MARION COUNTY. 103 



1. Buff colored sand 1 to 15 feet. 



2. Brown rusty ore \ to 1 foot. 



3. Yellow and buff sand 20 feet. 



4. Main ore bed 10 feet. 



Johnson's Hill is in this field, about three miles south of Lasater Station, 

 and forms part of the divide between the waters of the Big Cypress and 

 Black Cypress bayous. It is about three miles long from north northeast to 

 south southwest, and a mile wide. It looms up as a flat-topped plateau, and 

 its surface is capped with masses of ore broken from the underlying bed. 

 The capping of sand is here often entirely absent, a fact that is most import- 

 ant in facilitating the mining of the ore. A section of the ore bed on this 

 hill shows the following strata:* 



1. Ore bed stratified, and in geode beds brown and black, bed much broken, 



interbedded with seams of sand 4 to 10 feet. 



2. Ferruginous and mottled clays 3 feet. 



3. Ore similar to stratified part of No. J \ to f foot. 



4. Interbedded ferruginous sands and clays 20 feet. 



5. Mottled red and white sandy clays 10 feet. 



6. Red ferruginous sandy clays . . 65 feet. 



The iron ores of this field are brown hematites, and mostly of the nodular 

 concretionary variety. These nodules occur in flattened or rounded, oval, 

 honeycombed, botryoidal, stalactic, and mammillary masses, have rusty brown, 

 dull red, or even black color on the outside, and have a glossy, dull,.or earthy 

 lustre on the inside. These nodules occur in sizes from one to twenty-four 

 inches in diameter, and are generally hollow, though sometimes they contain 

 a central core or coating of red ochre. Large quantities of this nodular ore 

 are said to have been used at the Loo Ellen furnace, nine miles south of 

 here, and a pile of several hundred tons of it is still to be seen there. 



At the base of Leverett's Hill, in the bed of a dry creek, is seen a deposit 

 of conglomerate ore about two feet thick. These conglomerate ores gener- 

 ally consist of brown ferruginous pebbles from one quarter to two inches in 

 diameter, cemented together in a sandy mixture. Sometimes a few siliceous 

 pebbles are also found. These beds of conglomerate are mostly of local oc- 

 currence and lie in conjunction with or along the streams or water courses 

 of the district. 



Average specimens of ores from this field give the following analyses: 



Analysis No. 318 — N. Lilly headright. 



Analysis No. 320 — Brown Ochre from Isaac Johnson's headright. 

 Analysis No. 322 — S. J. Buress headright. 



Analysis No. 323 — Ochreous Limonite from Samuel Jeffries' survey, two miles north wes 

 of Lasater Station. 



Analysis No. 324 — Ochreous Limonite, two miles southwest of Lasater Station. 



From First Annual Report Geological Survey of Texas, pp. 11, 78. 



