Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/156

 is creeping and perennial, possesses precisely the taste of the common cabbage (Brassica oleracea), and, from its early verdure, being already in flower, might perhaps be better worth cultivating as an early sallad, than the Barbarea americana, or winter sallad.

22d.] From Mr. Blair's, at which place and in the neighbourhood Mr. D. spent the remainder of the day, I proceeded down the river about eight miles, in order to examine the reported silver mine of that place. My route along the banks of the river lay through rich and rather open alluvial lands, but, in many places, not free from transient inundation.

The pretended silver-mine is situated about one mile below White Oak bayou or rivulet. The search appears to have been induced by the exposure of the rocks in the bank of the river, which present indeed an appearance somewhat remarkable. The dip of the strata, about 45° to the north-west, and the whole texture of the rock, is similar to that which we have already noticed. The principal and lowest stratum, {108} is a dark coloured, sandy, but fragile slate-clay; the upper beds are a fine-grained, siliceous sandstone, containing grains of mica, and occasionally traversed with veins of quartz. In one of these veins, about a foot in breadth, were abundance of rock crystals, scattered over with round masses or imperfect crystals of a white and diaphanous talc, collected into radii, each plate forming the segment of a circle.

I was for some time unable to ascertain the character of the pretended ore of silver, as the whole concern lay abandoned. I observed, however, that the slags of their furnace betrayed a considerable proportion of iron in their operations, and at length I discovered a heap of