METALS AND THEIR ORES. 6 1 



five or six feet below the outcrop on the hillside. All these workings have been upon 

 the same ledge, which runs persistently the whole distance, and indefinitely further 

 with the extension of the mountain. 



The rock of the mountain is quartzite, whose numerous outcrops have all the same 

 general strike and dip given above. It is in layers, varying from half a dozen inches to 

 as many feet in thickness, and is generally gray, though in some layers brown in color. 

 At working No. 2, a few feet west of the layer principally worked, is a band one foot 

 wide of pure white quartz, which would serve as an excellent guide in tracing this ore- 

 bearing ledge. Very many of the layers have disseminated through them, in intimate 

 commixture with the quartz, the peroxide of iron in its micaceous form. In the most 

 highly impregnated layers the amount is sufiicient to give the cleavage face of the rock 

 the specular lustre and a black color ; but its transverse face is a dull gray, from the 

 superabundance of quartz. Most of the ore seems to have been taken out from a layer 

 three feet wide ; but this is not specially richer than its neighbors, and its impregnation 

 varies in different places. Nowhere is there a true metallic vein. 



The ore, while mingled with quartz beyond the possibility of washing, has none of 

 those impurities which deteriorate the metal. The richest portions might yield as much 

 as 60 per cent, of iron ; but the vast mass of the rock would not average 30 per cent. 

 Of the ore, such as it is, there is any amount, for the iron-bearing ledge could doubt- 

 less be entered anywhere in its course with substantially the same results as where it 

 has been worked. The ore could not, under the most favorable circumstances, bear 

 transportation. 



At Winchester a magnetic ore, carrying 24.26 per cent, of metallic iron, occurs in 

 three beds situated upon the opposite sides of a gneissic anticlinal, whence it is prob- 

 able that six beds outcrop. The thickest is somewhat less than 40 feet, dipping 40° E., 

 exposed for 200 feet. The smaller beds are five or six feet thick, opened about eight 

 feet deep for 200 feet, and dipping 3o°-5o° W. These beds were wrought and aban- 

 doned before 1800, the ore having been smelted at Furnace village in Winchester. 



Of other localities. Thorn mountain in Jackson shows several veins of magnetic ore 

 in granite, from a few inches to two and a half feet wide, running N. 25° W. on the 

 top, and N. 55° W. on the west side of the mountain. Dykes of basalt cut the veins 

 which afford 37.99 per cent, of metallic iron. The magnetic iron of Unity contains 62.6 

 per cent, of metallic iron ; and the hematite of Lebanon 65.17 per cent. The hematite 

 of Black hill, Benton, yielding 62.4 per cent, of metallic iron, is from six inches to three 

 feet in width, and quite irregular, contained in a granular quartz. Bog ores of consid- 

 erable amount, containing from 36 to 55 per cent, of metallic iron, are mentioned in 

 the towns of Eaton, Barnstead, Charlestown, Haverhill, Lebanon, Milford, Lancaster, 

 and Pelham. Additional localities of like account, of all three kinds, are in the towns 

 of Warren, Haverhill, Bath, Landaff, Franconia (east part), Lyman, Dalton, Gorham, 

 Berlin, Gilmanton, Moultonborough, Jackson, Pittsfield, Barnstead, Merrimack, Bed- 

 ford, Amherst, Lyndeborough, Peterborough, Swanzey, Gilford, Freedom, Grafton, 

 Eaton, Enfield, Canaan, and Orford. 



