THE NEW RIVER Not only on both banks of the New River are the brown oxides of the limestones found, but the red and brown oxides of the copper-region are also penetrated by this stream. It runs for fifty miles through the rich limestone valley, abounding in iron and lead, and then enters the Arnie formations to the east, formerly described in this connection, where immense masses of red and brown ores exist. Below the valley, or west of the valley limestones, the river enters the mountain-ranges of the formations overlying the Matinal. These mountain-ranges are made up of heavy sandstones, slates, and limestones, and contain numerous masses of brown ores, as developed in Giles, Craig, Monroe, Allegheny, Mercer, and Tazewell counties.
These ores may not be of any great value for the production of iron locally, because the timber to produce charcoal will not be adequate or in proportion, though the moun tain or Azoic region in Floyd, Carroll, and Grayson counties is almost an unbroken primeval forest, and the counties before named, to the west of the valley, also possess an abundance of timber; but these resources are insignificant, when compared with the resources of this region in iron ores.
But the Allegheny coal-field is in available proximity, and the coals of the Great Kanawha and the ores of the New River, in Virginia and North Carolina, are both on a scale of equal magnitude. We will not exaggerate if we compare the resources of the Kanawha in this respect to the most favored localities in Pennsylvania, not even except ing the Lehigh region, with its coal and iron. The only requirements are enterprise and capital to develop these resources and to combine the coal and the ores by rail.