WABASH AND EDWARDS COUNTIES. 59 



The concretionary sandstone is their main quarry rock here, and it is 

 sometimes quite hard and affords a very durable material for founda- 

 tion walls. Above this there are some layers of even-bedded sandstone 

 that, although rather soft when first quarried, become harder afier 

 exposure and make a fair building stone. 



At Dr. Smith's place, four miles north of Grayville on the west bank 

 of the Bonpass creek, the hill rises to an elevation of about a hundred 

 feet, but the beds forming its upper portion are hidden beneath a cov- 

 ered slope. A thin coal is found in this hill at an elevation of thirty- 

 six feet above the bed of the creek, which is underlaid by sandy shales 

 and sandstones that form a precipitous cliff to the creek bed. The coal 

 is about 8 inches thick and of good quality, aud is underlaid by a light- 

 gray fire-clay. The sandstone and shale below this coal are the equiva- 

 lents of the beds above the fossiliferous shale in the Grayville section, 

 and the fossil bed of that locality would no doubt be found here a little 

 below the creek bed. The thin coal found here has also been met with 

 in sinking wells at Grayville in the upper part of the town. About 

 half a mile above this, on the same side of the Bonpass, the same beds 

 outcrop again where an old mill was formerly located. At the base of 

 the bluff here there is from ten to twelve feet of blue shales partly 

 argillaceous, and. passiug upward into a sandy shale and sandstone 

 twenty feet or more in thickness, with a partial outcrop of the thin coal 

 and bituminous shale still higher up. This coal probably corresponds 

 to the ten-inch seam No. 15 of the Coffee creek section. 



At Mr. Nailor's place, six miles north west of Grayville, a coal seam 

 was opened many years since and successfully worked for a time to 

 supply the local demand for coal. It is probably the same seam worked 

 by Simonds and others south-west of Mount Carmel. The seam is said 

 to be about thirty inches thick and the coal hard and splinty, partaking 

 of the block character. 



At the ford on the Little Wabash, eight miles north-west of Albion, 

 on the S. W. qr. of sec. 7, T. 1 S., B. 10 E., there is an outcrop of a thin 

 coal associated with the following beds : 



Ft. In. 



1. Brown ferrnginons clay shales -. 10 to 12 



2. Brash coal 10 



3. Clay shale 8 



4. Brash coal 10 



5. Shale with numerous bands of iron ore 4 



6. Gray sandy shale 6 



7. Iron conglomerate in river bed 1 



The shale No. 5 of the foregoing section contains considerable clay 

 iron ore of a fair quality, amounting to nearly or quite one-half of the 

 whole thickness of the bed. If the quantity of iron in this shale should, 

 on drifting into the bluff, prove continuous for some distance, it would 



