OF ARKANSAS. G9 



superposition, as observed in Kentucky, of the cotemporaneous shales, I 

 am, at present, disposed to consider them as immediately following these 

 sandstones, in the order of superposition. At any rate, the cliffs of sand- 

 stone and conglomerate of Little Red river, and the Gilbert shales of 

 "White county, Arkansas, are a perfect counterpart of the high escarpment 

 of the " Dismal rock," of which a sketch is given as the frontispiece to the 

 first volume of the Kentucky Geological Report, and the ferruginous shales 

 of Xolin are shown in a section at the end of the same volume. 



The Gilbert shales are underlaid by heavy sandstones, passing down- 

 wards into a more schistose rock in the descent towards Panther creek. 



The quantity of iron ore at this locality, both of the carbonate and 

 limonite varieties, would go far towards supplying a furnace, and similar 

 ores can, no doubt, be discovered in the same geological position in other 

 parts of the county. Hereafter we shall record the constituents of this 

 ore when the quantitative chemical analysis is completed. 



In digging wells in the vicinity of Searcy, a blackish grey, indurated, 

 argillo-siliceous shale is encountered, containing small scales of dissemi- 

 nated mica. This material is brittle and crumbles, by exposure, to a clay. 



Similar shales are struck, usually ten feet below the surface, under the 

 red lands situated west of Searcy. The first ten feet passed through, gene- 

 rally consist of soil, subsoil, and gravel overlying these shales. The red 

 soil of these level farming lands is quite productive, yielding good crops 

 of cotton, corn, wheat, and the finest oats in ordinary seasons, viz. : 800 to 

 1,500 pounds of cotton in the seed to the acre, twenty to twenty-five 

 bushels of wheat, and forty to sixty bushels of oats, when there are sea- 

 sonable rains. 



Samples of this soil have been collected for future chemical analysis, in 

 case the agricultural department of the Survey should be hereafter pro- 

 vided for. 



This description of land must have an area of some 360 square miles, 

 extending, as it does, about thirty miles from east to west, and twelve 

 miles from north to south, and appears to have been derived from the dis- 

 integration of the ferruginous shales, which, at one time, existed over the 

 dark, argillo-siliceous shales, that now underlie this tract, and which still 

 are to be seen in the slopes of the hills adjacent to these red lands. 



In the southern part of the county, watered by bayou Des Arc and 

 Caney creek, sandstones and shales of the millstone grit period prevail. 



In the Royal Colony settlement, near the line between sections seven and 

 eight, township five, range ten, a bed of coal, from ten to twelve inches 

 in thickness, occurs sixty feet up in a ridge, known as Coal-hill, at the 

 head of Cypress bayou. 



