with industrious laborers. Cocke county, and in fact most of the mountainous counties abound in water power. The French Broad, which is from thirty to thirty-five rods wide, has a rapid current, and was found by the levels of the engineers who laid out the Railroad route from Charleston to Cincinnati, to fall at the rate of from ten to twelve feet in the mile,-solid rock strata crossing at intervals, the stream may be converted into natural mill-dams-any power can be had upon this river at several points from Newport to the State line.

Wolf creek, Long creek, the two branches of Big creek and Stone's creek are abundantly large for furnaces and light machinery—the great fall of these streams gives them unusual strength for their size.

Big Pigeon river is smaller than the French Broad, but as a stream for water power affords the same facilities-the fall is about the same. Shoals and seats are found from its mouth to where it crosses the State line. Cosby's creek is a bold stream, it drives a forge and bloomery erected by Messrs. Urps and Roadman, and is well adapted to mills,

etcetera.

With such an immense power every branch of manufactures can be established in these counties; and nature has at the same time placed the raw material to work upon at the disposal of him who will apply them to useful purposes-not to mention the manufacture of glass (1) and other branches-I allude here to the inexhaustible deposites of iron ore. Iron must become one of the principal sources of the wealth of Middle and East Tennessee. Missouri may boast of its iron mountain, (which in East Tennessee would be called a knob or hillock) but the quantity of excellent iron ore in our State far exceeds that of the iron mountain. Judging from the ore visible on the surface in both States, Tennessee is far more favored with it; and no where could a foundery

(1) As yet we have no manufactory of glass in the far west, and no country offers better materials for its establishment than some of the East Tennessee counties. I will here give the materials which are used in making the different kinds of glass, from which it will appear that the county here described has all the necessary requisites to carry on this branch of industry.

Bottle Glass. This is the coarsest kind of glass; in Europe made of various kinds of rock, as basalt or lava--all the rocks in Cocke county, the limestone and slate excepted, will answer this purpose, also the common sand, with some clay and common salt. In England it is made of coarse sand and waste earth of kelp, from which the soap-boilers have washed out the alkali. Kelp is an impure kind of soda which is made from plants which grow on the sea shore; it contains from three to eight per cent of pure carbonate of soda.

Window Glass.-This is generally made from fine sand, with about twice its measure of best kelp. Spanish barilla is used by the best manufacturers in Europe.

Flint Glass.-This is so called because it was formerly made of caleined flint, but at present a fine quartzose sand is employed by the English as the basis; this sand is well washed, calcined and sifted, (Cocke

for a national arsenal be more judiciously situated than in our State, the centre of the Union, and therefore not liable to be attacked by an enemy, and yet by means of its large rivers, and soon perhaps of rail roads, cannon or other arms may be transported in a short time to any point in the Union.

Not only is the country now under consideration rich in iron, and those advantages just enumerated, but all the counties near the State line are in this respect pretty much the same. I have only selected this county as affording the best opportunity for examining the rocks and stratification, by the sections that have been made through the mountains by the French Broad and Big Pigeon rivers.

Meteoric Metallic Mass-Found in Cocke County.

Besides the extensive deposites of iron ore which are found in Cocke county, and of which annalysis will be given in this report-iron of another description was found in this county. During my excursion through East Tennessee I had seen small fragments of native iron, and had heard of large masses of it which were believed to be silver. It being considered a precious metal, all that was known about it, and the places where it was found, were kept a profound secret. Some of the less prejudiced inhabitants at last became acquainted with the nature of the metal, and its real value was made known; and it is to the politeness of Col. Micajah C. Rodgers of Sevierville, that I am indebted for a considerable quantity of it, and to the Hon. Judge Jacob Peck of Jefferson county, who presented me with some small fraginents. I am thus enabled to lay a description of this singular substance before the scientific public.

