8 On the Salt Springs at Salina, Syracuse, ^c. 



In the course of the last eight years, a manufacturer at 

 SaUna, under a law of the state for the encouragement of 

 the undertaking, has made several unsuccessful attempts, by 

 boring in different places, to discover rock salt : and, within 

 eighteen months, the same operation has been performed, 

 vi^ith partial success, to obtain brine of increased strength 

 and quantity. At one place, in Syracuse, the boring was two 

 hundred and fifty feet, eighty feet lower than the deepest 

 places in Onondaga lake, and principally through indurated 

 clay, but the adventurers, meeting with very hard rock, sup- 

 posed to be granite, the work was discontinued without the 

 discovery of any vein of salt or even fresh water. At another 

 place, salt water of inferior strength appeared at the com- 

 mencement, but at the depth of fifty feet the boring was 

 abandoned, owing to the difficulty of forcing dowtt the tube, 

 of sheet iron, through a bed of rounded smooth stones, which 

 were of every size from common coarse gravel to that of a 

 man's head, and of a variety of colors and texture. 



About a mile from the south end of the lake, and on the 

 border of Onondaga creek, (the small river before mention- 

 ed,) among stones resembling those just described, a well 

 had been sunk thirty feet, and the work suspended three 

 years ; but last summer a tube was driven down, in the cen- 

 tre of the well, fifty feet further, into a stratum, the thickness 

 of which is undetermined, of clean washed gravel: ten feet 

 from the surface of the ground the saltness of the water was 

 first perceptible, increasing with the descent of the well, and 

 afterwards of the tube, till the boring ceased at the depth of 

 eighty feet, where it was found to contain twenty-two ounces 

 of salt and impurities in the gallon. When the water of the 

 well is lowered eight feet by pumping, the quantity discharg- 

 ed from the tube, which has the upper part cut oflT at that 

 depth, is one hundred gallons per minute, and, when the 

 pumps are stopped, it rises to the surface of the earth and 

 discharges in a small stream. 



At Geddesburgh and Green Point, places on opposite 

 shores of the lake, there has been boring to considerable 

 depths, not over eighty feet, and other veins have been open- 

 ed of salt water which is extensively used at the former place 

 and Liverpool. 



Three large metallic pumps, moved by the surplus water 

 of the Erie canal, and one, worked by a small steam engine? 



