CLINTON COUNTY. 
309 
like paving stones, and derived from the potsdam, are mixed. In other places the rock is very 
much exposed, as upon Rand’s hill, where it is laid bare, and without sufficient soil to support 
any but the smallest shrubs, except where they take root in the cracks or natural joints of the 
rock. This rock, too, furnishes two or three varieties which I have not recognised in other 
places. 
1. The ordinary fine-grained, grey or brown sandstone, crystallized on a large scale, in coarse rhombic prisms, similar to 
the rock at Keeseville. 
2. Deep red sandstone, stained with oxide of iron; it occupies the lowest position. About ten miles east of Plattsburgh 
on the Military road, and in West-Chazy two miles southwest of Lawrence corners, this variety is common, forming 
the lowest layers of the rock. 
3. White granular and friable sandstone, in the towm of Mooers. Sometimes it has the whiteness of loaf-sugar, and 
disintegrates into sand ; it is a fine material for flint glass. 
4. Dark iron-brown or black sandstone, traversed by seams of quartz; it resembles, as a whole, some of the varieties of 
greywacke. It forms one of the masses at Chazy. It occupies a superior position in the rock, and in conjunction with 
the succeeding, is not less than one hundred feet thick.* 
5. A brecciated mass, associated with the preceding. It contains fragments of limestone, resembling the calciferous sand- 
rock. 
6. Conglomerate, which usually occupies the lowest place; but on the northwest border of Clinton, the whole mass par¬ 
takes of this character. 
This rock extends two miles west of the Redford glass-works. At this place it is probably 
separated from the main mass by a range of granite, which extends through Saranac, and 
from thence northwards several miles in the rear of Rand’s hill. Although this rock is of the 
common grey variety similar to that at Port Kent and Keeseville, still it bums white, and is 
employed almost exclusively in the manufacture of the Redford crown glass, Avhich has be¬ 
come known to community for its beauty and strength. Probably most of this rock is suitable 
for this use. It is the common rock which is employed, though in Mooers a fine white variety 
is abundant. It is essential, however, that it become white in burning. 
Of the varieties described above. Nos. 4 and 5 appear to be entirely local. I have not seen 
them except in Clinton. The others are common. 
I had occasion, when describing this rock in Essex county, to speak of the remarkable 
gorge at Keeseville, and through which the Ausable flows. A still larger fracture exists in this 
rock near the Provincial line ; or it is said that the boundary passes through it, the town of 
Mooers being south, and Canada north. However this may be, the place itself is very widely 
known under the name of Flat-rock. Covey hill is sometimes spoken of as the place where 
this fissure occurs. It is sixteen miles west from Champlain. 
The fissure, or gulf, as it is usually called, is three hundred feet deep, and about sixteen 
rods wide. Its walls of sandstone or conglomerate are perpendicular at the deepest part. The 
small lake at the bottom is said to be one hundred and fifty feet deep. The direction of this 
fracture is north seventy degrees west, and the rock dips at a small angle from each side of 
* Boulders of this mass are scattered over the fields in this town. There is one, half a mile southwest of the village of Chazy, 
twenty-five feet long, twenty wide and eight thick. 
