The Tellico ores in Monroe county are varied. The Limonite is most abundant, but there are a few localities where the Hematite and Magnetite are found. The Hematite ore is so compact that blasting powder is used in raising it. It is very pure, having a few seams of yellow and white ochre.

Shot ore is likewise found in this vicinity. Donelley's Bank is the name of the principal deposit of this ore. A tunnel has been driven into a ridge, and for a while large quantities were taken out that yielded in the furnace fifty per cent.

Many years ago the immense masses of brown Hematite which cap the copper veins at Ducktown, in Polk county, attracted the attention of iron men. Many attempts were made to work it, but the small percentage of copper ore present made the iron worthless. Time may develop processes by which it can be made available, but at present the quality of iron is what is called "red short," and is almost worthless for any practical purposes.

There are now in operation, or temporarily suspended, five furnaces in the Eastern Iron Belt; one in Carter county, one in Washington, two in Greene, and one in Johnson. The quantity of iron made is small, on account of the inadequacy of railroad facilities. While the quantity produced in this region will not exceed 10,000 tons annually, the capacity of the furnaces is equal to the production of 15,000 tons. This charcoal cold-blast iron is very superior. Its chilling properties are just such as to make it most suitable for the manufacture of car wheels, and nearly all the iron made in this region is consumed in Knoxville and other points for that purpose. It has been pronounced equal to the best made anywhere for car wheels, axles, locomotive tires, and, indeed, everything in which toughness, elasticity and strength are required. A fair test was also given to this iron at West Point, for armory purposes, and proved entirely satisfactory.

THE DYESTONE BELT.

This belt of iron ore is remarkable for its length and richness. It skirts the eastern base of the Cumberland Table Land, and extends in our State from Chattanooga to Cumberland Gap, a distance of one hundred and sixty miles. The following counties, or parts of them, are embraced within this belt: Hancock, Claiborne, Grainger, Union, Campbell, Anderson, Roane, Rhea, Meigs, James, Bradley and Ham

ilton. As before stated, the belt includes the Sequatchie and the Elk Fork Valleys, which places parts of Marion, Sequatchie and Bledsoe counties within its area.

The chief ore of this belt is a stratified red iron-rock, called at many points Dyestone, being sometimes used for dyeing purposes. It is highly fossiliferous. Like a limestone, or a bed of coal, and unlike the Limonite of the Eastern Belt, it occurs in layers. Its quantity, in any given locality, can therefore be estimated, and the result of a given amount of mining can be calculated with some precision. As a mineral species, the ore is a variety of Hematite, which in plain English is blood-stone, the word referring to the color of the ore. If we take common ironrust and burn it, we obtain a red rust, the change being brought about by the expulsion of water simply. Common brown or yellow ironrust is then Limonite, the same burned is red Hematite. By the burning more than fourteen per cent. of water is expelled. The composition of Hematite is as follows:

Iron..........
Oxygen...

70

30

100

One hundred pounds of the pure ore might be made to yield seventy pounds of iron, but, as in case of Limonite, the impurities defeat this maximum production. In practice from forty to fifty per cent. (and rarely sixty) may be regarded as good work. The ore usually soils the fingers readily. At some points it is hard and is quarried out in blocks; occasionally it is soft and easily crushed. The impurities in it are sandy and argillaceous matter and carbonate of lime. Originally much of it contained limestone matter, this having been in the course of ages leached out, leaving red layers as we now find them.

One, and, at many points, two or more layers of Dyestone outcrop at the eastern base of the Table Land, almost without a break, throughout its whole extent from Virginia to Georgia. Also in many of the minor ridges, lying from one to a number of miles from the Table Land but running parallel with its eastern border, are other outcropping layers. The latter will perhaps, in the aggregate, equal an outcrop extending continuously through the State and following the direction, as above, of the outline of the Table Land. In addition there are lines of outcrops in Sequatchie and Elk Fork Valleys. Elk Fork Valley is in the extreme north-western part of Campbell county.

One of the richest deposits of this ore occurs within a few hundred

yards of Cumberland Gap, and extends without a break twenty miles along the mountain and is half a mile in width. It forms a regular stratum of Walden's Ridge, four feet beneath the surface and varies from eighteen inches to three feet in thickness. This stratum is parallel with the slope of the ridge, and forms a complete sheet or shield, with an overlying stratum of clay, sand, and gravel. The ore is raised with powder and thrown out in large broad sheets. It is here very hard and massive. The whole cost of raising this ore at Cumberland Gap, and depositing it in the bridge loft ready for smelting, is one dollar per ton. This fact will be appreciated by the reader when he reflects that ores delivered ready for smelting in the Pittsburg furnaces cost from ten to twelve dollars per ton. On the spurs which shoot out from the Cumberland Table Land, are deposits of Limonite iron ore of superior excellence, yielding from the furnace fifty per cent. This ore caps the hills, forming a ledge with intermingling gravel from sixteen to eighteen feet in thickness. Some of these beds are said to have an unusually small quantity of dead matter. In other places in the same vicinity are said to be deposits of the black oxide, and silicious iron ore, which have never yet been tested in a furnace.

