12 Topography of the Valley of the MusMngum. 



mosphere. Other masses have red, or purple feldspar. There is 

 also very beautiful sienite, and porphyritic granite, with hornblende 

 rock, containing large crystals ; greenstone, jasper and mica slate, 

 are also found. These, in company with other hard materials, are, 

 uniformly, in rounded masses, with the angles completely abraded, 

 as if transported from considerable distances. Primitive rocks, in 

 place, are abundant on the northern shores of Lake Superior, but 

 they are not known much south of that point. With proper atten- 

 tention and time, I have no doubt the origin of these " lost rocks" 

 could be discovered. They evidently, have been brought from the 

 N. west, and remarkably concur in this respect, with the course of 

 the boulder rocks, described by Prof Hitchcock in his Geology of 

 Massachusetts. 



The dividing ridges between the water courses on the east side 

 of the Muskingum, and especially those between the head waters of 

 creeks, are composed of the remnants of the bottom of the ancient 

 ocean, and afford the highest lands in this part of the valley. Where 

 their direction accords with the position of settlements and towns, 

 they are chosen for roads and highways, as they are very dry, and 

 sometimes, for miles in succession, they are barely wide enough for 

 a road, and they are, by the hand of nature, regularly rounded and 

 shaped to the form of a modern turnpike. In other parts, where 

 spurs put off into the head branches of small rivulets, they spread 

 out to considerable breadths, affording level lands for farms. As 

 these dividing ridges have been formed by the streams, so their di- 

 rection is governed altogether' by that of the watercourses. 



The tributary streams on the west side of the valley, above the 

 mouth of Licking river, rise in a supercretaceous or tertiary region. 

 The surface is flat or undulating, with here and there a hill of con- 

 siderable elevation, crowned with sandstone ; while the general sur- 

 face and the earth, beneath, so far as it has been penetrated in 

 digging wells, are composed of alternating beds of loam and clay, 

 gravel and sand, water worn pebbles, and boulders of primitive 

 rocks. 



The boulders, so far as I have observed, are confined chiefly, to 

 the tertiary portions of the valley, and are rarely if ever, found in 

 the hilly secondary or sandstone formations. The northern part of 

 the valley contains many wet prairies and swamps, jn which the 

 common cranberry flourishes ; numerous small lakes and ponds in this 

 region, give origin to several of the head branches of the Muskingum. 



