60 Wisconsin and Missouri Lead Region. 



Pilot Knob. — This is a much larger hill than the Iron Moun- 

 tain. It lies about six miles south of it, and seems to form the 

 termination of that ridge to the south. All around rise high hills 

 enclosing this, but none that appear to be a continuation of the 

 rid<ye. This attains an elevation of about seven hundred feet 

 above the valleys, and is quite steep and rocky. Iron ore more 

 close grained and compact than that of the Iron Mountain, is found 

 in loose pieces at the foot of the hill, and these continue to in- 

 crease in number and size on ascending. Half way up solid 

 ledges of iron ore and piles of ferruginous rock, resembling blocks 

 of granite on a steep primary mountain, appear. Some of it is a 

 ferruginous and siliceous conglomerate, black or red, and contin- 

 ually varying in its proportion of oxide of iron, from quartz rock 

 to the hardest and most compact iron ore. Some of it is of a 

 slaty structure, easily splitting like slate. At the top it is more 

 massive, and the best ore. Here rises a rocky peak, looking like 

 a rough granite crag, of about sixty feet perpendicular elevation, 

 forming the summit or knob from Vv-hich the hill takes its name. 

 The surface of the rock is of a gray color, covered with moss, 

 and it would not be distinguished by an indifferent observer from 

 other primary rocks. Huge blocks lie below the perpendicular 

 peak, and the solid ledge itself is exposed along the summit for 

 nearly two hundred feet in length, and forty or fifty in breadth. 

 Nearly all this is found to be the rich peroxide of iron, but a part 

 of it is the ferruginous conglomerate into which it passes, and 

 which perhaps in many other places would be considered work- 

 able iron ore. The sides of the hills are covered, when not too 

 rocky, with a good growth of oak, and the valleys and hills 

 around contain valuable forests of these trees, but there is no 

 good water power near, and the country is very thinly settled, 

 the soil being of indifferent quality, and the surface very rough. 



Other veins of iron ore are said to occur in the hills around, 

 but none of them are likely soon to become of any practical 

 importance. 



Some indications of lead ore are also found near the Iron Moun- 

 tain range of hills, in Bellevue valley. One shaft, sunk by a Mr. 

 Thomas, in a vertical east and west fissure, to the depth of forty 

 four feet, afforded some* galena, sulphurets of iron and copper, 

 and carbonate of lead, suflicient only for specimens, but enough 

 to encourage the proprietor to continue "prospecting" in hopes 



