306 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



age, as in Europe. In some of the Gulf States, especially 

 Alabama, tolerably strong brine is obtained by boring into 

 the lower argillaceous and arenaceous strata of the Creta- 

 ceous system. On the island of Petite Anse, on the coast 

 of Louisiana, nine miles south of New Iberia, is a remark- 

 able deposite of rock-salt, till very recently the only one 

 known to exist east of the Rocky Mountains. Underneath 

 the soil of at least one hundred and forty-four acres of this 

 island lies a solid bed of pure rock-salt, in which pits have 

 been sunk to the depth of thirty-eight feet without reach- 

 ing the bottom. The mass of this salt is below high water. 

 It is overlaid by about nineteen feet of clay, gravel, sand, 

 and surface soil. Not less than twenty-two million pounds 

 of salt were removed from the island during the eleven 

 months previous to April, 1863. The supply is probably 

 inexhaustible. This extraordinary mass may occupy the 

 site of an ancient bayou, the bottom of which has been ele- 

 vated, while the contiguous shores have been either eroded 

 or depressed, so that the land and water have exchanged 

 places. It is the opinion of Dr. Goessman, however, that it 

 is "a secondary deposite, resulting from the evaporations 

 of brine-springs originating from beds of rock-salt in some 

 older geological formation, and not a direct residuum from 

 any sea."* 



* Report of the American Bureau of Mines, 1867. Professor E. W. 

 Hilgard has also made an examination of this deposite. (See Amer. Jour. 

 Sci. and Arts, Jan., 1869, p. 77.) 



