HARRISON COUNTY. 155 



Near Carter's Ferry, on the Carthage road, there is another exposure of 

 lignite about six feet thick. This deposit, like the one at Rocky Ford, also 

 stretches across and is best seen in the river bottom. The water here has 

 cut a channel through the lignite bed close to the Harrison County side, and 

 leaves a wide stretch of the bed along the Panola County side of the stream 

 perfectly dry This lignite is a dull black, with little or no gloss when 

 freshly broken, and has a tendency to split into thin layers, and when broken 

 across the strata breaks with a subconchoidal fracture. 



In this deposit there are the trunks of two trees, measuring sixteen and 

 twenty feet in length respectively, and from eighteen to twenty inches in 

 diameter. The sixteen foot tree is silicified throughout its. entire length, 

 and the twenty foot tree is but partially so, having the butt and lower part 

 of the trunk silicified and the top and upper part of the trunk perfectly 

 lignitized. There does not appear to be any definite line of demarkation be- 

 tween the two conditions — the silicified and the lignitized — but they gradu- 

 ate from the one to the other almost imperceptibly. These trees are lying 

 in such positions as they would take naturally had they floated down the 

 river and sunk in the positions found. In this same bed there is a stump 

 standing in such a position as to lead to the inference that it grew in the 

 position it now stands, or was there prior to the deposition or formation of 

 the upper three feet of the lignite. This stump is silicified, and the centre 

 has apparently decayed and been removed before the process of silicification 

 had commenced. 



The following is a section of the river bank at this deposit: 



1. G-ray silty sand, forming the banks of the river on both sides 25 feet. 



2. Lignite, dull and lustreless, thinly bedded and containing fossil trees. . ....... 6 feet. 



31 feet. 



The deposit found at Robertson's Ferry is six feet thick, and is of a harder 

 nature than the two deposits described above. When freshly broken it 

 shows a slight lustre, which it soon loses, and breaks into an irregular lump 

 resembling bituminous coal. In burning this coal emits an offensive odor 

 and leaves a small quantity of brown ash. This deposit appears upon the 

 Harrison County side of the Sabine River and close to the water even in its 

 lowest stage. It is said another deposit occurs from twelve to fourteen feet 

 deeper. The deposit as seen in the bank of the river has a length of about 

 one hundred yards, and in passing back into the country appears to thin out 

 rapidly, as a well forty-four feet deep, about a mile north of the river, passed 

 through only one or two inches of lignitic matter and into the blue sandy 

 clay bed which underlies the lignite at the ferry. 



The deposit on the Francis Wilson headright is only two feet thick and 

 about seventy-six feet underground. This lignite has more the appearance 



