stick's creek irox ore regiox. 



41 



brown hematite, apparently very pure ; but at the upper hole corresponding to the 

 bottom of the bed, the ore is more silicious from the prtsence in it of small, round grains 

 of crystalline quartz a little bigger than a large pin's head. 



The bed seems to be opened also on the Wright tract at the Key's ore bank ; like- 

 wise on the north side of the Brushy Mountain Saddle, nearly half a mile north north- 

 west of the southwestern corner of the tract, near the burnt ruins of an old cabin 

 called Key's Cabin. It is but a very small trial opening, and the ore, found only in 

 loose lumps, is brown hematite in seams running through a brown, fine grained sand- 

 rock making a breccia of it ; and it was found too sandy for use in the bloomary. 

 But it is quite likely that a more thorough digging would bring better ore. to light 

 here, as at the other openinof thebedalready mentioned. 



The presence of the bed is also shown by lumps of ore on the ground for more 

 than a hundred yards, at least, west of the Thomas ore bank (the largest lump must 

 weigh at least 300 tons) ; and again at a point a quarter of a mile west southwest of 

 that bank; and at the bridle path across Pond Mountain, about half way down the 

 northern slope of the mountain and near the foot of the southern slope. At this last 

 place the ore lumps are very numerous, and a little pile of them has been gathered 

 together from a small space ; and the ore seems to be of a very good quality. At 

 the outcrop in the bridle path on the north side of the mountain the lumps are also 

 very numerous and those on the downhill side of the outcrop, corresponding to the 

 upper side of the bed (here reversed) arc mere lumps of sandstone with veins of hema- 

 tite running through them, something like the Hardbarger ore, but poorer. At all 

 these natural exposures of lumps from the outcrops, of course, the lumps roll and 

 slide and get washed to a greater or less distance down the hill ; but the position of 

 the outcrop can be told more or less exactly by the upper limit of the ore lumps, 

 since they are not carried up hill. 



The outcrop of the bed along the southern side of the Brushy Mountain Saddle 

 seems to run for about a mile, across the southeastern corner of the Thomas Tract 

 close l^y the southern boundary ; and on the northern side of the saddle for nine miles 

 and a quarter ; making ten miles and a quarter in all. The outci'op south of the 

 Pond Mountain Saddle seems to run from the western line of the Thomas tract five 

 miles and three-quarters easterly, then to return westerly on the north side of the 

 saddle five miles to the same line ; making ten miles and three-quarters for the whole 

 Pond Mountain outcrop. The bed seems to come to the surface again nowhere north 

 of that in the region ; so that its whole length of outcrop here amounts then to twenty^ 

 one miles. 



