ELIZAEETHTOWN AND PORT HEXRY OU.\DRANGLES I35 



by J. C. Smock as the Noble mine. Professor Smock records the 

 following in New York State Museum Bulletin 7, page 34, 1889. 



Noble mine, Nigger hill, Elizabethtown, Essex co. Another 

 mine of the Champlain Iron Company on lot No. 136 of the North 

 Riverhead tract. The ore has been opened for 150 feet, on a side 

 hill^ on the outcrop. The vein is 11 feet wide. The ore bed was 

 first discovered in 1825. No mining has been done in 15 years. 



Mr Newland also visited the pit pointed out as the Nigger Hill 

 mine, but whether it is the same one as described above may be un- 

 certain. He observed a pit 60 feet long by 30 to 40 feet wide, 

 opened by stripping off some 6 feet and less of gneiss in order to 

 expose a very, flat bed of ore beneath it. The overlying gneiss 

 was a basic hornblendic variety, apparently a member of the syenite 

 series, but the underlying was not recorded. This very fiat position 

 of the ore is unusual since the dips of the gneisses are as a rule 

 steeper. It probably chanced to be left by the general erosion at 

 the crest of an anticline or in the trough of a flat syncline. B. T. 

 Putnam did not visit the mine for the Tenth Census, so that no 

 analyses have been recorded. 



From some stray notes of Professor Smock there may be other 

 small openings in this hill, but if so, we have not seen them. 



Small pits near New Russia. The sudden fall of the Boquet 

 river at New Russia affords a water power which occasioned 

 the erection and operation of a forge during the period of the 

 bloomaries. Ore was naturally sought in the neighborhood and 

 at other points than the Gates and Nigger Hill pits. A series of 

 small beds was discovered along the west side of the valley and 

 small excavations were made at three or four points. To these 

 the writer w^as guided by Mr Frank Morehouse of New Russia. 

 The most southerly one is the Pitkin bed which was in the foot of 

 the hills just west of the highway about ^ mile south of New 

 Russia. A small pit had been sunk on a thin bed of ore. 



Next north is the Castaline a short distance up the valley of 

 Roaring brook and on the south side. Speaking of this and others 

 near, Professor Smock in Bulletin 7, page 34, states, " West of the 

 Boquet river in this town magnetic iron ore in workable extent has 

 been discovered on what is known as the Castaline place, north 

 of New Russia and in the Wakefield, Post and Ross veins. . . 

 Since the stopping of the forges these mines have lain idle. The 

 Castaline is one of the oldest openings in the country. Watson, in 

 his history of Essex county, says that ore was taken out of it about 

 1800 and used in forges." 



