322 Mineralogy of Orange County, JV. Y. 



overall undiilatory coimtry, under a high state of cultivation, until 

 I entered the Drowned Lands. The country thus denominated is a 

 morass of unusual extent for the Northern Slates, and celebrated for 

 the yearly inundation to which it is subject, and the malaria to which it 

 gives rise during the latter part of summer. Its length is twenty miles, 

 and its breadth, in different places, varies from one mile to five. 

 Through it, flows the Wnlkill with a scarcely perceptible current ; to 

 whose waters, when swollen by the spring freshets, it owes its annual 

 inundations. It consists of an immense accumulation of vegetable 

 matter, whose surface is iniperfectly converted into a soil, abounding 

 with carbonaceous matter, empyreumatic oil, and gallic acid, and cov- 

 ered, in midsummer, with a rank and luxuriant vegetation. Wherever 

 it has been ditched to any considerable depth, as bag been the fact in 

 several places in the construction of the roads that cross it, peat of an 

 excellent quality has been brought to light. Several islands rise at va- 

 rious intervals above its surface, the largest of which is two hundred 

 acres or more in extent, consisting of excellent land, which is im- 

 proved for agricultural purposes ; the smaller islands are uninhabited 

 and, for the most part, covered with wood, among which I observed 

 the beautiful flowering shrub, Rhododendron maximum growing in 

 the greatest abundance. The rocks in view upon these islands, as 

 well as those observed about the borders of this extensive morass, 

 reveal the formation on which it reposes to be, the Blue, cherty Lime- 

 stone. The small island near Woodville (see map) is the only ex- 

 ception to this remark, which consists of primitive Limestone, the 

 rock of the adjoining country. 



In an economical point of view, it is doubtful whether the Drowned 

 Lands have received the degree of attention which they merit. At pres- 

 ent, with the exception of here and there a strip bordering upon the high 

 land, they are abandoned as mere pasturing ground to cattle, which, on 

 the subsidence of the spring inundation, range over its wide surface 

 for a few weeks only, leaving it for the rest of the year a desolate 

 waste. The canal of three miles in length, now cutting at immense 

 expense, with a view, primarily, to avoid a bar of rocks in the Wal- 

 kill, it is confidently believed will redeem a large portion of these 

 lands from inundation, — a result to be desired, no less on account of 

 its bearing upon the health of the vicinity, than upon the agricultural 

 resources of the country. Nature herself offers an inducement of no 

 small consideration to the completion of this enterprize, in the facility 

 with which she will enable the agriculturalist to command the mate- 