Having ascertained, as appears from the analysis which will be mentioned in the following pages, that this iron contains Nickel, the mass must be considered of meteoric origin, but it differs from most of the masses of meteoric iron hitherto described. The original weight of it is said to have been about two thousand pounds. The parts that I have seen, and that which is in my possession, are a singular heterogeneous mixture, composed of metallic iron, carburet of iron, or graphite, sulphuret of iron, hydroxide of iron, brown and yellow, the brown being very hard, the yellow very soft, like gypsum; in some pieces all these ingredients form a kind of heterogeneus mixture.

The most interesting part, nevertheless, and which occupies about

county possesses at several places which I have examined on the French Broad, good sand for this purpose, and perhaps sufficient for such establishment. This nevertheless I am not prepared to affirm, but there are immense strata of quartz rock, which is pretty pure, and may serve the purpose. One of the strata is about five miles from Newport.) The flux used for this kind of glass is composed partly of red lead or litharge and pearlash.

It is unnecessary to mention that we have sufficient materials to make potash or pearlash over the whole of Tennessee, and particularly on the mountainous parts of East Tennessee, some of which will always remain as forest.

G*

ninety-five hundredths of the whole mass, is the nickeliferous iron. It is partly of a crystalline structure, and partly composed of irregular grains of various sizes and forms, sometimes merely agglutinated, sometimes separated by a thin, flexible pellicle of a highly polished metal, viz: highly carbonised iron. The crystalline part is composed of lamine, which vary in thickness, forming sometimes equilateral triangles, which are separated, the one from the other, by very thin lamina or pellicles of a brilliant steel polish as mentioned above, and being remarkably flexible, I expected to find these triangular laminæ placed in such position as to form octahedrons, or showing a cleavage parallel to the sides of that solid; but this is not the case, the cleavage gives a regular tetraedron. I have one of these forms, which measure about one inch from the base to the apex. This metallic iron is besides dispersed in irregularly shaped little masses through a solid compact brown hydrated oxide of iron, through which it is also dispersed in invisible grains which can only be detected by the magnet which attracts them when the substance has been reduced to powder.

This iron is malleable. I have in my possession a horse-shoe nail which was made of it without having undergone a previous preparation, and it is harder and whiter than common wrought iron. Its hardness is perhaps owing to a small quantity of carbon, or perhaps to nickel-but the color of the iron in its natural state, before it has been subjected to any operation, differs much in different parts. In some it is black and has no metallic lustre at all; in others it has a brilliant lustre, and is then always much whiter than steel or common iron. This iron is but little susceptible of being tarnished when exposed to the action of the atmosphere-the black part may be rendered white by a file. It is covered also here and there with a kind of black varnish.

The substance which constitutes the next greatest part of the mass is the graphite. It is not easily distinguished from the common graphite or blumbago, except that it is a little harder than the common granular and compact varieties. It is rather blacker than the latter, and makes a blacker and better defined line upon paper. When rubbed by a hard body, it assumes a bright metallic lustre. It is not a pure graphite, but rather a mixture of metallic iron and graphite. This iron can be removed partly by a magnet, when it is reduced to power, but a considerable proportion remains mixed with the graphite which when acted upon by hydrochloric acid is dissolved under a brisk production of hydrogen gas.

The sulphuret of iron or pyrites occupies the small proportion of the mass. This pyrites is not attracted by the magnet, nor does it seem to act upon the magnetic needle. It is easily cut with a knife, and consequently is softer than common pyrites. I have not been able to obtain sparks from it with steel. Another property which distinguishes it from common pyrites is its easy solubility in diluted hydrochloric acid, with a brisk expulsion of sulphuretted hydrogen gas, leaving a ixed powder of black and white in the fluid. It has a more or less nellar structure, in which no regularity could be perceived, and a bronze-yellow and copper-red, often tarnished.

This hydroxide of iron, which forms part of this mass, is a heteromixture of the varieties of the ore generally known under the geneous names of brown iron ore and yellow ochre, and resembles this terrresteral mineral. Its color is generally brownish black, passing into liver brown. The external surface of the mass is covered here and there with the yellow earthy variety. How far this latter penetrates into the mass or what thickness it had originally I am not able to say, as the mass was too much abused before part of it came into my possession.

