OTTAWA COUNTY. 233 
Below the brown hard-pan there is an unknown thickness of blue 
hard-pan. This also contains gravel stones of all sizes, and often large 
bowlders. In the township of Benton, along the northern division of 
the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, a number of wells, 
sunk for supplying steam saw-mills with water, have penetrated this 
blue hard-pan a few feet. It sometimes shows an indistinct stratifica- 
tion, and in one or two wells near Genoa beds of gravel and sand were 
met in this deposit, or immediately below it. In a moist state, as thrown 
out of the well, it has a tough plasticity, and is known as “blue clay.” 
The average thickness of this deposit in the county would probably 
not fall short of forty feet. Below this, and lying on the rock, there is 
apt to be a stratum of water-worn gravel and sand, which lies in a very 
compacted state, often cemented along its upper surface into a rock-like 
layer, which offers great resistance to the drill. It is sometimes mis- 
taken for the rock-bed. Below the cemented layer the sand and gravel, 
when present, is from six inches to ten feet, and usually supplies water. 
It is plain that the water in such wells, confined before by the impervi- 
ous hard-pan above, will rise immediately with great force to a height 
equal to that of its head or source, or until it encounters a way of lateral 
escape through beds of sand or gravel in the hard-pan. The slope of 
the surface being very gradual toward Lake Erie, such artesian wells 
rise but few feet above the ground. They are found at Oak Harbor, in 
Salem township, at a depth of about fifty feet, the water rising but a 
few inches above the surface. Nearer Lake Erie, along the Toussaint 
Creek, the water rises in such wells about seven feet above the ground. 
In connection with the Drift phenomena, the occurrence of stones and 
bowlders of all kinds in the vicinity of the limestone ridges must be 
mentioned. They are due to the removal of the finer parts of the Drift 
by the waves and currents of Lake Hrie, and are left on the bare rock, 
and in a belt surrounding it, because they could not be so removed. 
Their place was originally in the glacial hard-pan.* 
Wells and Springs.—The artesian wells of Hrnest Frank, Esq., and of 
Mr. George Momany, of Oak Harbor, have a distinct sulphurous taste. 
A well of Mr. Messersmith, in section 22, Benton township, is very 
strongly sulphureted, and the water is used only because of the difficulty 
of obtaining other water. This water issues from the rock, and as such 
water is known to rise from the Niagara limestone at various points in 
other counties, it is the best evidence we have, in the absence of natural. 
outcrops, of the presence of that formation. There are other wells in 
* See page 17 and page 60. 
