28 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



Gage County as of the other counties before described. Success will at- 

 tend all well-directed efforts that way. 



There are several tine springs of water in this county, but they are 

 not numerous. Good water is always obtained by digging wells, and 

 the depth beneath the surface generally depends on the elevation above 

 the principal water-courses. Wells vary from twenty to sixty feet in 

 depth. Near Blue Spring Mr. Tylor dug a well twenty-five feet deep 

 through the yellow marl to a point on a level with the bed of the Big 

 Blue Kiver, or perhaps a little below it, and obtained a copious supply 

 of water which never fails. At the village of Blue Spring a well was 

 dug on an elevated terrace fifty-five feet through clays and quicksands 

 without passing through a particle of rock — all alluvium or superficial 

 deposits. At the depth of fifty-four feet the bones of a mastodon were 

 found. At another locality a well was dug forty-four and a half feet 

 through alluvial marl and gravel to a bed of clay on a level with the 

 bed of the Big Blue, and the water flowed in, and now continues per- 

 manently eight feet in depth. 



The excellence of the water in springs and wells in this county is a 

 "most important feature in a sanitary point of view. 



There are no minerals that can be worked to advantage in this portion 

 of the State. In the Cretaceous sandstones there are large masses of 

 limonite, (hydrated sesquioxide of iron,) but they are so full of siliceous 

 matter that they can never be of much value. Even if there was an 

 abundance of iron in. this county there is no fuel to prepare it for use. 

 Every county bears testimony to the statement that ISiebraska is wholly 

 an agricultural and grazing State. For building-stone, gravel, lime, 

 different kinds of clay, materials for making brick, &c., this county com- 

 pares favorably with any other in the State. 



Most of the settlers came into the county poor, and have not yet com- 

 menced planting fruit and forest trees to any extent. 



Very little attention has been paid to hedges, but all the cereals are 

 most excellent, and the grasshoppers passed by without doing much 

 damage, and the harvests of this autumn will be the best known since 

 the State was settled. 



There are many fine horses and cattle in the county ; very few sheep 

 as yet. 



JEPFEESON COUNTY. 



The Nebraska legislature of 1866-'67 united the two counties of Jones 

 and Nuckols under the name of Jefferson, Leaving Beatrice we took a 

 southwest course across the divide between the waters of the Big Blue 

 and those of the Little Blue. The first branch we came to and the first 

 living water that we saw was at Eock Creek, a branch of the Little Blue, 

 twenty miles distant. We traveled at least eighteen miles over the 

 almost waterless and treeless prairie — about fifteen miles of our journey 

 without any water at all. 



There were no exposures of rock, but a broad level prairie much of the 

 way, too flat to possess a suitable drainage. I knew, however, that the 

 underlying basis rocks were Cretaceous, probably the loosely aggregated 

 sandstone seen on Blakely's Eun, near Beatrice. The configuration of 

 the surface everywhere would indicate that the rocks beneath were of a 

 texture to yield readily to atmospheric influences, and the little ravines 

 and valleys were grassed down to the edge of the water. 



All the land that we passed over was clothed with a thick covering of 

 grass, the soil appeared to be fertile, and the great proportion of silica 



