3IURPHREE'S VALLEY*, ECONOMIC GEOLOGY. 59 



debris, that it would require a great deal of labor to expose it. 



In Section 30, same Township, the hardness of the ore 

 from the 4th bed and the size of the displaced masses of it 

 seem rather to increase. Careful search on the most abraded 

 points was here made for the other beds. No. 3 was found, 

 and as far as could be judged by the surface, is from 3 to 4 

 feet thick; ore rather too shaly near the surface, may carry 

 good ore farther in. No. 2 was not found. No. 1 is thinner 

 than heretofore seen, and inferior. 



The Blackburn Fork of the Little Warrior cuts through 

 the Red Mountain near the middle of this section. On the 

 face of the mountain, on the South side of the river, the dis- 

 placed blocks of hard sandy ore from the 4th bed are en- 

 countered. There is so much of it that it seems improbable 

 it should all have come from one bed, only 3 feet thick. 

 But it has. At the top of the mountain it is washed naked, 

 and in place, and measured just 3 feet. A little farther 

 along, the abrasion of a powerful current is very plainly 

 seen. It had cut dawn the mountain below this bed, and 

 carried the huge blocks of ore far down on the N. W. side. 

 For a wide space the whole of the Clinton had been swept 

 away. How strange that that little stream, now flowing 300 

 feet below, should ever have flowed here ! Yet it had, 

 though then the mountain was not so high. If it had been, 

 the course of the stream would have been changed. It 

 would have flowed down the valley to a different outlet. 

 Plain proof here, were any needed of the gradual rise, and 

 gradual denudation, of these barriers. Their uplift, and 

 abrasion, went on together, and the course of the stream was 

 unchanged. How long since the last uplift, we may never 

 know, but it was evidently at no remote period of Geologic 

 time. The principal falls in all the streams which enter, or 

 leave the valley, are yet at the margins; at its very edge. 

 These must recede farther, and farther up the streams, under 

 their constant corrasion, until the fall in each is equalized. 

 Bars of hard rock are slowly cut by running water but these 

 falls are all in Carboniferous rocks,which are readily abraded. 

 It is therefore evident that the period since the elevatory 



