Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu/44

28 in the hands of many proprietors, pits have been opened, and before the interruption of our commerce, were worked to an extent equal to the demand.

In the Western country coal is known to be in so many places, as to have induced an opinion that the whole tract between the Laurel Mountain, Missisipi, and Ohio, yields coal. It is also known in many places on the North side of the Ohio. The coal at Pittsburg is of very superior quality. A bed of it at that place has been afire since the year 1765. Another coal hill on the Pike Run of Monongahela has been afire ten years; yet it has burnt away about twenty yards only.

I have known one instance of an Emerald found in this country. Amethysts have been frequent, and chrystals common; yet not in such numbers any of them as to be worth seeking.

There is very good marble, and in very great abundance, on James River, at the mouth of Rockfish. The samples I have seen, were some of them of a white as pure as one might expect to find on the surface of the earth; but most of them were variegated with red, blue and purple. None of it has been ever worked. It forms a very large precipice, which hangs over a navigable part of the river. It is said there is marble at Kentuckey.

But one vein of lime stone is known below the Blue Ridge. Its first appearance in our country is in Prince William, two miles below the Pignut Ridge of mountains; thence it passes on nearly parallel with that, and crosses the Rivanna about five miles below it, where it is called the Southwest ridge. It then crosses Hardware, above the mouth of Hudson's Creek, James River at the mouth of Rockfish, at the marble quarry before spoken of, probably runs up that river to where it appears again at Ross's iron works, and so passes off southwestwardly by Flat Creek of Otter River. It is never more than one hundred yards wide. From the Blue Ridge westwardly, the whole country seems to be founded on a rock of lime stone, besides infinite quantities on the surface, both loose and fixed. This is cut into beds, which range, as the mountains and sea-coast do, from Southwest to Northeast, the lamina of each bed declining