On the banks of the Monongahela, at West Brownsville, was born, sixty-five years ago, James G. Blaine. Until his twelfth year the hills and waters of the Monongahela were his favorite haunts. The Monongahela River and its tributaries cleave through a coal-field in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia exceeding in area the entire coal-field of 12,000 square miles of Great Britain. The coal is the famous Pittsburg seam, and almost all of it, lying along the river, is exposed above the surface of the water. Hundreds of coal tipples between Pittsburg and Morgan town are busily engaged in loading the fleets of coal barges that ply up and down the rivers of Ohio and Mississippi. Some conception of this vast coal-field may be had when it is realized that the river cuts through it for over 200 miles. And this Pittsburg seam is but a part of the great Appalachian coal-field, the greatest in the world, comprising about 60,000 square miles, containing about a third more coal than all the coal measures of Europe combined. Southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia possess the most valuable part of this splendid area, which the Monongahela carries to the workshops of Pittsburg and the towns and cities as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. "ERIC JONARD." Dalles of the St. Croix River. The Dalles enjoy a fame that is historic. They consist of high vertical cliffs which flank the valley of St. Croix River as it winds its way to the Mississippi. A great formation of trap-rock a thousand feet thick crosses this part of the country, and the river flows through a fissure formed, probably, during the process of cooling in this mass of volcanic outflow. The gulch thus originally formed has been deepened and widened through the lapse of ages by the action of the water, until it has become a mighty chasm through which a wide river rolls and tumbles. Many and strange are the shapes into which the water has carved the stone as it has worn its course through the barriers. Here and there are such strange rock formations as "The Old Man of the Dalles," the "Devil's Kitchen," "Devil's Chair," "Devil's Pulpit," and "Elbow Rock." In fact, the "Dalles of the St. Croix" (as the river here is called) is full of the most wonderful stone formations.