124 THE IRON ORE DISTRICT OF EAST TEXAS. 



consists chiefly of an un stratified brown or yellowish brown sand overlying 

 a regularly bedded, thinly laminated red and white sand or sandy clay. The 

 unstratified sandy deposits appear to have a thickness ranging from one foot 

 to sixty feet, and contain all the iron ore deposits found within the region. 

 The stratified red and white sands and sandy clays attain a maximum thick- 

 ness of about seventy feet. The stratified sands of Cass County become in 

 Harrison more of a clayey nature and the strata generally appear thicker. 

 In some sections of Harrison County the white strata attain thicknesses of 

 two or three and even five and six feet. Wherever these beds outcrop in 

 water courses the stream bed and banks are generally strewn with pellets of 

 pure white clay in sizes ranging from that of a pea to that of an ordinary 

 hen egg. These pellets are due to the breaking down of the beds and the 

 washing away of the loose sands from their clayey matrix and the leaving 

 of the clay to form the embryo nodules found. 



Between these two deposits occurs a thin ferruginous parting ranging from 

 one inch to a foot or even a foot and a half in thickness. This parting is in- 

 variably present in some one of its many forms of gravel, ferruginous sand- 

 stones, or laminated ore, and forms the lowest ore deposit. 



The next lower member of these beds is what is known in the locality as 

 soapstone. This is thinly bedded dark blue clay, frequently jointed and con- 

 taining rarely partings of a dark colored sand. This clay extends beyond 

 the plateau and underlies the brown sand of the next lower division of the 

 county. So far as seen it appears to have a maximum thickness of eighteen 

 feet. 



Lignite occasionally appears underlying this clay, but not with any degree 

 of certainty or regularity. 



The fourth member of the series is a stratified blue clay, weathering to a 

 pale blue color and having that tint towards the top, but darkening in color 

 towards the bottom of the bed. Maximum thickness known, thirty feet. 

 This deposit extends eastward as far as the third division, or gray sand area, 

 and under it for a considerable extent. 



The fifth member of the series appears to be a black clay, not exceeding 

 eight feet and only found in the eastern portion of the county. Its place in 

 the west and northern part of the county appears to be occupied by a white 

 gravelly sand, which in the Marshall Water Works wells is at least forty- 

 three feet thick. 



The sixth member of the series is a micaceous black sand or clayey sand, 

 thinly and irregularly laminated, showing a total thickness of eighteen feet. 

 This is underlaid by a thin seam of lignite about one foot thick. 



The seventh is a yellow or white sand, having a known depth of twenty - 

 five feet. 



