ORES OF THE CHAMPLAIN, TACONIC AND METAMORPHIC ROCKS. 
507 
and dug up,* and this was the evidence of the reported coal mine. It is hoped that our 
citizens will no longer suffer themselves to be duped by designing persons into mining specu¬ 
lations, most of which have a baseless foundation. 
“ The copper, silver and lead mine ” of Singsing, is on the State farm, and has already 
been described, as well as the copper mine at Sparta. Copper ore also forms a small vein 
in the marble quarries at the Prison. It occurs also in small quantities in the cliffs near the 
shore, about one hundred yards southeast of the brick-kiln at Sparta. It has also been found 
in small quantities in several places in the township of Mount-Pleasant, farther from the 
river. As it occurs in so many places in this vicinity in small strings and nests, it is not 
improbable that workable quantities of the ore may exist there, but I would advise persons to 
be cautious in investing capital for mining explorations. The working of metalliferous veins, 
with the exception of iron, has thus far in this country been like a lottery, whether for gold, 
silver, lead or copper. There are some that have proved to be good investments, and have 
yielded permanent profits; but, on an average, at least nine-tenths of them have cost far 
more than they have produced. Should the State lack employment for the convicts at Sing¬ 
sing, it might be worth while to make some investigations of some of these veins. 
Copper ore has been found in several places in Putnam and Westchester counties, but not 
in such quantities as to justify exploration. Pyritous copper and green carbonate of copper 
are found in small quantities in the gneiss racks at Phillips’s mills, one mile and a quarter 
east of West-Point; also at Phillips’s iron mine, ei^ht miles northeast of Coldspring landing. 
Arsenical iron occurs in several places in Putnam county; but the only locality known in 
that county to which any practical importance is attached, is about four or five miles north¬ 
west from Putnam court-house, and about half a mile southwest of Pine pond, in the town¬ 
ship of Kent, near the serpentine marble quarry. This is one of the old mine holes from 
which silver is reported to have been obtained. The mine is now owned or leased by a 
mining company, called the Hudson River Mining Company. It had been cleaned out when 
I saw it. The shaft is forty feet deep. Yellow pulverulent sulphuret of arsenic covered the 
sides of the shaft and the timbers, wherever they had been covered by water, resulting from 
the decomposition of the arsenical sulphuret of iron. This latter mineral abounds there. It 
forms a bed or mass in hornblendic gneiss rock above the shaft, and is there undergoing de¬ 
composition, forming arseniate of iron. The ore does not, so far as I could perceive, form 
a vein, but is a mass ; and from the surface indications, and from what I saw in the mine, 
there is a probability of the existence of a great quantity of this ore. The mine goes by the 
name of the silver mine, and it is stated that silver has been obtained from it; but the indi¬ 
vidual who is said to have analyzed it, has no public name as a chemist; and until it shall be 
analyzed by a disinterested person of reputation as an analytical chemist, confidence ought not 
to be reposed in the statement that it is a silver ore. This kind of ore is wrought as a silver ore 
in Germany, where it contains some of the precious metal. It is possible this may also contain 
* This was afterwards ascertained to have been buried by a designing person, with a view to get up an excitement, and 
organize a company to dig there for coal. 
64* 
