570 
GEOLOGY OF THE FIRST DISTRICT. 
bare, part is covered by soil from one to five feet in depth, and part by rock from six inches 
to a yard or more in thickness.”* 
A topographical sketch of the vicinity of the- Sterling mines may be seen on Plate 30, fig. 4. 
It is not pretended to be accurate, as it was sketched from memory since I was there, but 
will give a general idea of the localities. The rock of this region is the peculiar grey granite 
of the iron regions in the Highlands. Near the south end of the pond, on. entering.the valley 
at the outlet, the strata are seen to be transverse, viz. ranging northwest and southeast, and 
dipping about six to twelve degrees to the north-northeast, as is represented by the arrow 
point on fig. 4, and on the- section fig. 5. This may be seen distinctly at the mines, a few 
rods from the south end of the pond. From the stream at the line of section southward, the 
ore bed is either naked or covered with soil on a thin cap of sienite of one or two feet thick. 
It has been worked in many places on the hill-side, as represented by the letter n on fig. 4 
of Plate 5, and is from ten to twenty feet thick. It is exposed about three hundred yards 
along the hill-sido, with a breadth up and down the hill of about one hundred and fifty yards 
from the brook.. It is supposed that five hundred thousand tons of ore can easily be procured 
at this place. It has little or no covering, of rock, so that it may be worked as an open quarry, 
without any expense of drainage. Some of the ore contains pyrites, but a large portion seems 
to be very pure.f 
The Sterling, Mountain, Crossway, Patterson, Antone, Conklin and New mines, are all 
represented on the topographical sketch, Plate 30, fig. 4. They all seem to be the same 
original bed or. vein of ore, but the rocks have since been subject to such, derangements as to 
displace them. 
“ The Belcher mine is upon the same property,, and very similar ore to that of Sterling ; it 
makes cold short iron. It is one and a half mules southwest of Sterling mines, and at the 
southern termination of the same mountain. The ore has been worked about one hundred 
and fifteen feet wide, without finding a rock wall on either side. It is believed to be a 
prolongation of Sterling mine. This mine was found in 1792, by Jacob Belcher ; ore yields 
forty-eight per centum iron cold short.; cost of mining thirty-seven and a half cents per ton ; 
ore well adapted for making, bar iron by the blooming process, for which only it has been 
used.”| 
“ Red mine or Spruce-swamp mine h nearly three miles south of Long mine. All the ores 
of this mine are magnetic and full of pyrites, so much so that only a moderate amount has 
been used. They decompose rapidly when dug up and exposed to the open air. In this 
manner the surface of this mine has all been reduced to powder of an.iron rust, color;, like 
several other mines, the ore alternates with the rock. This mine was discovered' in 1780, 
'by J. Stuperfell;, cost of mining fifty cents per ton; ore sulphurous being remote, not 
* Dr. Horton’s Report: Third Annual Geological Report of Ne-w-York, 1839. 
t Beautiful specimens of crystallized green hornblende were found abundant iu a thin bed of sienite, between two beds of.the 
iron ore. 
t Dr. Horton’s Third Annual Geological Report of New-York. 
