Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/114

 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

��FlO. 2. SODTH FOBK KENTCCET RIVBB NBIB BOONEriUX.

ing as soldiers of the south. After the war many returned home. But the growth of the formal education and the broader outlook, both of which were stimulated by the war, has been slow.

In 1878, Shaler, of the Kentucky Geological Survey, saw in the eastern, and then most Inaccei^sible portion of the region, men hunting squirrels and rabbits with old English "short-bowa" and wrote:

These were not the contrivances of boys of to-day but were made and atrung, and the arrows hefted, in the ancient manner. The men, some of them old, were admirably akilled in their use; they assured me that, like their fathers before them, they had ever used the bow and arrow for small game, reserving the costly ammunition of the rifle for the deer and hear.

Recently outside capital has begun to develop the coal and timber resources of the region, a fact which is bringing about many changes in the mountain country, and that rapidly. As a result, the inhabitants are facing the crisis brought about by the sudden mingling of a primi- tive people with the exploitative phase of modern civilization.

Cn.iNQINO CONDlTIONa

We shall now turn to the changing conditions within the mountains, and consider the natural resources, first of all, the mineral wealth.

Mineral Resovrces

At an early period iron and salt within the region were the source of considerable traffic, but not now. Oil, gas and clays, although in progress of exploitation for the past two decades, do not promise to become important.

Coal is the chief mineral resource of the region. The seams occur in every county, increasing in number and thickness towards the south-

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