738 ' Transactions of the American Institute. 



and then again continues on its regular south-west course. This moun- 

 tain derives its name from the immense vein of fossiliferous iron ore 

 continuous through it. In Tennessee there are three or four distinct 

 veins of the red fossiliferous ore ; none of them of greater thickness 

 than five to six feet. This great vein in Alabama continues down to 

 near Birmingham to be about twelve feet thick, a distance of over 100 

 miles, and one to three miles north of the A. & C. R. R.., where it 

 makes the bend south, and again south-west it suddenly widens to the 

 enormous thickness of thirty feet, and runs thus for over twenty -five 

 miles. Then there is a singular drop in the mountain, hardly a trace 

 of a hill being in a direct line for three miles ; then the mountain 

 rises again, but with a vein of ore only from two to three feet thick. 

 But directly on the opposite side of the Jones Valley commences a 

 new ridge, and this contains a vein of the red fossiliferous ore seven 

 feet thick ; and perhaps other veins, as only this one has been explored. 

 These singular freaks of nature are of much interest, even to the 

 unscientific. From this point the veins continue on regularly until 

 they sink beneath the cretaceous formation of west Alabama. 



At various points in this valley are beds of brown hematite iron 

 ore, hut near Tannahill station, on Roup's Valley, they are of such 

 size as only to be described by the word immense. If one imagines 

 a house 300 feet high and 600 tb 800 broad at base, not going up cone 

 like, but with a top say ,100 feet broad, and this house eight miles 

 long, and he will have some idea of the size of one of these beds. 

 Make that house larger and six miles long, and he will have another. 

 Mr. David Thomas, of Pennsylvania, said that he had seen all the 

 great iron deposits of the world, and none equal to these. A mining 

 engineer sent out by Fritz said, that if he went back and told the facts 

 as they were no one would believe him. Messrs. Thomas & Sons ; 

 Fritz, Willbro & Edwards, and Ostrander, English & Cline, have 

 bought large bodies of this ore, ap well as of the fossiliferous and of 

 coal lands ; yet there are many more acres to be bought at compara- 

 tively moderate prices. The price of one tract was stated to me as 

 fifty dollars per acre, very eligibly located, and others less advantage- 

 ous at from twenty to thirty dollars. An original idea seems to have 

 entered the head of one capitalist of controlling the beds, but as their 

 immense extent developed upon him he retired from the contest. To 

 Mr. Edwards I am indebted for many attentions and much informa- 

 tion, as it is said no one knows the coal fields of Alabama more thor- 

 oughly than he does. 



It is hardly probable that any part of the world will ever be 



