All through the mountains of East Tennessee and Kentucky I have seen these
stick chimneys, some of them many, many years old. In these mountain
countries the fireplaces are lined with stones, but in Illinois, in the
olden times, stones were scarce and mud was plenty and the fireplaces were
made like those just described and illustrated by Fig. 272.
The stone chimney is an advance and improvement upon the log chimney, but
I doubt if it requires any more skill to build.