OF ARKANSAS. 125 



coal.* The accompanying wood-cut [see p. 127] is engraved from a rapid 

 sketch of this extensive prospect, comprising the various objects above enu- 

 merated, taken from the above heights, north-west of the town of Van 

 Buren. At the foot of this hill, and in the cuts of the ravines immediately 

 back of the town of Van Buren, 23 to 25 feet of shale are exposed, the 

 lower portion of which, for ten feet, is black and bituminous. One hun- 

 dred and ten feet more of shale have been passed through in the well sunk 

 at Pennywit & Scott's mill, including, near the bottom, a small seam of 

 coal, reported 18 inches thick. 



The strata immediately exposed, adjacent to the town of Van Buren, 

 are : 



Sandstone. 



Grey shale and shaly sandstone, with ferruginous segregations, 30 feet. 



Black and reddish shales, 15 feet. 



Blackish grey shale, with segregations of carbonate of iron, 15 feet. 



Shales, including 18 inch coal, passed through in the steam mill well 

 below the town of Van Buren, 110 feet. 



These shales lie no doubt at the base of the millstone grit, as we found 

 in the overlying sandstone, 150 or 200 feet above these shales, the same 

 curious impressions of plants (?) which occur in the millstone grit of Van 

 Buren county, near Theodore Goocllow's, showing the great extent and re- 

 markable persistency of this formation, as it extends through the northern 

 counties of Arkansas. 



The sandstones and shales seen in section in the Ozark mountains, north 

 of Van Buren, have much the lithological character of the " Barren Coal 

 Measures" of the eastern coal field of Kentucky, in which schistose earthy 

 sandstones predominate ; but it is not improbable that they may be all re- 

 ferrible to the millstone grit, which seems to have an enormous expansion, 

 and to occupy great areas in the north-west counties of Arkansas. 



Four or five miles north-west of Van Buren, in some of the deep cuts 

 where red and ferruginous shales are exposed, more or less iron ore was 

 observed, but mostly of a siliceous character. 



The shales, at the base of the hills, bordering on the Arkansas river, 

 noted in the preceding sections, seem to underlie a great extent of country 

 not only in this county, but for a great distance down the valley of the 

 Arkansas river, in a south-east direction. 



As limestone is a very scarce article in this county, it may be well to 

 take note that there is a dark grey, ferruginous, calcareous bed, that crops 

 out, not only near the sulphur springs in the bed of the Sulphur branch of 



* This country, south of the Arkansas river, has not yet been explored. 



