700 TRANS-PtiCOS TEXAS. 



ORNAMENTAL AND BUILDING STONES. 



Other valuable minerals besides the above mentioned metals deserve the 

 fullest attention. 



Coarse and fine-grained marbles, some of them so finely grained that they 

 might be compared to the so-called Mexican onyx, of white color, and of yel- 

 lowish, pink, purplish, and grayish shades, plain, striped, and mottled, crop 

 out in many places. These outcrops are found from five to fifty feet wide, 

 frequently covering whole hill slopes, interrupted only by streaks of serpen- 

 tinous rocks. The surfaces seem to indicate that these marbles resist atmos- 

 pheric influences very well. The greater part of the fine and coarse-grained 

 granites show similar resistance to weathering. 



The porphyries and porphyritic breccias of the Quitman Mountains appear 

 in numerous tints and shades, from a pale grayish color through various 

 shades of yellow, green, reddish, brown, purple, to nearly black. They are 

 hard, resist weathering, and take a beautiful polish. 



Some of the sandstones of the Sierra Diabolo and the hills northeast of 

 Allamore show nearly the color of the highly appreciated brown stone, con 

 spicuous in the fashionable streets of New York. 



All these building stones are within short distances from the Texas and 

 Pacific and Southern Pacific railways (one-half to six miles), and roads fit to 

 carry the heaviest dimension rocks can be built in some cases at a merely 

 nominal cost. 



Between the Quitman Mountains and the M alone range, not more than one- 

 half mile from the railway, a large gypsum deposit appears, which on the 

 surface consists of a loose material, ready to be shipped as a fertilizer without 

 grinding. Below this loose surface material crystalline gypsum appears in 

 the thickness of several hundred feet. This and the selenite deposits will 

 make excellent plaster of Paris; the finer granular varieties are fit for works 

 of art. 



Agates can be gathered by the wagon load between the Davis and Chinatti 

 mountains. They are the milky, cloudy banded varieties, from the size of 

 peas to six, eight, and occasionally even more inches in diameter, and might 

 be cut to marbles, ornamental work, and mortars for chemical laboratories. 

 In this vicinity we also find true onyx, with parallel layers of white and a 

 dark honey color, eminently adapted for cameos and similar ornamental 

 work. This onyx evidently was mined in former times. A deep water hole 

 of about twenty feet in diameter, in the Smuggler's Cave ravine, was seem- 

 ingly an onyx mine. 



" West of the San Jago Pass numerous moss agates, some of great beauty, 

 are found, and south of Pena Colorado I found in the mara villas gravel 

 amazon stones of very fine color, as float, which also can be worked into or- 



