238 Ten Days in Ohio. 



weekly, one German and two English newspapers. There are large 

 and well filled stores ofmerchandise, &,c. he. The present population 

 is about two thousand. The Ohio canal passes within eight miles of 

 the town and the stock has been taken up for opening a lateral cut, 

 estimated to cost $50,000, which will soon be completed. Fairfield 

 County is thirty miles long and twenty four miles broad and contains 

 25,000 inhabitants. 



The HocJchocking. 



We left Lancaster at half past seven, crossing a toll bridge over 

 the Hockhocking, which is here a small stream, with a muddy bot- 

 tom and low banks; we then passed a small prairie west of the 

 bridge, the upper, or surface soil, being black and rich ; but the substra- 

 tum composed of gravel and pebbles, many of the latter are of prim- 

 itive rocks. It is a compound of primitive, transition and secondary 

 materials, the ruins of former rock formations. The country for the 

 first ten miles west of the Hockhocking, is made up of low hills with 

 fertile valleys between. The hills are composed of argillaceous earth, 

 filled with boulders and pebbles, of primitive and secondary rocks, 

 all of which are rounded and waterworn. 



PICKAWAY COUNTY. 



We now entered the borders of Pickaway County, turning off* 

 westerly into the valley of the Scioto and leaving the " great thor- 

 ough-fare of the west," on our left. The country from this to Cir- 

 cleville, a distance of eleven miles, is flat, with many wet marshy 

 places of small extent, the soil rather thin, except in the wet spots 

 and pretty well timbered. The boulders, when seen, are of the 

 same character with those passed. Eight miles east of Circleville 

 near the Lancaster road, is a quarry of fine grained sandstone, from 

 which the material used in building the aqueduct across the Scioto, 

 was taken. The texture is compact and beautiful ; splitting very 

 readily into blocks of ten, and twenty feet in length, and of any desi- 

 red width and thickness. The color is a light brown, easily wrought 

 and suffers no decomposition on exposure to the vicissitudes of the 

 weather, a quality not common to all our sandstones. We reached 

 Circleville at L P. M. 



circLeville — Ancient Works. 



May 26. — Morning cloudy and rainy, temperature at 5 A. M. 

 37°. Nimbus at 8 A. M. with thunder, day cloudy, with high 



