450 
Lesley.] [May 3, 
ore-clays are packed in descending cavities sloping at that angle. The 
massive ore seems to dip 45° therefore, instead of 10°. But as several 
hundred feet of the nearly horizontal limestone beds has converted itself 
more or less into ore, the quantity of ore is immense. 
The series of ore pits from which the furnace has supplied itself, ranges 
up the side of a steep hill, beginning at an elevation of about 200 feet 
above the river (one mile from it), and ending at an elevation of 350 feet. 
But the ore continues up the hill a hundred feet higher ; and descends 
also below the lowest pit. No system has been observed in mining the 
ore. Everything has been done hap-hazard and in the most expensive 
yay. 
The stripping varies from a foot or two to twenty and thirty feet. The 
solid ore-ground, consisting of from one-half to four-fifths fine ore, the 
rest balls, with occasional masses of clay, and occasional masses of solid 
hard limestone rock (left in its original condition, but with all the edges 
dissolved round), has been dug into toa depth of ten, fifteen, twenty feet 
and more in places, without r saching bottom. 
I judged that I saw along the line of pits over the end of the tramway, 
about one million of tons of ore. 
The ore can be followed over the top of the little hill and down its 
northern side. 
Abundant evidence of ore covers the long slope of the hill towards the 
south for a quarter of a mile. 
The same limestone beds take into the isolated hill to the west ; and on 
both sides of this hill near its top are old diggings of the ore, from which 
the original furnace was supplied for a good many years, and abandoned 
when that furnace was abandoned, and the new Furnace wag erected at 
Embreeville. The old furnace was situated on Bompas Creek, about half 
a mile southwest of the present ore mines, and just opposite the lead 
mine shown upon the map, but inconyeniently far from the river. 
There must be millions of tons of iron ore in the more central part of 
the cove, in the low hills composed of the almost horizontal ore-bearing 
limestone strata, which everywhere show the dissolving action of the ore- 
collecting waters, and are covered in many places with ore-ground. 
The books of the Furnace show that after the ore has been washed and 
the large lumps roasted to make them more easily broken to pieces, the 
lowest percentage of ore to pig metal is 49, and the highest 59. The 
practical average of pig iron obtained from the thus prepared ore is fifty- 
five per cent.* : 
> 
* Analysis of Brown Hematite ore from Bompas Cove, E. T., made by Prof, Fisher, of U. 8. 
Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md, : 
Water and organic matter, - - - - - - 13515 
Phosphorie acid, - - - - - - 4 ~ i. 09 
Silica, . Fr - ms = < . i 8.05 
Alumina, - - - = iS - - i i 1.28 
Sesquioxide of manganese, - - - - - cS oaT 
Sulphur, - - - - “ < . i - 203 
Peroxide of iron, . . > i . c ie 82,27 
100, 313 
82, 27 peroxide of iron equals 57.6 per cent, pure iron, 
