THE IKON MOUNTAIN. 115 



along the Mississippi for twenty-four miles, at the base of lime- 

 stone bluffs which are covered with oak, and by an undergrowth 

 of the beautiful red-leaved sumac. The banks and sweeps of 

 the river are very picturesque. When we leave the river, we 

 pass over an undulating wooded country with many streams. 

 Cleared spots yield good crops of corn, now in shock, and the 

 young wheat is fresh and green. But the land generally is not 

 very tempting for agricultural purposes. Vine culture, how- 

 ever, has been successfully introduced by the German settlers, 

 and is making progress. 



The Iron Mountain covers a surface of 500 acres ; it rises 

 to a height of between 200 and 300 feet above its base, and 

 nearly 1000 above the bed of the Mississippi, from which it is 

 thirty-eight miles distant. It is clothed with young oak and 

 hickory trees, which thrive well on the scanty soil between the 

 crevices of the rock, and among the loose stones with which it 

 is covered. The whole mountain, and every stone upon it, 

 is nearly pure iron ore, there being only 2 to 3 per cent, of 

 silica and alumina, 65 per cent, of pure iron, and the remain- 

 der oxygen. The quantity above the base is estimated at two 

 million tons. A bore of 150 feet has been made, at the base, 

 without meeting with any change, and the geologist of the State 

 says that it may be of any depth, if it is, as he supposes, a mass 

 of iron which has been upheaved through a fissure of the earth's 

 crust. 



No coal is found nearer than that of Illinois, opposite to 

 St. Louis, and the cost of carriage thus operates as a great bar 

 to the profitable working of this deposit. The Glasgow black- 

 band iron is found in combination with sufficient carbon to cal- 

 cine, and, in some cases, even to smelt it ; and there are al- 

 ways strata of coal found with the iron in Scotland, which gives 

 a great advantage to the Scotch iron-masters. Lime, which is 

 used as a flux, is got in close proximity to this mountain. 



