Coshocton. — Ancient Cemetery. — Coal. 69 



Coshocton County. — Coshocton County contains about fourteen 

 thousand inhabitants. Its surface is hilly, but very fertile and pro- 

 ductive in wheat and other grains. The hills abound in bituminous 

 coal and iron ore. Several salt wells have been sunk in the county, 

 on Wills Creek, and on the Muskingum, which make considerable 

 salt. The wells are not deep, and are probably connected, on the 

 north western margin of the saliferous deposits. 



Town of Coshocton. — Coshocton, the seat of justice for this 

 county, is finely situated at the junction of the Tuscarawas and the 

 Walhouding rivers. The ground on which it is built, lies in four 

 broad natural terraces, each elevated about nine feet above the other. 

 The last one is nearly one thousand feet wide. The situation could 

 hardly be altered for the better by the hand of man. The present 

 population is about five hundred. 



Ancient cemetery. — A short distance below Coshocton, on one of 

 those elevated, gravelly alluvions, so common on the rivers of the 

 West, has been recently discovered a very singular ancient burying 

 ground. From some remains of wood, still apparent in the earth 

 around the bones, the bodies seem all to have been deposited in 

 coffins ; and what is still more curious, is the fact that the bodies 

 buried here were generally not more than from three to four and a 

 half feet in length. They are very numerous, and must have been 

 tenants of a considerable city, or their numbers could not have been 

 so great. A large number of graves have been opened, the inmates 

 of which are all of this pigmy race. No metallic articles or uten- 

 sils have yet been found, to throw light on the period or the nation 

 to which they belonged. Similar burying grounds have been found 

 in Tennessee, and near St. Louis in Missouri. 



Coal. — The main deposit of coal, near Coshocton, is said to be 

 nine feet thick, and lies much lower in the hills than at Newcastle. 

 It is probably the same stratum that is found below the bed of the 

 Muskingum River, at Zanesville. 



May I8th. — We left Roscoe and passed down the Muskingum 

 valley, generally near the base of the hills, to Websport, a small 

 village of warehouses on the canal. At this point a side cut is taken 

 out to the Muskingum River, across the bottom lands, which here 

 are more than two miles wide, and continue nearly of this width for 

 eight or ten miles up and down the river. From the outlet of this 

 side cut, dams are to be thrown across the stream at intervals, for a 

 slack-water navigation to the town of Zanesville, a distance of four- 



