1S74.] -^^"^ [Lesley. 



On the southeast flank of Tussey Mountain at R. IT. Powell's mines, 

 ten miles southeast of Frankstown, the same bed varies from 15 to 25 

 feet in thickness, and shows three well-marked benches, an upper and a 

 lower of sandy rock ore, and a middle bench, 5 or 6 feet thick, of soft 

 rich fossil ore, which is mined by the Cambria Iron Co. and transported 

 in large quantities ninety (90) miles by railroad via. Huntiogdon and 

 Tyrone city across the Alleghany Mountain to the Company's furnaces 

 at Johnstown in Cambria County, for mixing with coal-measure ores 

 (mined back of the furnaces) and high grade ores from Lake Superior 

 and Missouri. 



This is another practical evidence of the importance of this deposit to 

 the pig-metal make in America. 



The bed is absolutely continuous and uninterrupted. Its outcrop can 

 always be found at a well-defined elevation on the flank of the Upper 

 Silurian Mountain, and about two-thirds of the distance from the base 

 towards the summit. But the bed is very variable in thickness even in 

 distances of a few hundred yards, and ought to be opened in many places 

 along its run of nearly eleven miles through Lyon, Shorb & Company's 

 lands, before any extensive mining plant is made. 



Its solid contents above water lei>el is very large. Southwest of the 

 Tyrone gap it contains above water level from one to three million cubic 

 yards of ore, according as its thickness varies from three to nine feet. 

 Northeast of the gap, it contains one to two millions more, allowing for 

 the probable general thinning of the bed in that direction ; but as ex- 

 perience has taught vis that sections of its outcrop are very likely to show 

 an exceptionally great thickness, the estimate may be indefinitely in- 

 creased. 



Along the whole 10^ miles of outcrop it runs parallel to and within less 

 than a mile of first-class railways, (the Pennsylvania Railway, and the 

 Bald Eagle Valley Railway,) which ofier facilities for distributing it to 

 furnaces in northern, eastern, and western Pennsylvania. It is also 

 exposed on both sides of the Tyrone Gap, on the line of the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad, so that a main gangway a mile long can be driven in just high 

 enough above grade to allow of shutes on a siding. 



This bed in its descent beneath the surface and water level i)robably 

 suffers no such change as that which the soft fossil ores (to be next 

 described) sufler, and it can therefore be mined hereafter to an indefinite 

 distance downwards by shafts and slopes. This fact adds many millions 

 of tons of available ore to the estimate given above. 



Soft Fossil Ore Beds. 



About 40 inches of this ore may be looked for along its outcrop where- 

 ever the deposit c, d, is in good order. Sometimes its three beds are near 

 enough to mine in one gallery. Oftentimes one or another of them is want- 

 ing. Often they lie ten, twelve or more feet asunder. The variations are 

 frequent and rapid. Several hundred feet beneath the triple bed c, d, 

 A. p. S. — VOL. xiv. N 



