74 On the Anthracite Region, &c. of Pennsylvania. 
canal through the valley of Junietta is completed. About 
50 per cent. of iron in pigs is extracted from the Junietta 
ore, and it loses one-third in passing from the bloom to bar 
iron 
At Belfonte, a pleasant: village in Center county, in the 
process of making bar iron, powerful rollers are substituted 
for the trip-hammer. The half bloom, heated by bituminous 
coal, is quickly passed between successive rollers, until high- 
ly compressed. A smooth bar, of the usual weight ad 
by an experienced and disinterested manufacturer, that bar 
iron, formed by this process, is softer than the produce of 
the trip-hammer, and not as desirable for plough-shares, and 
work subject to much Pag but for all other purposes 
equally good. Soft bar iron cannot ae made from ores lo- 
cated he of the Allok mountai 
here is more land capable of ealieetiad’ in Center = 
adagvion counties, than is common in the mountain di 
tricts of Pennsylvania. . The calcareous valleys are wide and 
extensive, and the ranges narrow, and of little elevation. In 
Huntington county, a quarter of the surface is first rate land, 
and more than two-thirds is under partial improvement. 
Center county there is a large body of table land, called the 
barrens, from which the timber has been cut ae the use of 
furnaces. It is uncultivated, and held in little estimation 
from its total destitution of springs, and the impossibility of 
procuring water by sinking wells. The soil is of an excel- 
lent texture for wheat or grazing, and stone rarely occurs on 
the surface; but the earth rests on calcareous rocks, replete 
with fisores, into which the rain-water sinks to a great depth. 
This uninhabited tract has in some places a-width of five 
miles, and extends thirty: it would afford good ranges for 
p, if cleared of underwood 
‘Springs are numerous and large in these caleareous val- 
leys. A clear, cold, and never failing mill-stream, issues 
from limestone caves, near Belfonte, ie which the name 
of the village is derived. 