Limestone for flux, and sandstone for hearths, are found all through the Dyestone region. Coal, too, abounds in juxtaposition to the iron ore, though preference, until the establishment of Rockwood Furnace, was given to charcoal, for the manufacture of which there are ample supplies of timber. Until the erection of Rockwood Furnace, since the war, stone coal had never been used in this State for the smelting of iron.

Very fine deposits of this Dyestone ore occur in the Half Moon Island region, both on the Island and on the mainland. Being on the river, it is easily transported at small cost to Chattanooga and other points. Before the war a large, furnace was in operation at Chattanooga, which used the ore from this region.

But we cannot pretend, within the limits of this chapter, to point out all the advantages which this region affords for the manufacture of iron, or to enumerate all the exposures of ore. What has been said is sufficient, perhaps, to give a general idea of the facts. The thickness of the layers varies from a few inches to four and five feet, sometimes swelling out locally from eight to ten.

So far we have spoken of the Dyestone as occuring in Tennessee; but it has a great range outside of the State. It extends south-west

ward through the north-west corner of Georgia far into Alabama, and is represented by several lines of outcrops. It is the Red Mountain ore of Alabama, and has yielded many hundred tons of iron in that State. To the north-west it extends into Virginia, and indeed through it, reaching into eastern Pennsylvania, where it is extensively reduced in splendidly appointed furnaces.

The layers of ore are attended with shales and thin sandstones, which, with the ore, make up the Dyestone Group or formation. This is a part of the Niagara geological series. The Dyestone Group is often associated, in the ridges, with two other formations, the Black Shale and the Silicious Group, both of which lie above it. The three make a trio of formations often met with.

Prior to the war there were in the Dyestone Belt five blast furnaces and fifteen bloomaries. The quality of the iron made was excellent. Soon after the end of the war attention again began to be directed to the dyestone beds, and it was not long before a new era in iron making was inaugurated in a portion of the belt, by the building of a superior furnace in Roane county at Rockwood.

At thts place are now erected two furnaces, only one of which is in blast. The burning of the gas in the furnace, heats the boilers and makes the steam. These furnaces were built under the superintendency of Gen. J. T. Wilder, whose communication to the Bureau of Agriculture, included in this chapter, will be read with increased interest as the wonderful resources of this iron belt are made known.

We have already said that the Dyestone Belt lies at the very base of the Coal Measures. Here, then, we have, sandwiched, coal, iron ore, limestone and sandstone, the latter suitable for hearths. This circumstance adds much to the interest of this region. Nothing is lacking to make it one of the most famous metallurgical centres in America but facilities for transportation, capital and enterprise. The Cincinnati Southern railroad has already been prospected, and the route surveyed through this iron belt. It is understood that $10,000,000 have been subscribed, and doubtless in a short time the iron horse, with its civilized shriek, will run over beds of ore as rich and as exhaustless as any that exist on the continent. A chain of fiery furnaces will then be built that will illumine the whole eastern margin of the Cumberland Table-land. The light of one will reflect back the light of another. The wilderness of the forest will be replaced by enterprising industry, and there will gather along this line busy communities. Flourishing

towns will spring up, in which manufacturers from the colder regions of the north will rear their establishments for the fabrication of firearms, cutlery and farming implements. Under the shadow of the mountains a new empire of industry will spring up, in which there will be no idlers. With the creative power of coal the iron rocks that have slumbered for unknown ages beneath the surface will be fashioned into articles of utility and value. Ponderous trip hammers will shake the earth, and the eternal whirr and buzz of machinery will make the very atmosphere redolent of life and enterprise. Farms in the long, rich valleys will teem with luxuriant crops, that will find a ready market near, at good prices, and communities that now live from hand to mouth will revel in all the blessings, superfluities and luxuries of life. Nor is this a fancy picture. Under a good government, in a happy climate, wherever coal and iron lie in juxtaposition, and are made accessible by railroad communication, great centres of population are established. See Pittsburg, how opulent! Mr. Valentine, the able superintendent of Wells and Fargo's Express, says of it:-"If you would see what coal can do for a people who turn it to full account, look at Pittsburg, a city with its environs of 300,000 inhabitants built up by miners of coal. There are no drones in its hive-heads and hands are busy. It lost $30,000,000 by the war without shaking its credit. No city on this continent contains more solid wealth according to its population." If coal can do this for Pittsburg, surely coal and iron can do the same for this portion of the State, and Knoxville and Chattanooga will gather in their laps an almost fabulous wealth, and in time become the Pittsburghs of the South.

In the Dyestone Belt are four furnaces now in operation or temporarily suspended, and two or three others in course of erection. Oakdale, stone coal, hot-blast, has a capacity of 1,200 tons per month; Rockwood, Nos. 1 and 2, both stone coal, hot-blast furnaces, have capacities respectively of 750 and 1,200 tons per month; and the Cumberland Gap furnace, charcoal, cold-blast, has a capacity of 105 tons per month. Crockett furnace, in Claiborne county, will soon be put in blast. This has the same capacity as the one at Cumberland Gap. Two will soon be in blast in Chattanooga; one already completed, with a capital stock of $100,000, and the other under way, with a like amount of stock. These furnaces propose to work mixed ores from various points with stone coal. The capacity of each is thirty tons per day.

The following letter from Gen. Wilder, superintendent of Rockwood,