AND THE SALT DEPOSIT ON PETITE ANSE ISLAND. 



15 



yet the boiling process alone has been resorted to within even traditional times, 

 until the discovery, at the bottom of a salt well, of solid rock-salt, by ]\Ir. J. M. 

 Avery. 



Borings and pit-workings, extensively prosecuted during the war, have demon- 

 strated that the surface of the salt is very undulating, varying to some extent in 

 conformity with the surface of the ground. Borings made at a higher level have, 

 therefore, repeatedly struck the salt at nearly the same, or a slightly greater, relative 

 depth than excavations made lower down. 



The surface of the salt explored up to the time of Dr. Goessmann's visit, lies 

 mostly below tidc-lcvol ; at one point only it was found one and three-quarters feet 

 above, at another as much as thirty-tAVo feet below, as shown by the instructive profile 

 given in his report and reproduced on the map. The salt stratum has now been 

 penetrated to the depth of fifty-eight feet below its surface, without any material 

 change in character; being remarkably free from the usual impurities, viz., gypsum 

 and magnesian salts. Minute laminte of the former sometimes exist between the 

 larger crystals ; and in the shaft now worked there was found, thirty-eight feet 

 beneath the surface of the salt, a dark-colored vein, about a foot thick, running north- 

 west and southeast, and consisting of an aggregate of crystals of rock-salt and 

 gypsum. This seems clearly, however, to have been a subs(^quent infiltration. 



Occasionally, cavities occur in it containing large and beautiful cubes ; but usually 

 the mass consists of crystals more or less deformed by mutual interference, one- 

 eighth to one-quarter of an inch in diameter. Dense granular or fibrous salt has 

 never yet, so far as I am aware, been found at Petite Anse. 



Since Dr. Goessmann's visit, another pit has been sunk by INIr. Chas. C'hoTiteau, 

 of St. Louis, assisted by Mr. Dudley M. Avery, son of Judge Avery, whose intelligent 

 observations have greatly facilitated my researches, and to whom I am indebted for 

 a record (verified from the materials at the pit) of the strata penetrated. It appears 

 that in order to avoid the troublesome quicksand always met with a few feet above 

 the salt, Mr. Chouteau selected a spot on a hill-side, above the level of any previous 

 bore, and where the semi-indurate sand strata, exhibited in a ravine near by, seemed 

 to promise greater facility in sinking a shaft. 



