On the Anthracite Region, &c. of Pennsylvama. 75 
A canal route has been surveyed through the most fertile 
part of the counties of Pennsylvania bordering on Ohio, to 
eonnect the waters of the river Ohio-with Lake Erie, which 
will give additional value to the products of agriculture, and 
of the salt springs, of that part of the state. In the summer 
of 1825, the price of wheat at Pittsburgh was but 25 cents 
the bushel ; at the same time, adjacent to Lake Erie, from 
whence there was an uninterrupted navigation to the Atlantic 
market, it commanded 75 cents the bushel. 
e soil, in a considerable proportion of the counties of 
Pennsylvania, bordering on the State of Ohio, is fertile. The 
northern division of the counties contiguous to Lake Erie and 
the State of New-York, has a good soil for grazing, and is 
in general heavily timbered with beech, hard maple, and 
birch. But adjacent to, and between the head waters of the 
rivers Alleghany and Susquehanna, embracing a portion of 
eight counties, there is an elevated, mountainous, rocky 
hemlock, pitch-pine and maple, with frequent entangled 
thickets of laurel, almost exclusively tenanted by numer- 
‘ous panthers, wolves, and other wild animals found in | 
unsettled parts of the State, with the addition of elk and 
aver. 
The soil and aspect of this region is so forbidding, that it 
will long remain unoccupied, and much of it be ever useless 
for agriculture. Its mineral resources are little known, but it 
is reported to contain much coal, bog, and other ores of 
iron. In the county of Clearfield, a considerable part of 
which is in this mountain district, a large amount of iron is 
manufactured by the aid of bituminous coal and charcoal. 
Iron ore occurs in various parts of Pennsylvania, but is most 
abundant, and of the best quality, in the extensive calcareous 
adjacent to calcareous districts. The iron manufactured in 
Center and Huntington is called the Junietta, and is distin- 
guished for tenacity, malleability, and other valuable quali- 
ties. he furnaces and forges, situated on never failing 
streams, are numerous. Bituminous coal, from the Allegha- 
ny mountain, is often used for making pig iron, Xe. for 
-which anthracite will probably be substituted, when the 
VOL. XII.—No. 1. 10 
