Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/315

 NEW JERSEY 303 let fever, 781 ; enteric fever, 336 ; diarrhoea, dysentery, and enteritis, 552. In 1873 the state authorities reported 6,636 marriages, 20,866 births, and 11,479 deaths, including 1,502 from consumption and 638 from chol- era infantum. New Jersey has a direct coast line of 120 m., exclusive of the coasts on the Raritan and Delaware bays ; but including smaller bays, islands, and tide-water creeks, this shore line is much longer. On the north- east the Hudson river, and New York, New- ark, and Raritan bays, afford good harbors. From Sandy Hook to Cape May there is a narrow sandy beach, intersected at a few points by narrow inlets, and separated from the mainland by long and narrow bays and tide meadows traversed by numerous tidal wa- tercourses, called thoroughfares. These bod- ies of water form an internal water route, and afford safe harbors for vessels of light draught. They communicate with the ocean through Manasquan, Barnegat, Little Egg har- bor, Great Egg harbor, and other inlets. On the Delaware bay there is a belt of tide meadow from 1 to 12 m. wide bordering the water, with no good harbors. The state is well watered by a river system which flows E. into the bays and the Atlantic ocean and W. into the Dela- ware river and bay. A small portion of the state is drained by the Wallkill, which runs N. E. to the Hudson river. The Hackensack and Passaic rivers empty into the northern end of Newark bay; the Raritan, into Rari- tan bay ; the Nevisink, into Sandy Hook bay ; and the Little Egg Harbor or Mullicas river and the Great Egg Harbor river, into the At- lantic. Maurice river, emptying into Delaware bay, is the largest stream of S. Jersey. These are all navigable for distances of 10 to 20 m. from their mouth. The Delaware receives a number of streams from 10 to 40 m. long, but none of them above Trenton are navigable. The surface of the state in the N. W. portion is mountainous ; in the N. E. and central por- tions, hilly; in the southern, low and gently undulating. The mountains in the north belong to the Appalachian system, and consist of two main ranges: the Blue or Kittatinny moun- tain, near the Delaware river, known in New York as the Shawangunk mountain, and the Highland range. These are separated by a valley about 10 m. wide, known as the Kitta- tinny valley. The Highland range consists of a series of parallel ridges whose heights vary from 1,000 to 1,450 ft. above tide water. The most prominent of these are the Ramapo, Trow- bridge, Wawayanda, Hamburg, Schooley's, Musconetcong, Scott's, and Jenny Jump moun- tains. The Blue mountain range, the highest in the state, is from 1,400 to 1,800ft. above the ocean. The N. E. and central portions of the state consist of a great plain, diversified by the trap ridges of the Palisades including First and Second mountains, Sourland mountain, and Rocky hill, from 300 to 600 ft. high. S. E. of a line connecting Amboy and Trenton the sur- 597 VOL. xii. 20 face is lower and the hills slope more gently. The Nevisink Highlands are the highest, being 375 ft. above the ocean. Very few other ele- vations in this part of the state exceed 200 ft. All of the great geological periods are repre- sented in New Jersey, excepting the carbonif- erous or coal and the Jurassic. The rock for- mations cross the state in belts from N. E. to S. "W. The oldest of these, known as the azoic or archaic formation, constitutes a broad belt forming 'the Highlands. On the line between New Jersey and New York it is 23 m. wide, stretching from Sufferns to the Wallkill river ; on the Delaware it is only 9 m. in breadth. There is also a small outcrop of the rocks of this formation near Trenton ; they extend N. E. from Trenton, along the N. side of the canal, about 6 m., and northward along the Delaware about 2 m. A very limited area of these rocks underlies Jersey City. The rocks of this for- mation are nearly everywhere stratified, and these strata have a strike of N. E. to S. W., and dip generally at a high angle toward the southeast. They are mainly gneiss, crystalline limestone, mica schist and slate, granite, and sye- nite. The syenitic gneiss greatly preponderates. No fossils are found in them. Near the surface in the S. W. portion of this belt these rocks are much disintegrated, forming a very superior and enduring soil. Toward the northeast they are much firmer, and the outcropping ledges show little change or weathering. The granite and gneiss make good building material, and they are quarried in a few places for this pur- pose. Magnetic iron ore occurs abundantly in this formation, in beds interposed between the gneissic strata, and also as a mineral compo- nent of the rocks. There is a large number of productive mines in this belt in Sussex, Pas- saic, Morris, and Warren counties ; their total product in 1873 amounted to 665,000 tons. About one fifth of the production is annually worked up in the blast furnaces at Ringwood, Boonton, Stanhope, Oxford Furnace, and Phil- lipsburg, in the state ; but the greater portion goes to the anthracite furnaces of Pennsylva- nia. In the white, crystalline limestone at Ogdensburg and Franklin, in Sussex co., there are large beds of zinc ore associated with frank- linite, supplying the extensive zinc works at Newark and Jersey City. Northwest of the azoic formation, and occupying some of the val- leys in the Highlands, are the rocks of the Silu- rian and Devonian epochs. The most extensive of these is the magnesian limestone, a blue sedi- mentary rock seen in the Kittatinny, German, Musconetcong, Pohatcong, and Wallkill valleys, and to a less extent in a few other localities. Its stone is largely used for building and in the manufacture of lime. Hematite ore, of which there are about a dozen mines, occurs in it. The lowest member in the Silurian system is the conglomerate and sandstone, which makes up the Bearfort or Rough, Greenpond, and Copperas mountains, and other lower ridges, and the thin belt of gray sandstone found be-