40 GEOLOGY OF ILLINOIS. 



in former days, when a few made fortunes and the many only ordinary 

 mining wages. 



There is from twenty to thirty-five feet of the "flint rock" above the 

 water level. The flint, on the higher levels, is from 130 to 150 feet be- 

 low the surface. The crevices gradually close before reaching the flint 

 rock. The easily worked perpendicular crevices above the flint strata 

 were first worked out, and then the mine was generally abandoned. 

 Another observation worthy of notice is the local elevations and dips 

 in this group of lead mines. The flint strata outcrop at the side of the 

 Galena road in a ravine about two miles north-west of Elizabeth. This 

 outcrop is a few feet above the water level of the brook near by. At 

 NYishou's shaft, a short distance east of the outcrop, and near the top of 

 the hill, the miners are working thirty-five feet below the water level 

 of the mines, and still the flint is not reached. The water level in the 

 mines rises slowly as the hill is penetrated ; but this rising of the level 

 could make but a few inches or feet difference at most ; while the fact 

 seems to be that there is more than forty feet difference between the 

 bottom of the shaft and the flint outcrop on the road, and no flint is 

 yet reached in the shaft. In other localities the same thing has been 

 noticed. In prospecting for deep mining in this region, this fact may 

 aid in coming to a correct conclusion as to the probable location of 

 lead deposits. 



Leaving the Elizabeth lead fields, the next heavy mines are found a 

 few miles west, on the east and west slopes of the bluff' range, border- 

 ing the Mississippi river. These are the New California mines, discov- 

 ered accidentally only a few years ago, by a fisherman, who resided in 

 a wild glen on the Mississippi river. At this point the rocky bluff's rise 

 abruptly. The ranges are found by drifting into them a little above 

 water level, going in where a crevice is noticed rising vertically through 

 the rocks. The mineral found is heavy mineral, existing in large cubes 

 or cogs in some instances. It resembles the large bodies of mineral 

 found in the Marsden lead. On the east slope of the bluff range, where 

 the hills fall away gradually to the level of the interior, several lodes 

 are struck by sinking shafts down to the ranges. The following ranges 

 have been struck in these mines, and perhaps a few others, the names 

 of which I did not learn : Wise range, McKenda & Graham, Davis & 

 Brownell, Bernard & Co., Lester, Sanders & Hony, Felt & Clymo, 

 Wakefield & Co., Marble & Young, Dye & Co., Samuel Taylor. Other 

 valuable ranges will doubtless be discovered, when all the crevrees are 

 examined. 



West of the Mississippi river, in the Iowa bluifs, the same great min- 

 eral eas't and west range has been found. We have thus followed it 



