SOURCE oP ST. Peter's river. 41 



It is a remarkable fact, that with the admitted supe- 

 riority of the British over American castings, no attempts 

 have been made to work the same ore and by means of the 

 same fuel which have proved so successful when used abroad. 

 It is a truth with which every person who feels an interest 

 on this subject, is conversant, that the clay iron stone is the 

 principal ore used in England ; that it is smelted by means 

 ofcoak; that the products are extremely advantageous ; that 

 results equally favourable, if not more so, have been obtain- 

 ed in Silesia from the same ores ; that experiments which 

 have been made on the same subject in France, have been 

 attended with the happiest results. We may therefore won- 

 der, that so much of this valuable ore is allowed to remain 

 unwrought in the midst of the very fuel which ought to 

 be used to smelt it ; and that a preference should be given 

 to the hydrates and oxides of iron, worked with charcoal, 

 very frequently with great disadvantage. 



The furnace which we visited near Zanesville, was 

 built in 1809, and was, as we were told, the first erected in 

 the state of Ohio ; its inside is lined with fire-bricks made 

 of the clay which is used for crucibles in the glasshouse, 

 and the proprietors informed us that it was their intention 

 to make large bricks of the same materials for their hearths, 

 as all the stones they had heretofore used had proved de- 

 fective, and had obliged them to suspend their operations 

 under a year's blast, at a time when the rest of the fur- 

 nace was in a very sound state. This experiment, if suc- 

 cessful, will be attended with great advantages to the coun- 

 try. The clay has been analysed in Mr. Keating's labora- 

 tory in the University of Pennsylvania, and found to con- 

 tain about seventy-two per cent, of silex, with alumine, 

 little or no lime, and no metallic oxide. 



The iron ore used here is an hydrjited oxide, which 



Vol. I. 6 



