ALLUVIAL DIVISION. 
87 
exceeded that of the water of the ocean * These licks and the salt well are in the rocks of 
the Catskill division, but the well probably penetrated into the rocks of the Erie division. 
Several hundred barrels of salt were made, and it was very white, and a superior article for 
table use. The water still flows from the well, but the quantity could not easily be ascer¬ 
tained. 
The basin or trough-formf in which the strata are deposited,^ renders it not improbable 
that brine might be obtained by deep boring in the valley of the Delaware, between Deposit 
and Narrowsburgh, in the valleys of both branches of the Delaware, and the lower parts of 
their .main tributaries ; and possibly in the valley of the Susquehannah about Sidney, in that 
of the Mongaup, and of the Neversink above Cuddebackville. 
The water of the ocean has been but little used on the coast of New-York for the manu¬ 
facture of salt, although extensively employed for that purpose on other parts of the coast of 
the United States, and in various parts of the world. The concentration is most generally 
effected by solar evaporation. The salt marshes of the coast of New-York, which are exten- 
sivej are well adapted to this branch of manufacture, either by solar evaporation in large shal¬ 
low reservoirs like those of some foreign countries, or in vats like those of most of the coast 
salt-works of the United States; or else by freezing the water in shallow reservoirs to con¬ 
centrate the brine and bring it to the point of crystallization, as is done at some of the Rus¬ 
sian salt-works. 
Another method of evaporating very weak brine is pursued at Moutiers in the Alps, which, 
in my opinion, may be introduced with advantage on our coasts. This method consists in 
exposing a great surface continually to the action of the winds, either by permitting the brine 
to trickle down cords attached to troughs twenty or thirty feet above the ground, leading to 
other troughs below; or by permitting it to trickle through loose brush, thrown into open 
frames of slight timber-work, between the upper and lower series of troughs. The lower 
series of troughs conducts the concentrated brine to reservoirs. The location usually selected 
is on a hill side, where the brine, coming from one set of frames, flows directly into the upper 
conductor of another set at a lower level, the top of which is on a level with the bottom of the 
♦ Ten bushels of salt were made per day in eight kettles, with a consumption of two cords of wood. This will enable the 
manufacturer to form an approximative estimate of the strength of the brine. 
+ This is in a bay, if we may so term it, a trough-shaped depression, connected with the great basin containing the salt water 
that fills the pores and fissures of the rocks in and below the Coal formation of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, 
Alabama, Kentucky and Ohio. An anticlinal axis, with a very gentle swell, separates this basin from that of the Green River 
and Wabash basin, which includes Western Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, part of Missouri, &c. 
t The rocks between the Susquehannah and the Catskill mountains dip slightly towards the valley of the Delaware; and in 
Schoharie county, they dip southward, giving a basin-shaped form to the stratification. It is a fact that has been forced upon 
my attention by extended observation, that many of our salt-well districts in the United States are in depressions of the strata; 
in other words, they are within the undulations, as troughs or basins in the strata. 
Whatever be the origin of the salt water of our salt wells and licks, whether from salt in mass, or disseminated in the superin¬ 
cumbent rocks, as some of my colleagues and others believe, or from the water of the ocean, (for there is indubitable evidence 
that it formerly covered all these rocks,) the fact that salt water is generally found in such depressions of the strata, is believed 
capable of demonstration. 
