228 Ten Days in Ohio. 



already nearly four hundred thousand bushels per annum. The 

 county is thirty two miles long from east to west, eighteen miles 

 broad from north to south, and contains about thirteen thousand in- 

 habitants. McConnelsville, the seat of justice, is a thriving town, 

 seated on the left bank of the Muskingum, twenty five miles below 

 Zanesville, in the midst of the salt region. 



ZANESVILLE. 



Zanesville is the county town for Muskingum County, and lies on 

 the east side of the river, about seventy five miles from its mouth. 

 It stands on the sand rock formation, at the falls of the Muskingum, 

 in a most picturesque and beautiful region. The town is named af- 

 ter Ebenezer Zane, one of the earliest and most enterprising pio- 

 neers of the west ; and the town plat, being a mile square, was 

 granted by Congress to Mr. Zane in 1796, in consideration of his 

 .surveying and laying out a road on the most eligible route between 

 Wheeling, in Virginia, and Limestone, in Kentucky. His perfect 

 knowledge of the country, obtained in his hunting excursions, ena- 

 bled him to do this in the most satisfactory manner. The town was 

 surveyed and laid off into streets and lots, about the year 1800, and 

 in 1803 contained only ten families, within the" town plat. It is now 

 one^of the most thriving and business-like towns in the state; em- 

 bracing a population of about four thousand souls. Its immense 

 water power for mills, and the vast deposits of coal and iron found 

 here, give it superior facilities in many kinds of manufactures. The 

 inhabitants have improved these advantages, and iron works, flour 

 mills, cotton and woolen, and glass manufactories, &;c. are in opera- 

 tion on every side. A canal, cut through the sand rock stratum, 

 across the bend made by the river at the falls, affords, by means of 

 lateral cuts, invaluable water power. The bed of the river, at the 

 falls, is composed of a dark colored, very compact limestone, highly 

 impregnated with iron, and is sometimes used in the neighboring 

 furnaces with other ores. The superior density of this rock, has 

 doubtless occasioned and preserved the falls where they now are. 

 Had they been of sandstone, like the deposit over it, the continual 

 wear of the waters, would, ages ago, have reduced the falls to a 

 mere ripple. 



Coal. 



Above the sand rock, in the adjacent hills, which here rise about 

 two hundred feet above the bed of the river, are found beds of bitu- 



