374 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



any bold, rocky exposure in the landscape, for vegetation covers every 

 thing. 



Gas springs are known in this township ; the one on Mr. Z. White's 

 land, one-third of a mile north-west of Weymouth, being the most east- 

 erly observed in the county. The gas comes from a spring of water 

 which has never been known to freeze over. Another gas spring is in 

 the bed of the west branch of Rocky River, three miles north of Medina 

 village and west of the turnpike bridge. 



An ancient fort, just south of the business houses of Weymouth, is one 

 of the best preserved and most interesting of its Jjind which can be seen 

 in this region. Like other such evidences of the old power and import- 

 ance of the race of men known as the mound-builders, this fortification 

 is called an Indian fort, though the Indians which the early settlers ot 

 the country found, knew nothing of these ancient works of defense. 

 How could they when the maple trees growing on the embankment gave 

 Evidence of being over seven hundred years old? The fort is an in- 

 trenched projection of land, which has abrupt, bluff outlines, excepting 

 at its rear connection with the main land. The river having made an 

 abrupt turn, back upon itself, there was formed a peninsula-like projection 

 of land having shale bluffs over fifty feet high. The defense of this 

 point was easy after trenches had been cut across the neck. Three such 

 trenches are now plainly discernible, and they bear on the surface evi-- 

 dence of the former greatness of the work. The trenches are two hun- 

 dred and ten feet long (width of the point of land) ; the inner trench is 

 three hundred and sixty feet back from the end of the point ; the middle 

 trench is forty-one feet from the inner one.; and the outer trench is forty- 

 nine feet from the middle one, or four hundred and fifty feet from the 

 end of the point. The trenches run east and west, the point of land 

 being a southward projection. Even now, after these many centuries of 

 ciiange, the average depth of the trenches is three feet, while in some 

 places it is five to si}^ feet, the embankment projecting above the general 

 level of the land about two feet, making the bottoms of the irenches be- 

 low the tops of the embankments five feet, and in places seven feet. 

 Early settlers of the township thought this high point of land, this old 

 fortification, a superior place for a burying ground, and it was used for 

 this purpose for some years ; a few of the brown stone slabs still stand as 

 reminders of the pioneer whites who dispossessed the red man of this 

 territory, which had once supported the the ^emi-civilized mound- 

 builders. To get at the cemetery a road was cut through the center of 

 the three embankments. The Clinton Line Railroad (never built) was 

 to have passed just in the rear of the other trench, and some excavation 



