In the vicinity of Chattanooga, and in North Georgia generally, vast beds of brown oxide and fossiliferous red oxide are found, and used to a considerable extent.
At the LONACIIUCKY IRON WonKs, some eight miles east of Jonesboro, the brown hematites of the Eastern range are developed in immense deposits,—consisting of dense and massive conchoidal, or "liver ores," porous, or fibrous ores, and yellow, or ochreous ores. These works have been in operation for nearly fifty years, though idle at in tervals; and while all the near or available timber has disappeared, no impression has been made on the ore.
From this point to Marion, in Smythe county, Virginia, the Eastern range of ore may be traced in almost unbroken beds or deposits; and from Marion to the "Old Lead Mines," in Wythe county, the ore is found in immense masses, and generally in the form of a stratum of almost solid ore, which has a clean, smooth fracture; is hard, yet brittle; dense, yet not refractory, and is extremely pure and productive, and has been extensively used in the bloomeries or Catalan forges for the production of wrought or bar-iron direct. In the vicinity of the lead-mines, in Wythe county, are several
furnaces which have been in operation some thirty years or more, and which have realized fortunes for their proprietors. But they do not all obtain their supplies from the Eastern range. David Graham's New River furnace is supplied from crevices in the limestones, and shallow deposits on the face of the ridges; but the amount so dis tributed is inexhaustible as the supply of a single furnace.
North of this point, in Pulaski county, are the ore banks of the LAUREL DALE Iron Company. This deposit is massive in structure, and irregularly stratified in the soft clays which lie at the base of the Blue Ridge, or, more properly, the ridges which pro ject from its western slope. All through Pulaski and Montgomery counties this range may be traced with almost unbroken ledges and masses of ore along the Blue Ridge. But at this point a greater development of ores has taken place than elsewhere in the valley, as far as our experience goes.