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ore, which exists in the concretionary state, imbedded in a highly 

 ferruginous clayey loam, which displays the utmost variety of 

 colour, texture, and composition, being mottled and streaked 

 with clays of all shades, white, yellow, red, and brown. The ore 

 distributed irregularly throughout this mass, presents no less 

 diversity of aspect, though it all belongs to one species, denomi- 

 nated brown iron ore. It occurs massive and cellular and some- 

 times fibrous, also in a mamillary and botryoidal form, and is often 

 so hard and compact as to require blasting. The workings are 

 generally dry. The earth in some portions of the mine gives evi- 

 dence of resulting from decayed felspar and the other consti- 

 tuents of the adjacent gneiss rock, and contains beside much 

 plumbago in a disintegrated and pulverulent state, clearly indi- 

 cating that the dissolution of the crystalline Umestone has been, 

 in part at least, the cause of this large accumulation of ore. 



The mineral is of excellent quality, yielding a much superior 

 iron to that procured from the magnetic ores of the adjoining pri- 

 mary districts. The facility with which it may be smelted in 

 blast furnaces, compared with the magnetic ore, is another great 

 recommendation, and when we consider that the latter, by the 

 usual process of reduction in bloomery forges, requires from six 

 hundred to eight hundred bushels of charcoal to produce a ton of 

 malleable iron, while this ore may be brought into the condition 

 of cast iron by an expenditure of not more than two hundred 

 bushels, costing between five and six dollars per hundred bushels, 

 we are still further impressed with its value. 



Though but five or six years in use, this ore has already become 

 rather extensively worked, being not only smelted at a large fur- 

 nace recently erected near Hamburg, but hauled over the Wall- 

 kill Mountain a distance of twelve miles to Clinton Furnace, and 

 a still greater distance to Ryerson's Furnace, near Pompton. 



Another mine of similar brown iron ore, discovered rather be- 

 fore that in the ridge near Pochuck, lies about a mile and three 

 quarters east of Hamburg, above the junction of two small streams 

 called Sand Pond and Mud Pond creeks. This deposit, already 

 alluded to, is embraced between the primary rocks of the base of 

 the Wallkill Mountain and a small knob of gneiss a little west of 

 it, and lies only a short distance from the northern termination of a 

 belt of white crystalline limestone, the disintegration of a portion 



