QUARTZYTES AND SANDSTONES. 75 



a certain royalty per square foot of stone taken out, about a half a 

 cent per square foot, but now the rate ranges from five to ten per 

 cent royalty. Few of the quarries are run by companies or on a 

 large scale. Nearly all of them are worked by a single party or by 

 the associated effort of two or three men of small capital, or more 

 often by laborers themselves uniting their labor. Hence little or no 

 machinery is to be seen at the greater number. Generally a loading 

 derrick, worked by hand-power and a small hand-pump make up the 

 equipment. At the larger quarries horse-power derricks, for lifting 

 the stone from their beds, and loading derricks at the railroad dock, 

 are in use. The quarries in the Esopus creek valley and in Wood 

 stock are nearly all in steep hillsides and the drainage is natural. 

 And in nearly all of the quarries in the lower country the situation is 

 such that little or no water has to be raised. 



In quarrying the rock is thrown down or broken up by the use of 

 common, blasting powder, until the quarry beds are reached. The 

 latter are split apart into convenient sizes by the use of plug and 

 feather wedges, driven in shallow holes, set in lines across the block. 

 The natural division planes, or joints are taken advantage of in 

 cutting up the blocks. These joints are generally vertical, or nearly 

 so, and run in two systems, the one parallel to the strike of the beds, 

 or the ledge also, and the other system at right angles to the first and 

 in the line or direction of the dip of the beds. The former make 

 the successive "headers'' or face of the quarry ; the latter are known 

 as the end joints. The average distance between the latter is from 

 10 to 20 or 30 feet. Where they are regular and well defined, as 

 they are in nearly all of the larger quarries, the blocks or slabs of 

 stone are readily cut into rectangular-shaped sizes for platforms, side- 

 walk, crosswalk and curbing stone. The beds of stone range from 

 an inch to three feet in thickness, and in some instances six feet, 

 as at Quarryville, the top beds generally being thinner than those 

 deeper in the quarry. In working into the hills the bedding planes 

 or divisions sometimes disappear and two or more thin layers coalesce 

 into one thick bed. In most cases these thick strata can be split 

 along planes parallel to the bedding. And the cap layer is lifted off 

 by means of wedging on the edges. The size of blocks is determined 

 by the natural joints, and stone 60 feet by 20 feet have been lifted 

 from the bed. The facilities for handling and shipping limit the size. 

 It is customary to use the thinner stone for town or village sidewalks. 

 The thicker stone are cut into curbing, or crosswalk and sidewalk, or 



