4 Facts relating to certain parts of the state of Ohio. 
and as many as 1000 Ibs. of saltpetre have been obtained 
from one cavern. The rocks in the county of Washington, 
are generally coarse and fine sandstone. ‘The finer sort are 
used for finishing and ornamenting our fire-places; for win- 
dow-sills and caps; and for monuments in our grave-yards. 
They are susceptible of a finish nearly or quite equal to mar- 
ble. The coarser kind are used for the walls of houses, for 
underpinnings to brick buildings, for cellars, and for wells; 
some quarries split so freely that stones may be obtained of 
any length and thickness that is desired; and with almost as 
little trouble as would be required to split a log of wood. 
Some of the quarries are in strata of various thickness, from 
four to twenty-four inches; | believe always in horizontal 
layers. Others are in vast cliffs of perpendicular rock, from 
50 to 100 feet in height; in strata of 10 or 20 feet; these 
are usually in the narrows, near the river Ohio. 
Limestone is common all over the county. It is found on 
the tops of many of the bills, but in far greater quantities in 
the earth at their bases; beds of it being brought to light by 
the washing away of the superincumbent earth in the courses 
of rivers and creeks. It is generally impregnated with iron, 
which gives it a brown, or ochreous cast, when burnt and 
slaked for use; this does not prevent its making excellent 
mortar, when duly proportioned with sand; and to give it 
that clear white so much admired in the plaister for inside 
work, we make use of a coat prepared from lime made of 
burnt shells, than which nothing can give a purer white. 
Below these beds of limestone, you pass through a stratum 
of clay, and sometimes fossil coal; this is of various depths, 
in different parts of the county; after which you come to 
that vast and extensive bed of rock, which underlies the 
country, from the Alleghany mountains to the Mississippi 
river, for aught | have heard. The thickness of this rock 
has never yet been ascertained, but, at the depth of from 150 
to 400 feet, this rock is strongly impregnated with salt, and 
if on boring to that depth you are so fortunate as to find wa- 
ter, I believe that water invariably holds in solution a greater 
or less quantity of the muriate of soda. ‘Two attempts at 
boring for salt water have been made in this county. The 
first was made two or three years since, about 40 miles from 
Marietta, near the Muskingum river; they proceeded to the 
depth of about 200 feet, and, their prospects of obtaining water 
rather diminishing than increasing, they gave up the work. 
