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Limestones for fluxes are in Milam county; also ill Limestone county northward on the Central Railroad. Timber and coal both abound in Robertson and Milam.

Cherokee county has immense beds of iron ore. The hills around and in the vicinity of Young's Iron Works. on the International Railroad, about eight miles southwest from Jacksonville, and three miles front the Neches river, abound in first-class iron ores, of both the red and brown hematites. These works were in operation during the war, but the death of the enterprising proprietor, soon after the close of the war, caused them to be suspended. Their location is very pleasant, on an eminence amid trees, at clear springs of good water. The forge or smelting furnace is thirty-four feet square and thirty-four feet high, built in the most substantial manner of the best reddish brown sand rock-a rock peculiar to Central and Eastern Texas-at a cost of between $6000 and $7000. Ore, more than can be used for many centuries, lies in beds in the adjacent hills, and also scattered in loose masses over the surface of the country. Lime of the best quality about eighteen miles distant. This would have to be hauled by teams, as it is not on the line of the railroad. Pine and other timber very abundant on the surrounding hills. These hills or small mountains, composed mostly of sandstones and iron ores, are nearly, and perhaps entirely, the highest in Eastern Texas.

Young's Iron Works, on account of railroad and other facilities, offer peculiar and superior advantages for smelting purposes, and also for the manufacture of all manner of iron ware, to which may be added agricultural implements-the ash, oak and other wood, not far distant, being excellent for their wood work.

South of Rusk, about eight miles, amid pine-clad hills. and at a perrenial stream of clear water, is Philias Iron Works, where ore was smelted on large scale during the war, at the close of which the smelting was suspended. and only the foundry business continued; hence the works now are in a very dilapidated and decaying condition. The only drawback to the profitable manufacture of iron here is the want of better transportation than that offered by wagons. Here the ores are good, convenient, and in inexhaustible quantities, at least for the next hundred years. Lime abundant. only three miles distant. Plenty of pine and other timber on the hills and in