He spoke strongly, simply, powerfully, with no attempt at embellishment, but in such terms as left no doubt whatsoever as to his meaning. After a time he stepped to the map, and, pointing out here and there, explained as nearly as he himself knew the nature of the Company’s holdings. He told them where the coal cropped out at the headwaters of this or that creek, told them that on some of the mountain sides three veins of coal had been known ever since he could remember, the middle vein over eight feet thick, the lower four feet thick, and that nearest to the mountain top almost as deep. He explained to them that there was coal over more than a hundred miles of that country, as he knew, and told them how nearly everyone mined his own coal on his own land, and did not trouble to cut wood for much of the year. As for the new strikes of oil, Joslin could put his finger upon the map where every one of these discoveries had been made. He said that his own people cared little for that, for they had long grown to believe there was no way for them to get out into the world. He explained to them that there were no roads in that country, that logs were dragged down the mountain side by cattle, rolled into the shallow streams by hand labor, and left to the chance of the infrequent “tides.” He told them that in many of those streams there were logs enough to touch end to end from one end of the creek to the other—logs enough bedded in the sand to floor the creek entirely for half its length—black walnut logs two and a half feet through—white oak logs three and a half feet in diameter—and poplar four and a half feet. Their eyes glistened as he went on telling all these things naturally, simply, naively, as one fully acquainted with them. He explained to them the ways of all these methods of logging, how no one could run a saw mill in that region with profit, how no raftsman ever made more than a living at his work, hard as it was. Then he told them how he himself had seen the stakes of the new railroad line coming across the head of Hell-fer-Sartin and making for the upper waters of Big Creek, and passing thence on to the older railway lines. “When the railroad comes, gentle-_men_,” said he, “things has got to change in thar. We’ve been alone—no one knows much about our lands. Ye come in thar twenty years ago, when no one cared for nothin’. Ye bought yore land fer skercely a dollar a acre, most of it, an’ thar’s trees on it thar that’s wuth ten an’ twenty dollars fer every log in ‘em, onct ye git ‘em out, an’ two, three, four logs to the tree. The railroad will let the world in, an’ it’ll let us out. I reckon the time has come fer that. All I ask ye in turn fer what I’m a-tellin’ ye, is to treat my people fair. Give them a fair value fer what they’ve got. They’re pore, they’re ignerint, they’re blind. I’m as ignerint as the wust of ‘em. But we’re squar’ with ye. We want ye to be squar’ with us.”