A few facts will show what such an enterprise is worth to the industry of Tennessee. The company now, in all its departments, gives employment to about 450 persons, including 150 convicts digging coal. The aggregate coal trade, commencing with the first of the year 1866, and ending with the first of October, 1872, was 31,582 cars-8,005,954 bushels, producing $960,714.48. The other business of the company, sales of goods, lumber, &c., amounts to $562,860, making the entire receipts $1,523,574.48. The amount of improvements made for the year 1873, as well as the monthly productions of coal for the same year, may be ascertained by referring to chapter on coal, pp. 190-218, where the minimum and maximum products are given. Around the mines has sprung up a town of 1,000 people, with churches and schools. A branch of the Tennessee State prison has been established there, and 150 convicts are now worked in the mines with great success. The shipments of coal daily are to Atlanta, Chattanooga, Huntsville and Nashville, besides the towns on the line of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. System and close economy in the business of this company have developed a trade altogether beyond the expectations of the parties interested. Besides supplying several railroads, the company is now shipping coal daily to St. Louis. The number of men employed inside the mine is about 250; the whole amount of track under the ground is about nine miles, and the extreme points of the mine worked are 1,500 yards apart. The average thickness of the coal is four feet ten inches. The openings to the mines are three, and cars are loaded from three different chutes. The coal is not brought down an inclined plane, as most of the mines in Pennsylvania, nor is it elevated as in most of the mines in England. All the entries are horizontal, and the coal is brought to the mouth of the pit and dumped into the railroad cars. Practically the mine is inexhaustible, and as a pure coal, valuable alike for grates and manufacturing-making iron as well as making steam-there is perhaps no coal in the United States superior to it. As analyzed by Prof. Safford, it is carbon 65.50, volatile matter 29.00, ashes 5.50. Since this company commenced rebuilding and shipping coal in 1866 the increased demand for coal is one of the most interesting features in the growth of Tennessee. We are assured that shipping 50 cars per day the company is further from supplying the demand than when it was shipping four cars in 1866. A. S. Colyar has been President of the company since 1860, except when the property was abandoned during the war. In his annual report for 1869 occurs the following remarks in reference to the enterprise and coal trade of Tennessee:

Believing that coal was to be the great basis of wealth in Tennessee, as it is in Pennsylvania, and knowing that this could never be while the coal trade here was confined to a sort of huckstering business, as it has been for twenty-five years, I have struggled through difficulties which but few persons will appreciate, to make the company what it now is capable of supplying the present demand, and as it may increase, of a great and growing manufacturing State, and of supplying the demand upon the well established basis in enterprising communities, that money in coal is to be made by selling large quantities at small profits, instead of smal quantities at large profits. Coal can be supplied at Nashville for manufacturing purposes as cheap as in most towns in Pennsylvania, and cheaper than in the manufacturing towns of New England.

The success of this enterprise may be attributed in a great degree to the fact that the stockholders have been more anxious to put it on a firm basis than to declare dividends, believing that fixed and permanent dividends, though delayed, were preferable to early but uncertain dividends. The increase of the business is shown by the following facts:

This company sold at Nashville for manufacturing purposes in 1866 not exceeding 50,000 bushels. Now the sales at Nashville for manufacturing purposes amount to between 400,000 and 500,000 annually.

The Secretary is indebted to the President of this company for many facts pertaining to this county, and especially for those pertaining to the coal interest, which is the great interest of the county, and is destined in the future to give to it great wealth.

HICKMAN COUNTY.

COUNTY SEAT-CENTERVILLE.

Hickman county, containing 559 square miles, lies on the western side of the great Highland Rim of Middle Tennessee. It was created by the Legislature in 1807, reducing the limits of Dickson county, and

was named in honor of Edmund Hickman, a surveyor, who came with Colonels Robertson and Weakley, in 1785, to survey entered lands on Piney River. Hickman, while on this trip, was killed by the Indians near the mouth of Defeated Creek, on Duck River, within one mile of where Centerville, the county seat, now stands. In 1819 the county was permanently established, David Love, Joel Walker, John S. Primm and Joseph Lynn being appointed commissioners to superintend the running and marking of the lines, these to include an area within the constitutional limits.

Streams. The drainage in every part of the county is perfect. The main artery, Duck River, a clear, swift stream, abounding in fish of delightful flavor, flows in a westerly direction entirely through the county. Its tributaries, Sugar Creek, Beaver Dam, Piney, Swan, Lick Creek and Leatherwood, flowing north-east and south-west, supply every portion of the county with living water. One other stream, Cane Creek, rises in Lewis county, passes through the south-west corner of Hickman, and empties into Buffalo, in the county of Perry. These streams are remarkably clear, and their beds are filled with immense piles of gravel, which, shifting with every rise, often destroy the fords, and roads which run on their banks. For manufacturing, these streams will not do to rely upon, for several very good reasons. Their banks are unusually low, and composed for the most part of gravelly beds. These are cut away by the action of the stream, and wide sandbars are constantly forming on the opposite side. It is almost impossible to construct a dam that will not in the course of a few years be undermined. Another reason is, that the undulating surface of the county makes the descent of water from the surface very rapid, and after hard rains, the water with its accumulated force rushes down with Alpine fury, sweeping away trees, fences, houses and everything, and subsides with as much rapidity as it rises.

