484 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
a few proprietors for their timber supply, have to a great extent been 
passed over in the general settlement and cultivation of the neighboring 
portions of the State. And these circumstances have also prevented as 
thorough a knowledge of the resources of the region in coal, etc., as would 
have otherwise been the case. ‘he region is about as thinly populated, 
and, excepting the Ohio Valley, as isolated and poorly provided with 
means of transportation as any portion of the State. The population 
is almost entirely dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the iron in- 
dustry, over a large part of Lawrence county. 
The surface of the country in the Hanging Rock region is, like so 
much of the eastern part of the State, a constant alternation of high 
hills and deeply eroded valleys, which have been cut out of the originally 
level surface of the State by the numerous streams which empty into 
the Ohio. The valleys cutting down through the various strata of rock, 
coal, iron ores, etc., present outcrops of these beds in positions scarcely 
surpassed for their accessibility to the miner. And water, though it 
has been the first miner in cutting out the beds formerly spanning the 
valleys, has been, nevertheless, a very wasteful one. As the strata all 
have a dip quite uniform and gentle toward the east, never greater than 
30 feet per mile, the ores, coals, etc., which on the eastern side of the 
region are at or below the bottoms of the valleys, as we go westward, 
rise until their proper position passes over the summits of the highest 
hills. Thus the region is limited on the east by the depth of the ores, 
rendering them difficult to win, and on the west by their absence from 
the tops of the hills, while between these limits the ores appear on the 
hill-sides at various elevations. ; 
Allusion has already been made to the great extent of some of the 
furnace properties, which has prevented the general settlement of the 
country, and to a great extent its cultivation, and has scattered the points 
of the manufacture through the region at places more or less removed 
from one another, excepting, however, the few towns where industries 
depending on pig-iron have been established, and where the use of 
mineral fuel has rendered the community of industries more practicable. 
Mention may be made here of the towns most important in | 
the manufactures of the region and their means of communication. 
First, Jackson, in Jackson county, where the excellent “ Jackson block 
coal” or the “shaft” coal is the basis of quite flourishing smelting 
establishments. At this place the Orange Furnace was the first furnace 
