96

the Potomac river by which it is separated from Virginia,

-with a part of Montgomery county for its southern boundary,

Carroll county for its eastern and the summit of the Blue
Ridge Mountain and the eastern line of Washington county
for its western boundary.

It embraces many varieties of excellent soils, most of which
has been improved to a high degree by the natural manure
resources of the country and is well cultivated. The soils
comprise the best varieties of the clay limestone soils, mica
slate soils, the roofing slate soils, the red lands and several
other varieties; each of these have peculiar excellence and
adaptation to particular crops, but all of them produce large
yields of wheat, rye, oats, Indian corn and the cultivated
grassed, and as a consequence fine qualities of the best cattle,
sheep, horses and other domestic animals. Many farmers
pay particular attention to the raising of live stock, and have
been rewarded with great success. The herds, of cattle par-
ticularly, and sheep being equal to any in the adjoining
States, and raised with much less expense than in those north
us.

The face of the country is undulating, with gently swelling
hills, rising in the western portion to a beautiful spur of the
Blue Ridge, known as the Catoctin Mountain, not rugged,
barren and forbidding in its aspect, but covered to the sum-
mit with well cultivated farms or dense forests of valuable
timber. The South Mountain or Blue Ridge, with the same
general features expressed in a greater degree, forms the west-
ern border of the county, and is specially noted for the beau-
ty of its scenery and the purity of its atmosphere. Between
the Catoctin and the Blue Ridge or South Mountain, lies
the beautiful Middletown Valley, one of the most lovely and
at the same time best cultivated and most productive of any
found in the whole country. Its farm buildings and dwell-
ing houses are of the first order for comfort and convenience,
its water of the purest fountains from the mountains, its roads
good, and it has for transportation to market the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
running through its southern border, giving it the advan-
tages of quick and cheap communication with the markets of
the country through Baltimore Georgetown and Washing-
ton. This combination of advantages should satisfy the most
exacting; certainly it cannot be equalled anywhere out of our
State in the whose Union. Harbough's Valley, as the north-
ern extremity of this Valley is called, is a portion of the
county enclosed between the same mountains as the Middle-
town Valley, is also famous for its beauty of scenery, its health
and productive soil; it lies more retired from the public high-
ways than the Middletown Valley, but from the works of im-
provement now in progress, will leave hereafter greatly in-
creased transportation facilities.