MUSSEL SHOALS CANAL.
Lock 7, looking down Canal.
Arch Bridge at Lock 6.
Lock 4.
This section of the Tennessee river runs through a fertile and beautiful upland, presenting on both shores bluffs or rock of strong texture that afford very extensive and excellent quarries for all structural purposes, while the rocks for the rougher work of dam construction are abundantly supplied in the bed of the river. These bluffs break away into beautiful farm lands, and the high lands and salubrious climate insure healthful homes.
Directly tributary are all the elements necessary for a great manufacturing center.
The nearby iron, coal and phosphate fields are among the richest in the world, and the supply of lime- and sandstone for manufacturing and building purposes is inexhaustible. Forests of timber of both hard and soft woods of every description are near at hand, and bordering the river banks from Chattanooga to Johnsonville are the most productive cotton fields of the South. Labor is skilled and plentiful.
It has been impossible to develop this great power heretofore, as the government has refused to allow the construction of dams across the river, but by the recent Act of Congress such permission has been granted.