Its fracture resembles that of the common compact brown iron ore, The brown variety is very hard, no file can make the least impression on it, the best file is immediately dulled, and leaves the steel on the surface of the mass. Nevertheless, the whole is not of a uniform hardness, some part, particularly the liver brown, is scratched by the file.

Some small cavities in it are lined with small lamellar crystals, resembling those of white pyrites.

This hydroxide, judging from my specimens, is not abundant in the interior of the mass, where it serves as a matrix for the metallic iron, but the exterior of the mass is entirely composed of it, which is at some places about one inch in thickness, while at others it is no more than one quarter of an inch, showing here and there small points of metallic iron piercing through it.

Constituents of different parts.

One hundred grains of the metallic iron were dissolved in diluted hydrochloric acid, leaving a residue of half a grain of a black powder similar to that obtained of the graphite. This solution being treated with nitric acid to convert the protoxide into peroxide, was precipitated by pure ammonia; the precipitate being washed and ignited gave 124 grains of peroxide-S7 grains of pure iron. The ammoniacal solution gave 12 grains of metallic nickel, with a trace of cobalt; loss half a grain

METALLIC IRON.

Of the graphite, pulverised and freed by a magnet of intermixed iron fifty grains were acted upon with diluted hydrochloric acid; an effervescence took place with disengagement of hydrogen gas, owing to the metallic iron which was so intimately mixed with the graphite, that it was not attracted by the magnet. After the effervescence ceased it was heated in order to dissolve every thing that was soluble. The insoluble part being washed and dried, was pure carbon, it weighed fortysix and a half grains.

The hydrochloric solution being treated with nitric acid to convert the protoxide into peroxide, and precipitated by ammonia, gave peroxide equal to three grains of metallic iron. The filtered solution was

treated with pure potassa, a hardly perceptible floculent precipitate was obtained, so that this iron was free of nickel.

A small fragment of the pyrites was dissolved in diluted hydrochloric acid under a brisk effervescence and disengagement of sulphuretted hydrogen gas-part of it was insoluble; this, after being washed and dried, was exposed to heat, by which sulphur was sublimed, and a black powder remained. The quantity used for the analyzes was too small to determine the precise proportions-hut it is composed of

Sulphuret of Iron,
Carbon.

SULPHURET OF IRON,

HYDROXIDE OF IRON.

The hydroxide of iron lost about seventeen per cent. by being heated, and had then all the characters of similar residue of terrestral brown iron stone or hæmetite.

Such are the characters and appearances of this mass. Nothing is known, in the country, of its fall; it was accidentally discovered near Cosby's creek, in the south-western part of Cocke county, and as mentioned above, considered as silver ore; in fact there is yet a fragment of it in the hands of an inhabitant who asks fifteen hundred dollars for it, which sum would be some hundred dollars too much if it were pure silver.

This is not the only instance of meteoric iron occurring in Tennessee; a small mass was found in Dickson county, and another a few miles from Caney Fork, the latter had an oval shape, its long diameter being from ten to twelve inches, and a smooth glassy surface. It is said that several masses have been found about twenty miles east of the Warm Springs in North Carolina; I went to the spot during my last excursion, but could learn nothing with certainty of them, nor see any of the metal.

IRON ORES.

Though the preceding metallic mass is of the highest interest to the philosopher who investigates the operations of nature, it is not so in regard to the political economist, who points out the sources of National wealth. I should therefore have given a mineralogical and chemical account of the ores which, as appears from the preceding pages, are so abundant in Cocke county. But whether it is to be attributed to the neglect of those who promised to send me specimens, which I was not able to carry with me on horse back, or whether it is owing to a want of opportunity to forward them-I have been disappointed in my expectation and the description of these ores which was promised in the preceding pages, will have to be communicated in a future report.