VERMILLION, spelled with two l's, is from the French vermilion, spelled with one l, and signifies, according to Webster, "a bright red sulphuret of mercury, consisting of sixteen parts of sulphur and one hundred parts of mercury." This substance, he remarks, is sometimes found native, of a red or brown color, and is then called cinnabar. Used as a pigment. The word is a literal translation of the Miami Indian word pe-auk-e-shaw, which was given to the Vermillion Rivers on account of the red earth or "keel" found along their banks. This substance was produced by the burning of the shale overlying the outcrops of coal, the latter igniting from the autumnal fires set by the aborigines. From the rivers the county was named.
The position which Vermillion County occupies in the world can best be indicated by describing the geodesic situation of Newport, the county seat, which is near the middle of the county. This point is 39° 55' north of the equator of the earth, and therefore the north star appears to the observer here at that angle above the horizon. Newport is also 87° 10' west longitude from Greenwich (London, England), and railroad standard time, which is here conformed to that of the ninetieth meridian, is about eleven minutes slower than local, or sun-time. Newport is also about 520 feet above the level of the ocean, and fifty feet above the low-water mark of the Wabash River opposite.
The beautiful, picturesque scenery of Vermillion County, Indiana, is equal to that of any other in the State. The modest meanderings of the classic old Wabash, which ever and anon are hiding their silvery waters away amid the luxurious foliage of the forest trees, give to its eastern border a lineal presentation of romantic beauty such as attracts universal attention while the long range of bench hills which skirt the western border of this garden valley throw along its railroad line a continued display of panoramic rural
beauty which even without any coloring, might be termed "the lovely valley of the West." The county, stretching its narrow length along the river for thirty-seven miles, is wholly made up of beautiful scenery.
All the minor streams draining Vermillion County are of course tributary to the Wabash, and most of them have a general southeasterly direction. Spring Branch, or Creek, flows southwesterly through the northeast corner of Highland Township. Coal Branch flows south near the western border. Big Vermillion River winds southeasterly through the southwest corner of Highland and the northern portion of Eugene. Little Vermillion River wends its way through the south-western corner of Eugene, and empties into the Wabash near the middle of the east side of Vermillion Township. Jonathan Creek, in the western part of Vermillion Township, flows northeasterly into the Little Vermillion.
From one-fourth to one-third of Vermillion County consists of the rich bottoms and terraces of the valleys of the Wabash and its affluents, the Big and Little Vermillion Rivers and Norton's creek. The main terrace, or "second bottom," is especially developed in the region between Perrysville and Newport, a fact probably resulting from the combined action of the two main tributaries in this county. The terrace is from one to four miles wide, furnishing a broad stretch of rich, well drained farming lands, having an average elevation of about forty feet above the present (or "first") bottoms. Below Newport the bluffs approach the river so closely that the terrace is nearly obliterated, and the immediate bottoms become very narrow. At the mouth of Little Raccoon Creek the bottoms are considerably widened; but the terrace has no considerable extent until we reach the head of Helt Prairie, about six miles north of Clinton, whence it stretches southward, with an average width of one to three miles. About three miles below Clinton it narrows again as we approach the mouth of Brouillet's Creek and the county line.
At the first settlement of the country the bottoms were heavily timbered, but a large proportion of the terrace was devoid of timber. We are scarecely permitted to believe that these timberless tracts were originally prairie, as, on account of their nature and favorable situation we should presume that they were grounds cleared and cultivated by the same aboriginal race, possibly the Mound-Builders, for mounds abound in this region, and the annual fires prevented a re-occupation by trees or shrubbery.
Rising from the upper bottom lands we find bluffs, more or less abrupt, which attain a general level of 120 to 130 feet above the river, and form the slightly elevated border of Grand Prairie. The most gradual ascent is to the westward from Perrysville, favorable for the construction of the present railroad. South of the Big Vermillion the bluffs are much steeper, where a moderate grade for a railroad can be found only by tracing one of the smaller streams. These bluffs, being too steep for cultivation, are still covered with timber, which consists principally of oak, hickory, maple and walnut, and toward the southern end of the county, beech. In many of the ravines, and along the foot of the bluffs,
there are large groves of sugar maple. Near the principal streams this timbered region extends westward to the State line. The northern and middle portions of the county are in great part a portion of the Grand Prairie, which covers all eastern Illinois, from the forest of the Little Wabash to Lake Michigan.
Vermillion County is singularly blessed with springs, bursting forth from below the boulder clay of the drift period. Some of these springs are very strong.
The alluvium of the river bottoms have the common features of river deposits. Vegetable remains are mingled with fine sand and mud washed from the drift beds higher up the streams, and occasional deposits of small stones and gravel, derived either from the drift or from the rock formations into which the rivers have cut their winding ways. The only definite knowledge obtained as to the depth of these beds refers to the prairie between Eugene and Perrysville, where wells have been sunk sixty feet through alluvial sand, and then encountered six to ten feet of a soft, sticky, bluish mud filled with leaves, twigs and trunks of trees, and occasionally small masses of what appears to have been stable manure. This stratum is sometimes called "Noah's Barnyard." The lake-bottom deposits, of corresponding age, which commonly underlie the soil of the Grand Prairie, have been found west of the State line, consisting of marly-clays and brick-clay subsoil, and probably exist equally under such portions of the prairie as extend into this county.
There are several very good gravel beds in the county, principally developed since the building of the railroads.
The boulder-clay referred to above, which forms the mass of the drift formation, is a tough, bluish drab, unlaminated clay, more or less thoroughly filled with fine and coarse gravel, and including many small boulders. On the bluff west of Perrysville this bed was penetrated to a depth of about 100 feet before reaching the water-bearing quicksand commonly found beneath it. Out-crops of 110 feet have been measured, and the bed very probably attains a thickness of 125 feet or more where it has not been worn away. It is much thinner in the southern part of the county. From the difference in character of the included boulders at different levels, we are led to the conclusion that the currents which brought the materials composing these beds flowed in different directions at different times.
Illustrating the above remarks we give a section from a branch of Johnson's Creek, in Eugene Township: Boulder clay, with pebbles of Silurian limestone and trap, thirty feet; yellow clay, with fragments of coal, shale, sand-stone, etc., four inches; boulder clay, with pebbles of Silurian limestone, twenty-five feet; ferruginous sand, a streak; boulder clay from the northwest, with pebbles of various metamorphic rocks and trap, and nuggets of native copper, fifty feet.
The section of rocks exposed at the Horse-shoe of the Little Vermillion exhibits the following strata: Black, slaty shale; coal, two and a half to four feet; fire-clay and soft-clay shales, with iron-stones, fifteen feet; argillaceous (clayey) limestone, one to two feet; dark drab clay shale, one foot; coal, four to five feet; light-colored fire-clay, two feet; dark-colored fire-clay, one foot; soft, drab shale, with iron-stones, ten to fifteen feet; fossiliferous, black slaty shale, often pyritous, with many large iron-stone nodules, two to three feet.
A considerable portion of the boulders and pebbles of these beds, especially those consisting of limestone and the metamorphic rocks, are finely polished and striated on one