Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-01-28
LLAN0.
The Varied Resources of the CoEnty-The Earth
Full Of Undeve!oped Riches.
LIANo Tex Jan, 25 1889,

The Varied Resources of the Countrywide Earth
Full OF Undeve!oped Riches
LLANo, TEX, Jan. %, 1883.
To the Gazette.
On the road from Fredrickburg to this
place about fifty miles there are some
wonderful Texas curiosities. The valleys
are of fair size and very rich and have a
thrifty population. Along this road are
vast thickets of hickory sappIings from
as large as your thumb to four inches in
diameter and with them are whole forests
of the larger hickory and oak. Up on
the head of Willow creek is the curiosity
of the country, the Enchanted rock.
This, a solid granite rock, covering a
space about a mile square or $40 acres of
land and is about $50 or 400 feet high
from the base to the top. On its top is
not single handful of earth, bare !,
huge, barren rock. It's top contains Il
level surfrce of leo to 100 acres of solid
surface granite and acres at place are
smoothe as a floor.
at one or two places are slight de-
pressions which are now filed with water.
1t is said that there are but two seams in
rock is nearly perpendicular and the
south admits Of places to ascend by
circuitous routes. Here this huge bare
rock stands among its neighbors of giant
rocks, beaped and piled upon each other
in a wonderful manner, ali vast granite
rock country. About four or five miles
from the Enchanted rock is Mt. Nebo,
another cone hill or mountain, and ITS
top from the distance seems to be hooded
with limestone layer of lime rock on
top. This is at the base of the vast
granite range of high hills called "Bell
mountain. - Huge boulders of every
shape and size meet you everywhere.
Many seemed to me would weigh even
millions of tons All this stone splits
like wood, very accurately by driving in
iron wedges and is beautiful pink
granite.
At little country town called Oxford,
near the foot of the Bell Mountain, -
saw whole high hill on its south side,
and over several hundred acres of land
was the celebrated soap stone. No fire
in crucible or furnace has ever been made
hot enough to effect or destroy this stone.
Neither does water have any effect on it I.
What a fine old time we can have with
buckwheat cakes on a stone griddle.
There is enough of it here to supply the
earth. On the opposite side, north of
the residence of Mr.. Hill is fine quar-
~ of blue mingled marble. It is about
twenty-five or thirty feet wide, and runs
by the road for over half mile Llano
City itself is built on vast marble bed,
pushing out of the earth above the sur
face in the public square. 1 saw some
buildings on the north side of the court
house built of this marble.
The Mexicans near Baby Head are
working the silver and I got a specimen
of it, also the quartz ore from which the
silver is smelted. Here in this strange
looking country is the graphite man
ganese, magnetic iron, iron of all kinds
and in all forms, silver, copper, soap
stone, marble, granite, slate, flint, lime
stone, sandstone, aud another kind of
mineral called asbestos, and in ancient
times rs is often now, cloth is woven from
it. What king of the ancients was it
who, after his guests were through
dining, to cleanse the tablecloth, threw
it into hot fire and, to the amazement
of all. it was not consumed or even dam
aged?
Here is a fine county for the small
farmer, and everybody wants the Fort
Worth and Rio Grande railroad to reach
the county, that the people may develop
all these now idle riches. A. J G.