GALLATES" COUNTY. 217 



When I first visited the " Saline" in the summer of 1867, the average 

 product of the works was from thirty to forty barrels of salt per diem ; 

 since then it has been increased to double that quantity. There is a 

 system of manipulations connected with the operation of making good 

 salt from this brine that belongs exclusively to the company. It has 

 been established by an outlay of large sums of money spent in experi- 

 menting, by much anxiety, and with failure after failure. Taking this 

 property, with the previous disastrous failures staring them in the 

 face, Messrs. Temple & Castles have built up a successful manufacture 

 which is creditable to themselves as enterprising gentlemen and of 

 incalculable importance to the county. It is therefore hoped that they 

 will reap, as they deserve, a rich reward for their meritorious labor. 



They have adopted, the plan of graduation houses, as in parts of 

 Germany and France, for concentrating the natural brine before it goes 

 into the evaporating pans. These houses consist here of two frames 

 from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet long, and forty to forty- 

 five feet high ; the longest of the two is divided into two parts, so that 

 the brine may be divided into three grades. Thorn bushes are spread 

 on parallel horizontal frames, arranged from top to bottom of the 

 houses, so that the brine, which is pumped and forced to the top of the 

 frames, may descend in a shower through the whole series. After 

 passing the brine, successively, in this manner, over the three houses, 

 the graduation in favorable weather carries it from 7° 2 to 9° 5. From 

 the third house, or after the third graduation, the brine is conveyed to 

 the pans, where the evaporation is completed over the fire. The fuel 

 used for this purpose is stone coal, mined on the company's land one 

 mile west of the works, from No. 5 coal, which is here of excellent 

 quality and almost entirely free from sulphur. It is brought to the 

 works on a tram road, and about three hundred bushels are consumed 

 in the manufacture of thirty-five barrels of salt. 



Iron ore. — More or less clay iron-stone is found with the shales of the 

 coal throughout the county, but at no one locality in quantity sufficient 

 to make it of commercial value. 



Building stone. — There is an abundance of good freestone, suitable 

 for building purposes, all along the Gold-hill axis, along Eagle creek 

 and its tributaries in the south, at Equality, and in the river bank at 

 New Haven. Some members of the Chester limestone might answer 

 for building stone, but as a general rule it will not endure where unpro- 

 tected from rain and frost. A black septaria limestone, belonging to 

 the Coal Measures, which is exposed at low-water in the river bank at 

 Shawneetown, is susceptible of a remarkably fine polish, and being 

 chequered with veins of white calc-spar, it presents a beautiful appear- 



