a 
449 
1872.] [Lesley. 
be put in blast safely, making together (with one always out for repair, 
ete.), say 3150450 tons of metal per week ; or even 600 or more. 
On the other hand, no profit could be made on coke bought at the 
mines; and no profit on coal, but only on the coking of the coal at the 
Furnace, by supplying store goods for wages ; whereas, the 64 cents per 
bushel paid for the charcoal is paid in stores, and a large saving accom 
plished. 
The same is true of other labor, at the Furnace and at the mines ; but 
this would not be changed by the substitution of coke for charcoal. 
Another consideration, and one of importance, is the change in the 
quality of metal produced. So long as the lowest beds of the Cumber- 
land Mountain system are mined, the coal will be second rate, and even 
if the best precautions are taken, the coke will not be so good a fuel as 
charcoal. Quality of metal would have to be sacrificed to some extent for 
the sake of quantity. The metal made at Embreeville could hardly be 
better than it is ; exceedingly strong in the pig and much esteemed for 
car-wheel use. The price of such iron must always be high, whatever be 
the state of the seaboard and foreign markets, because of the limited 
amount of it made, and always to be made. Much, if not most, of the 
Tennessee iron must always be cold-short on account of the wide dis- 
tribution of cold-short ores through the country. 
; The Brown Hematite, or limonite, deposits of Bompas Cove exactly re- 
semble those of Morrison’s Cove, Nittany Valley, Kishicoquilis, and other 
Lower Silurian limestone valleys of Pennsylvania and Virginia; and 
those of the long line of the north flank of the South Mountain (Blue 
Ridge, Smoky Mountain range) from the Hudson River to Alabama. They 
are in’ fact situated geologically just like the Allentown, Carlisle, and 
Chambersburg deposits. 
These ores are irregular masses of ochreous clays and loose sands, full 
of shot and balls and pipes of the hydrated sesquioxide of iron ; with 
coatings of the black oxide of manganese, and traces of the original sul- 
phide of iron, sulphide of lead, and sulphide of zinc, held by the lime- 
| stone strata before these were dissolved and made cavernous by the drain- 
} age waters which have packed the clay sand ore into all the holes and 
, crevices, caves and water-courses thus made. 
| The general dip of the limestone beds in Bompas is about 10° north- 
northeast, against a fault which crosses the mouth of the cove and 
seems to run in.a line about N. 15° W., S. 15° E. All the rocks to the 
east of this line—the rocks in which the river flows—are of an older age, 
and dip 60° S. 40° E., in very st raight bold outcrops, as represented on 
the map and in the section accompanying it. 
This gentle dip of the limestone has exposed several square miles of the 
ferruginous lower limestone to decomposition ; and the quantity of ore is 
correspondingly great. 
The limestone has been cross-cleft ; its cleavage planes dipping 45°, 
more or less. The dissolution has followed these cleavage planes. The 
A. P. 8.—VOL. XII.—3E 
