14 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



region, in question, numerous interesting, and impressive 

 views present themselves. Sometimes the strata of sandstone 

 seem to have been broken down, into large tabular masses, 

 which arc promiscuously scattered about, or they are piled on 

 each other, in wild disorder. In some places, this rock rises 

 into conical hills, as in Licking county, near, and also north, 

 and northeastwardly of the town of Granville. Here, these 

 mounds, of a very friable sandstone, resemble, in appearance, 

 at a distance, the limestone knobs, in the barrens of Kentucky. 

 Sometimes these rocks rise into pillars, as in Fairfield county, 

 whose sunmiits are high and their angles acute, and, standing 

 in piles not very distant from each other. The summits of 

 these hills and pillars are often, nearly on the same level, and 

 the seams which separate their strata, correspond through the 

 whole series. 



Hence, it is inferred, that these hills and pillars, once con- 

 stituted a continuous mass, traversed by perpendicular fissures, 

 and that the elements have operated the changes in them 

 which we now see. Alonor the Ohio river, in the counties 

 of Scioto, Lawrence, Gallia and Meigs, and in corresponding 

 parts of Kentucky and Virginia, the hills assume a lofty as- 

 pect, of five and sometimes, seven hundred feet, in height, ris- 

 inor with acute angular sides. In front of the town of Ports- 

 mouth, the sandstone hill, on the Kentucky shore, rises, five 

 hundred feet above the bed of the river. This rock consti- 

 tutes the broken, and often abrupt surfaces of the hilly por- 

 tions of Scioto, Lawrence, Pike, Jackson and Hocking coun- 

 ties. It lies in beds, between three and four miles east of the 

 Scioto river, across Pickaway county, diverging from it, as we 

 travel north, until at Columbus, in Franklin county, these beds 

 are nine miles east of the Scioto river. From these beds 

 stone is procured for buildings of various sorts, and the great 

 aqueduct, across the Scioto river at Circleville, where the ca- 

 nal crosses the river, rests on pillars of this sandstone. 



It is easily quarried, and answers many useful purposes. It 

 underpins houses and barns; — and it is made into spring-houses, 

 in the sandstone region. Of it, fronts of houses are built, ia 



