Ten Days in Ohio. 249 



Mineral Spring — Slate or Shale — Shells. 



At West-Port, which is a small village of ten or fifteen houses, two 

 stores and a mill, is a fine mineral spring, rising in the bed of Deer 

 Creek. The water contains sulphate of magnesia, iron, and carbon- 

 ic acid gas, causing the water to sparkle briskly as it runs from the 

 earth. The spring rises from a vast bed of recent clay slate, which 

 for many miles forms the bed of the creek, and a cliff along its banks 

 of twenty feet in height. The slate contains iron pyrites, and fos- 

 sil impressions of bituminized wood. The spring is copious, and 

 moderately cathartic, affording probably a barrel of water in two 

 minutes ; and when confined in a tube of boards rising to the height 

 of eighteen feet and running over the top. Deer Creek affords some 

 of the most beautiful specimens of shells of the Genus Unio, that I 

 have seen in Ohio. But in the summer months, the waters of the 

 creek become so much charged with lime, as to coat entirely over 

 the outside of the shells an eighth of an inch in thickness. 



This deposit of clay slate is probably very extensive, as the same 

 is found on the Whetstone fork of the Scioto, north of Columbus ; 

 on Paint Creek in Ross County, and on the eastern branches of 

 Brush Creek in Adams County, a distance of one hundred miles. 



Iron Ore. 



I am led to call this deposit iron ore from the fact of its contain- 

 ing globular pyrites, and some specimens approaching to clay iron ore, 

 or carb. of iron, which are melted up with other ores in the furna- 

 ces in Newark and Granville, where they are found out of place, 

 in the diluvial earth, amidst boulders of limestone and primitive rocks 

 at ten or twelve feet below the surface. The furnace men and ore 

 diggers, fully believe them to be cannon balls and bomb shells, used 

 by the ancient inhabitants in defence of their forts, which near New- 

 ark are numerous and extensive. When found in place they are of 

 all sizes ; from one inch, to ten feet in diameter, some of them are 

 perfect spheres; others are oblate at one pole, or urn-shaped. So 

 exact is the resemblance to a globular iron casting, with a ring in re- 

 lievo all around the margin, that it is hard to divest one of the be- 

 lief of their artificial origin. I have several in my cabinet, both urn- 

 shaped and spherical. In the banks and bed of Deer Creek, I saw 

 a number in place, at least eight feet in diameter; when long expo- 

 sed to the atmosphere, they had split into numerous fragments, prob- 



Vol. XXV.— No. 2. 32 



