegetable kingdom. The soils of Missouri have been produced by the mixing of organic matter with the pulverized marls, clays and sands of the Quaternary deposits which are found in great abundance in nearly all parts of the State, and are of material best designed for their rapid formation. For this cause the soils of the State are marvelously deep and productive, except in a few localities where the materials of the Quaternary strata are very coarse, or entirely wanting.

CLAYS.

Clays are dark, bluish-gray strata, more or less mixed with particles of flint, limestone and decomposed organic matter. When the floods of the Mississippi and the Missouri subside, lagoons, sloughs and lakes are left full of turbid water. The coarser substances soon subside into a stratum of sand, but the finer particles settle more slowly and form the silico-calcareous

clays of the alluvial bottom. Thus, after each flood, strata of sand and clay are deposited, until the lakes and lagoons are filled up.

Then a stratum of humus, or decayed vegetable matter, is formed by the decomposition of the annual growth and of the foreign matter which falls into the water, and every succeeding crop of vegetation adds another such stratum. Thus are rapidly formed thick beds of vegetable mold, yielding support to the magnificent forest trees which grow upon the sites of those ancient lakes and morasses. In this manner have been formed the vast, alluvial plains bordering upon the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, which comprise about 4,000,000 acres of land, based upon these strata of sand, clays, marls and humus. The soil formed upon these alluvial beds is deep, rich and light almost beyond comparison, and is constantly increasing by the filling up of lakes and sloughs as above described.

THE BLUFF OR LOESS.

This occurs in the Missouri bluffs forming a belt of several miles in width, extending from the mouth of the Missouri to the northwest corner of the State, where it is found just beneath the soil, and also in the bluffs of the Mississippi from Dubuque to the mouth of the Ohio. Thus while the bottom prairie occupies a higher geological horizon, the bluff is usually several hundred feet above it topographically. The latter is generally a finely comminuted, siliceous marl, of a light, brown color, and often weathers into perpendicular escarpments. Concretions of limestone are often found, and to the marly character of these clays may be ascribed the richness of the overlying soil. It is to this formation that the Central Mississippi and Southern Missouri valleys owe their superiority in agriculture. Where it is best developed in Western Missouri the soil is equal to any in the country.

DRIFT.

This formation exists throughout Northern Missouri. The upper members consist of stiff, tenacious, brown, drab and blue clays, often mottled and sometimes containing rounded pebbles,

chiefly of granite rocks. The lower division includes beds of dark blue clay, often hardening on exposure, frequently overlaid and sometimes interstratified with beds and pockets of sand, sometimes inclosing leaves and remains of trees. Good springs originate in these sand beds, and when they are ferruginous the springs are chalybeate.

TERTIARY SYSTEM.

There is a formation made up of clays, shales, iron ores, sandstone, and a variety of fine and coarse sand, extending along the bluffs, and skirting the bottoms, from Commerce, in Scott County, westward to Stoddard, and thence south to the Chalk Bluffs in Arkansas.

The iron ore of these beds is very abundant, and exceedingly valuable. The spathic ore has been found in no other locality in Southeastern Missouri, so that the large quantity and excellent quality of these beds will render them very valuable for the various purposes to which this ore is peculiarly adapted.

The white sand of these beds is available for glass making, and for the composition of mortars and cements. The clays are well adapted to the manufacture of pottery and stoneware.

CRETACEOUS ROCKS.

These strata are very much disturbed, fractured, upheaved and tilted, so as to form various faults and axes, anticlinal and synclinal; while the strata, above described as tertiary, are in their natural position, and rest nonconformably upon these beds. In these so called cretaceous rocks no fossils have been observed.

CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS.

This system presents two important divisions: The upper carboniferous, or coal measures; and the lower carboniferous or mountain limestone.

The coal measures, as seen by the table, are composed of numerous strata of sandstone, limestone, shales, clays, marls, spathic iron ores and coals. About 2,000 feet of these coal measures have been found to contain numerous beds of iron ore, and at least eight or ten beds of good, workable coal. Investigation shows