There is, however, some fine water-power in the county. McClarin's mills, sixteen miles from Centerville, are situated upon a stream that flows in a large volume from the side of a bluff, with a descent so rapid that, within forty yards of its exit from the bluff, it has capacity enough to drive an overshot wheel twenty feet in diameter. Several manufacturing establishments have been driven by this stream without requiring more that half its available force.

Another fine power is to be found about eight miles west of the county seat, and where the old Montgomery mills were situated. A mile above the mills the waters of the Piney disappear under a bluff,

and reappear, after passing under a farm of considerable extent, upon the face of a bluff 150 feet high, and fall perpendicularly about ten fcet. No dam is wanted. The construction of a forebay is all that is necessary to utilize the stream. Perhaps in the State no finer uncurbed water-power can be found.

Topography, Timber, Soils, etc. Hickman county has usually a broken surface, composed of high, rolling ridges and deep ravines, pointing generally toward the streams. Some plateau lands lie in the northern part of the county, being a continuation of that which extends through Dickson county, and forming the water-shed between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. This plateau sinks as it approaches Duck River, but again appears on the south side and extends on through the county into Lewis and Lawrence counties, where it widens out into a broad prairie-like area, and is marked by open woods, scrubby timber, barren grass, thin soils and a scarcity of settlers. For a more particular description of this plateau land the reader is referred to Lewis county, in this volume. The ridges that form so large a proportion of the lands of Hickman are exceedingly sterile and unproductive. The soil is rocky and thin, but in spots sustains a rich verdue of barren grass, upon which the stock of the county subsist for nine month in the year. The timber of the ridges is white oak, chestnut oak, red oak, black oak, hickory, and chestnut. In the valley it is poplar, beech, maple, ash, boxelder, black walnut, butternut, red bud and elm. Sometimes, however, these ridges flatten out into a broad surface, and wherever such places are found, in which the subsoil is a deep red cherty clay, the land is very fertile. Such a spot is found on the road from Dickson to Centerville, about Pinewood. Around this village are found lands of the same character as the rich, chocolate lands north of Clarksville, in Montgomery county, well adapted to the growth of corn, wheat, cotton and tobacco. These low plateaus differ widely in productive capacity from the more elevated ones to which we have referred. In many respects the soil is superior to the bottom lands, especially for the growing of wheat and clover. The price of these lands are, for improved farms, $30 to $40 per acre; bottom lands, about the same; barren lands and rolling ridges, from fifty cents to five dollars.

Crops. The crops grown in the county are wheat, oats, rye, barley, cotton and peanuts. The average yield of wheat for the county is eight bushels per acre; cotton, 600 pounds; corn, thirty bushels; peanuts, forty bushels, On the most fertile lands the yield would be fully

doubled. The culture of peanuts bid fair, at one time, to be the great industry of the county, but the fall in price, occasioned by the enormous crop of 1872, cut down the quantity for 1873 fully four-fifths. Since the war, this crop has been very profitable, and has constituted the principal source whence farmers obtained means to buy their supplies and meet their general wants. Nashville is the principal market forthe farmers, and the place for selling and buying such things as they need, from a paper of pins to a barrel of salt. It was no uncommon thing in 1872 to meet, in one day, fifty wagons loaded with peanuts on their way to Nashville.

They are hauled fifty-four miles over a common dirt road at great expense, and with much loss of time, the expenses averaging twentythree cents on the bushel. The first peanuts raised in Tennessee and carried to Nashville for sale were from Hickman county. Jesse George, who died but recently, was the first to introduce them. He obtained a few from some emigrants, moving from North Carolina to the west, and planted them. This was the beginning of the culture of peanuts, which has become such an important agricultural feature in this and adjoining counties. The crop averages from forty to fifty bushels per acre, and sometimes reaches 125 bushels per acre. The yield of this crop for the county was in 1871, 150,000 bushels; 1872, 225,000; 1873, 35,000.

Hickman, like all of those counties in which the farms are cultivated by white labor, is as prosperous as it was before the war. The farms are worked as well and look as well. They are mostly small, and but few old fields have been turned out to grow up into thorns and briers. Since the fall in the price of peanuts, and the consequent abandonment of their growth as a crop, it has been a very serious question with the farmers what crop to introduce in their place. Near Pinewood, where there is a most excellent cotton factory, the raising of cotton has proved highly satisfactory, but in other portions of the county the raising of mules and horses is thought to be more profitable. The highway pasturage being ample for their sustenance, the usual practice is to bell the mares and turn them out with their colts to shift for themselves.

Wool Growing. But for the dogs, sheep would be extensively raised, as they can live the entire year in the woods without attention; but the lowest estimate of the loss from dogs is forty per cent. Sheep are driven up twice during the year, May and September, and sheared, and the owners, after marking the lambs, pay no more attention to them. They live on the wild grasses in summer and on the farm in