1S62.] 35 [Lesley. 



the cost at the mines being $3 per lump and 65 for ground plaster ; 

 eighty miles distant it has been sold for $20. 



The yield in salt in 1853 was 300,000 bushels ; 50 pounds to the 

 bushel, and 6 bushels to the barrel, at 50 cents per bushel. Five 

 furnaces were then running, and 24,000 gallons of brine pumped 

 daily; 10,000 cords of wood supplied the fuel. Coal is now used, 

 brought from the neighborhood of Wytheville by a branch railroad. 



Southwest of Wythe, the coal is traceable in all the little ravines 

 and gaps of the first mountain west of the Great Valley; and in the 

 third mountain west of it, far beyond the celebrated salt deposit of 

 Smith county, and into Tennessee ; but the single bed is thin and 

 ci'ushed, and the coal worthless. In the Peak Hills country, east of 

 Wythe, the coal is almost an anthracite, and has been exposed to such 

 movements that it rattles like sand out of the shovel, and cannot, there- 

 fore, go to market. Otherwise it is pure and good. This condition 

 is apparently connected with the appearance of a massive sand-rock 

 under it, which forms a terrace and range of small peaks along the 

 side of the mountain. The coal bed itself is of large size, consisting 

 of the following layers : 



Roof shale, sandy, several feet. 

 Coal dirt and coal slate, ...... 5 feet. 



Yellow shale, two feet. 

 Coal crushed to coarse dust, ...... 2 feet. 



Blue shale, &c., three feet. 

 Coal crushed and coal slate, ...... 2 feet. 



Interval of twenty or thirty feet. 

 Quarry rock. 



On the south side of the New Kiver the two coal beds are opened 

 at Cloyd's. Here the summit and mid-rib of the Brushy Mountain 

 is a pebbly conglomerate of great thickness, dipping 45° J south 34° 

 east ; over which, forming the southeastern slope of the mountain, 

 are, first, yellowish flagstones; and then, soft clay slates; in all about 

 1200 feet thick, dipping the same way. Over these lies the "Quarry 

 rock," a massive, gray, micaceous, quartzose sandstone, forming a 

 line of little peaks. Ten feet above this is coal bed A, yielding 

 about two feet of very bright pure semi-anthracite coal, much crushed 

 and with the same dip. Thirty-five feet above A lies coal bed B, 

 with its neat, undisturbed roof-rock of thin-bedded argillaceous sand- 

 stone, yielding about two and a half feet of good coal out of the fol- 

 lowinsr section : 



