ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY. 
223 
deposits in quantity, and is equally pure, and has the advantage of both 
in the presence of large percentages of manganese, and the capacity to 
produce spiegeleisen without admixture of other ores. It is not difficult 
to foresee that this must speedily become the nucleus of a large iron man- 
ufacturing interest ; especially when the remarkable facilities for manu- 
facturing, in the way of water power, (heretofore noted,) and the prox- 
imity of coal in abundance, are taken into account. 
The rocks of this region are slaty, gray gneiss and mica slate, with oc- 
casional patches of massive light gray granite. 
The rock which underlies the ore is a light-colored, felspathic slaty 
gneiss, which readily decomposes. The neighboring hills, at the distance 
of half a mile, both north and south, are reported to show many scattered 
fragments of the same ore on the surface ; and on the right bank of the 
river, on nearly the same level with the Buckhorn Mine, at the distance 
of about one mile southwest, is the Douglass Mine. This is a recurrence 
of the Buckhorn bed, on the scale and with the features of its lower ex- 
posures, being more schistose in structure, some of the strata being in 
fact simply gneiss and mica slate, with disseminated grains and laminae of 
hematite (and magnetite), and the lower strata passing into a slaty man- 
ganesian silicate. The thickness, not very well exposed, seems to be ten 
to twelve feet. Angular fragments of dark, dense, granular ore, with a 
black, manganese stain, are scattered over several acres of the hill top, 
indicating a wide exteii'i<m of the bed. From the facts stated, it will be 
apparent that these different beds are mere remnant fragments of an 
ancient and very extensive deposit which has been almost entirely re- 
moved by denudation, an I carried away by the erosive action of the river. 
About 1 mile north of the Buckhorn mine is a small vein about 1 foot 
thick, of a highly magnetic ore. Its strike is N. 60° and dip eastward 
30°. The gangtie is an epidotic quartzite. There are two openings on 
the vein, called the Peg ram Mine. An analysis of this ore for the owners 
by Mr. C. E. Buck, gave 50.57 per cent, of iron and 1.51 of titanic acid. 
This group of mines is worked by the American Iron and Steele Com- 
pany, who have erected a charcoal furnace, the first of 8 proposed, at the 
Buckhorn Locks, nearly 2 miles above the ore bank. They have already 
expended upwards of $300,000 in opening the navigation of the river for 
a distance ot some 40 miles above the ore bank, through the coal deposits, 
and they have also repaired the Endor furnace and put it in blast, and 
have been making a very superior car-wheel iron. The product is mostly 
a spiegeleisen, of which the following partial analyses by Mr. Lobdell, will 
show the peculiarities : 
