Miscellaneous Back Matter [pp. 472A-RD06]

THE COAL FIELDS OF ARKANSAS.
load of their pluckiest soldiers steals cautiously up Broad river for the purpose of reconnoisance. A party of these vandals landed at a plantation
called Buckingham, one day last week. At the sight of a company of our
riflemen, they fled to their boats and made their way down the river with
all possible speed. The accounts in the Northern papers of the capture of
thousands of bales of cotton is all fudge. In every direction the patriotic
planters have fired their cotton and buildings, and where the cotton had
not been gathered from the plant gangs of negroes have been sent into the
field to trample it into the earth. Mr. Mikell destroyed $40,000 worth of
cotton in one night, and Hon. John Townsend burned a like quantity.
Every night since the battle at Port Royal the skies have been illuminated
by the burning plantations, and from the battery in Charleston looking
southward, vast volumes of smoke can be seen rising by day.
"The battle of Port Royal was fought with distinguished gallantry by our
troops. The two militia artillery companies in Fort Walker were composed( exclusively of German citizens of Charleston, and were commanded
by Col. John A. Wagener, of the First Regiment of Artillery, S. C. M.,
himself a worthy German. Though the enemy had four hundred guns, and
we scarcely forty though our force actively engaged was not over two
hundred, while the enemy's guns were worked by at least two thousand
men, our brave German fellow-citizens stood to their posts for five hours;
and when they retreated they went off in good order, the report of D)upont
to the contrary notwithstanding. They did not leave until it was discovered that the enemy were about to cut off their retreat altogether. The
history of the battle and the struggle of Wagener and his Carolina Germans against the hosts of the invader are yet to be written.
"There is no panic in Charleston, as has been represented. Some timid
people have gone into the country, and some of the extortioners and speculators, who had been swindling the people and soldiers, attempted to get
away when there was a prospect of having military duty to do, but the
Mayor has stopped this villainy by ordering that hereafter no one shall
leave the city without a passport signed by himself."
ART. VIII.-THE COAL FIELDS OF ARKANSAS.
To EDITOR DE Bow's REVIEW:
Y
The most important mineral production of the whole earth, perhaps, is
that of coal. Nearly every branch of business enumerable is dependent.
in a greater or less degree, upon the coal supply; and I am happy to state
to you that almost at our very door we have that supply in such vast, incalculable quantities, that generations yet unborn can implicitly rely.upon
a fil supply, and our dependence (to a limited extent) upon the distracted
empire of Doet. Lincoln for coal has ceased.
The main coal fields of Arkansas are located on the western bank of the
Ouachita river, in the immediate vicinity of Camden, Arkansas, and are
embraced in one tract of land, twenty-eight hundred acres in extent,
borderiing the bank of the Ouachita for mniles. From the main shaft of the
mine a railroad has been built to the river, and the coal is discharged
direct from the shaft over the road in cars into flat boats. The vein of coal
here is of the astonishing thickness of six feet-the outcropping of which,
upon analysis, was pronounced far superior, in many important respects, to
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