Excerpt from Mineral and Agricultural Resources of the Portion of Tennessee Along the Cincinnati Southern and Knoxville Ohio Railroads, Including the Country Between the Two

The road is 336 41-100 miles long. Its general direc tion is north and south. The northern end bisects the Blue Grass region of Kentucky. The southern end, for about ninety miles, runs through a series Of valleys that in fer tility, beauty of scenery and healthful climate are not sur passed in Southern France or Italy. The middle section traverses a region rich, beyond the comprehension of the unskilled observer, in latent resources of mineral and agri cultural products. Millions of acres on either side of the road, from the Kentucky River to Emory Gap, can be bought at merely nominal figures, but they are as good sheep lands, as good for the purposes of the grape culturist or general fruiterer, as any acres the sun shines on; while beneath them lie exhaustless beds of coal and iron, in such close proximity as are found nowhere else in the world outside the Southern mineral region. When these dreary knobs are covered with vineyards and orchards and studded with sheep cotes; when scores of furnaces light up the gloomy ravines and impart their glow to the forbidding palisades, then will the great and enterprising city find that that which deterred all others from undertaking to build her a highway to the South brings her most profit; that these mountain fastnesses were better worth the reaching than the sunny plains beyond, covered with cotton and cane.

The principal southern connections of the Cincinnati road at its southern terminus will be the Western and Atlantic from Chattanooga -to Atlanta, and connecting thence with Augusta, Macon, Savannah, Columbus, Pensa cola, Brunswick, Jacksonville; and the Alabama and Chat tanooga road from Chattanooga to Meridian, Mississippi, and connecting along the line and from its southern termi nus with Montgomery, Mobile, Selma, Vicksburg, New Orleans, &c. The last mentioned is a' natural and very important connection and link of the Southern Pacific Railway, destined to be completed at no distant day. When built, it must place Cincinnati on an equal footing, with reference to commercial intercourse with the Pacific slope, with St. Louis and Chicago. Indeed, she must be more eligibly situated than either of them, for her access will be quite as direct and always available for its highest capacity in freight or passenger traffic, whereas the Northern Pacific route, on which her rivals depend, is precarious during four months of the year from deep snows and severe cold. But we can not go into detail here. Let the reader take any map of the United States, and in the absence of the laid down line Of the Cincinnati Southern, let him lay a string or rule from Cincinnati to Chattanooga, and study the strategic advantages gained by the former city with her road fin ished. Let him consider that every point named here has been placed as near to Cincinnati as it is now to Louisville. No thoughtful man can fail to comprehend the splendid field opened to the enterprise which conceived and executed the gigantic undertaking of reaching that field over its own railway.

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