MARSHALL AND PUTNAM COUNTIES. 



for coal, traces of which mineral were found at a considerable depth, 

 but no coal in workable quantities could be found, and the shaft is now 

 abandoned. At Miuouk, the next station south on the Illinois Central 

 railroad and a few miles within Woodford county, a coal shaft has also 

 been sunk to a depth of over four hundred feet. The company are still 

 at work in the shaft. They have spent over twenty-five thousand dol- 

 lars in the attempt to find coal at this point, as yet without substantial 

 success. At about one hundred feet below the surface an unproductive 

 seam of coal was discovered. Nearly a hundred feet below this another 

 was detected, and, lower down towards the bottom, traces of a third 

 were observed, but none of them contained sufficient coal to make their 

 working' profitable. They do indicate however the existance of coal 

 seams under eastern Marshall county, corresponding to the La Salle and 

 Peru seams perhaps, but probably not developed to a workable extent. 



In the bluffs and ravines along the east side of the Illinois river no 

 coal, so far as I could ascertain, outcrops, or has been worked. Stone 

 quarries and natural outcrops of rock are also extremely rare in these 

 bluffs and hills. In a few localities, a whitish, hard sort of limestone, 

 which rings like an anvil when being struck with the hammer, was ob- 

 served in partial outcrops. It is the same kind of rock, and belongs to 

 the same geological horizon, as the outcrops above Trenton in Bureau 

 county. It will thus be seen that there is nothing of special interest to 

 the geologist in the eastern part of Marshall county. In the western 

 part of the county the field is more inviting. 



In the western bluff range, from the south line of the county to a 

 point considerably north of its center, and in the associated ravines and 

 hollows along this distance, sandstones, shales, black slaty clays, thin 

 bands of limestone, and coal belonging to some three different seams, out- 

 crop, or are mined and quarried. 



At Sparland. opposite Lacon. a large number of coal mines may be 

 examined. There are thirty or forty drifts in all, within two or three 

 miles of the place, but most of these are now abandoned. A few are 

 still actively worked, and furnish all the coal needed for local consump- 

 tion, including that burned by several large mills and manufactories in 

 Lacon. Gimlet Hollow " is a crooked ravine, of a few miles in length, 

 widening among the bluff's, having its mouth immediately west of the 

 little village of Sparland, on the Peoria and Chicago railroad. The 

 sides are steep and abrupt. A considerable sized brook of yellow, 

 ocherous water flows in its bottom. Commencing almost in the village. 

 the piles of black earth and shales, indicating the mouths of old coal 

 drifts, may be seen on either side, and some forty feet above the level of 

 the water in the brook. For about two miles up the hollow, these old 

 drifts mark a regular black line along the face of the hills. Most of 



