26 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



its centre, is its highest elevation, owing to the mouth of " Dry 

 run," being discharged there, from the east. A ridge of 

 land of considerable elevation, in some places, separates this 

 prairie from the Scioto, on the West, the river being from 

 one fourth, to a half mile distant from its western edge. 

 These particulars must supply the absence of an accompany- 

 ing map. 



Several years since, for the double purposes of makuig a 

 fence, and of draining a portion of these wet lands, a ditch was 

 dug in them of considerable length, and from appearance, we 

 shoild say, it was four feet wide, and as many in depth. By 

 examining this ditch, while the digging was going on, as well 

 as the materials excavated from it, we ascertained that this 

 prairie contained a great abundance of peat. We have speci- 

 mens of it, which burn briskly, and produce a good degree of 

 heat. Its quality is of the very best species; it exists in quan- 

 tities entirely sufficient, amply to supply with fuel, the sur- 

 rounding country, for ages yet to come. It is composed of 

 fibres, and is of that species called "compact." Similar peat 

 exists in a prairie through which the main road from this town 

 to Columbus passes, six miles south of the State Capitol. It 

 exists in all the wet prairies, which we examined for it, in this 

 county, and in those of Madison, Champaign, Clark and Mont- 

 gomery. In December, 1814, we found it in the wet prairie, 

 adjoining to, and east of the town of Urbana. While on the 

 same tour, we saw similar peat, in the prairie skirting the Mad 

 river, from near to Springfield, Clark county, almost all the 

 way to Dayton, situate at the confluence of the Mad river, with 

 the Great Miami. The prairie north of Circleville, appears to 

 have been the bed of some considerable stream, the Scioto river 

 perhaps. In some places it is four feet from the present surface, 

 to the ancient one. On the latter, once stood a thick forest of 

 white cedar trees ; these trees now lie on the ancient surface, 

 in diflTerent stages of decay. Some of them appear to have 

 been broken down by violence, others were turned up with 

 their roots, entire, while others seem to have mouldered away, 

 and died of old age. Wc have a fragment of one of these 



