Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/182

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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

��assorting and depositing in different places the materials having different specific gravities. The question, what that agent probably was, will be discussed when other facts bearing upon its full solution shall be accumulated.

Gt>/(1. — One of the most interesting surface deposits of the count}', and one intimately con- nected with the discussion of the drift, is the gold found al)out Bellville and other places in the southern part of Richland County. The origin of the gold has been attributed to an ancient drift agency, which brought in the peb- bles of the Waverly conglomerate ; but the geologist is quite confident that it should be referred to the surface drift, and was brought in b}' the same agency that transported the granitic bowlders and pebbles. If referred to the Waverly conglomerate, it should Ue found at the base of this deposit. It is, in fact, found most al^undantly about the level of its upper surface, and in perceptible quantities on the slopes of the hills fifty to one hundred feet above it. If it came from the Waverly con- glomerate, it should be the most abundant where the quartz pebbles of this conglomerate are the most numerous, while at Bellville and the immediate neighborhood this Waverly rock is comparativelj^ free from pel)l)les. The gold is found in minute flakes, associated with black sand (magnetic iron ore), small garnets, and fragments of quartz. It is most abundant at the mouth of gorges opening to the south, ris- ing rather rapidly toward the north, termintiting in various branches, which start from the top of the hills two or three hundred feet high. On the table-land above, large quartz bowlders are occasionally seen, and angular fragments of quartz are abundantly obtained in washing for gold. Pieces of native copper are also found, some of them of considerable size, occasionally copper ore. and. very rarely, minute quantities of native silver. In the stone quarry near Bellville an angular and partly decomposed fragment of quartz was picked up. containing

��what the miners call "wire gold," interlaced through it. It had evidently fallen from the gravel bed at the top of the quarry, which con- tained quartz fragments, mingled with other erratics. The most plausible theory of the origin of the gold is, that the transposing agen- cies which brought in and deposited the surface drift, passed over veins of gold-bearing quartz, which were crushed, l)roken up, and transported with the other foreign material, and scattered along a line extending through Richland, Knox, and Licking Counties. Over what is now the southern slope of the divide between the waters of the lake and the Ohio, a thick deposit of the drift has been washed awa,}', the fragments of the quartz tooken up and disintegrated, the gold of the drift concentrated probably a hun- dred thousand fold, so that in these protected coves the '-color" of gold can be obtained from almost every panful of earth. The first dis- covery of this fact caused much local excite- ment, and experienced miners and others pros- pected the whole region in the confident expectation that these indications would lead to rich placer mining. One returned California miner spent the whole of one summer and fall prospecting, part of the time with one, and the rest with three, hired assistants. The gross amount of gold obtained was lietween twent}'- five and thirty dollars. In the richest localities about one dollar per day can be obtained by steady work. As no gold-bearing rocks are to be found in the State, the occurrence of gold here can have only a scientific interest con- nected with the theories of the di-ift.

Iron Ore.— The rocks of Richland County include a few deposits of iron ore, generally of little value, and the surface accumulations of this mineral are rare. In Plymouth Township, on a small stream near the center, and west of the railroad, is quite an extensive bed of hy- drated oxide of iron, containing large masses of calcareous tufa. No spring of water is appar- ent which could deposit these minerals, and

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