HOCKING VALLEY. 601 



the owners to continue operations and to introduce their coal into nearly 

 all the markets to the north and west, while no inccnsiderable quantity 

 found its way to Baltimore and New York. But the most important 

 result is the demonstration that in facilities for iron-making the owners 

 of these larids are substantially independent of tariff's and of panics. 

 There is really no danger that the price of iron will become so low that 

 it can not be here manufactured at a profit. 



THE MOXAHALA OE UPPEK SUNDAY CREEK REGION. 



The Upper Sunday Creek region is separated from the rest of the Great 

 Vein field by a formidable barrier, viz., the bed of an ancient water- 

 course which flowed through the old Carboniferous marshes in the ages 

 immediately suceeeding the subsidence which coyered the Great Vein 

 with argillaceous mud, since consolidated into shale. This stream came 

 from the north along a line midway between Buckingham and Shawnee, 

 its precise location being in some places yet undetermined, but passing 

 under Priest's Branch and along the valley where is now the little village 

 of Hemlock, and trending eastward it followed nearly the line which 

 now separates Perry and Athens counties. It cut away the shales above 

 the Great Vein, and, in places, the whole thickness of the coal ; in others 

 it left a part of the coal varying from a few inches up to the normal 

 thickness, and gradually filled the excavation with coarse material now 

 consolidated into sand rock. This channel invades the eastern part of 

 the Newark Coal Company's property at Shawnee, but left the greater 

 part of the coal undisturbed. It thinned down that on the western part 

 of the "Carbon Hill " property in the Moxahala region ; left a thin body 

 of coal at the point now worked at Hemlock, and a little to the east of 

 this probably cut it all away. 



An expensive experiment has determined more accurately its course 

 and extent after striking the north line of Salt Lick township. Borings 

 have been made through the horizon of this coal at the following named 

 places, and with the following disclosures : 



In Section 36, Salt Lick township, at south-west corner, the coal is 

 thirty-five feet from the surface and two feet four inches thick ; near the 

 south-east corner of the lot it is at the same depth and two and one-half 

 feet thick ; near the center of Section 31, Monroe township, it is entirely 

 wanting ; at the south-east corner of the same section the first coal struck 

 is six inches thick, and is found sixty-four feet two inches from the sur 

 face and covered with forty-two feet six inches of sand rock, which occu- 

 pies the place of the Great Vein, the channel here extending some twenty- 

 five feet below this coal and cutting away the upper part of the Lower 

 Moxahala coal. In the north-west corner of Section 36, Trimble town- 



