Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/43

37 where there is a post-office. The falls will admit of extensive water-works, and the country around them consists of a rich soil. Two miles below the falls, Point river has washed away the side of a hill that bordered on the bank, which has exposed to view a great variety of fossils. The hill, which is supposed to be nearly 400 feet high, seems to consist principally of lamina of slate stone. These lamina appear to be cemented together by allum and copperas, which is melted and runs out by the heat of the sun. It is collected by the inhabitants and applied to common use. There are round lumps of a mineral substance, from the size of a turkey's egg to that of a large common ball, frequently rolling down, which appear to contain sulphur, lead, and copper. In the vicinity of Point river, which runs into the Scioto, are a great variety of ochres and pigments of different colours, as well as minerals, which would afford an ample field for the investigation of the mineralogists. Many sulphur springs gush out from the hills in the neighbourhood of this river.

South of the State road, and between Point and the Ohio, is a large range of steep hills, called the Sunfish Hills, from a stream of that name which drains them and discharges itself into the Ohio. They are about forty miles wide from Point to the Ohio, and about sixty miles long from the Scioto to the Little Miami. The greater part of these hills are so steep and broken that no settlements can be made upon therm But in those parts of them 4