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fifty miles above Hanover-town, and Mattapony to Downer's bridge, seventy

miles above its mouth.

Piankatank, the little rivers making out of Mobjack bay, and those of the eaftern shore, receive only very fmall veffels, and thefe can but enter them. Rappahannock affords four fathom water to Hobbe's Hole, and two fathoms from thence to Fredericksburg, one hundred and ten miles.

The Potomack is seven and a half miles wide at the mouth; four and a half at Nomony bay; three at Aquia; one and a half at Hallooing point; one and a quarter at Alexandria. Its foundings are feven fathom at the mouth; five at St. George's ifland; four and a half at Lower Match‹dic; three at Swan's point, and thence up to Alexandria; thence ten feet water to the falls, which are thirteen miles above Alexandria. The tides in the Potomack are not very strong, excepting after great rains, when the ebb is pretty frong, then there is little or no flood; and there is never more than four or five hours flood, except with long and ftrong fouth winds.

The distance from the capes of Virginia to the termination of the tide water in this river is above three hundred miles, and navigable for fhips of the greatest burthen, nearly that distance. From thence this river, obftructed by four confiderable falls, extends through a vast tract of inhabited country towards its fource. These falls are, tft, The Little Falls, three miles above tide water, in which distance there is a fall of thirty-fix feet; 2d, The Great Falls, fix miles higher, where is a fall of feventy-fix feet in one mile and a quarter; 3d, The Seneca Falls, fix miles above the former, which form fhort, irregular rapids, with a fall of about ten feet; and 4th, The Shenandoah Falls, fixty miles from the Seneca, where is a fall of about thirty feet in three miles from which laft, fort Cumberland is about one hundred and twenty miles diftant. The obftructions which are oppofed to the navigation above and between these falls are of little confequence.

The Great Kanhawa is a river of confiderable note for the fertility of its land, and ftill more, as leading towards the head waters of James river. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether its great and numerous rapids will admit a navigation, but at an expenfe to which it will require ages to render its inhabitants equal, The great obftacles begin at what are called the Great Falls, ninety miles above the mouth, below which are only five or fix rapids, and thefe paffable, with fome difficulty, even at low water. From the falls to the mouth of Green Briar is one hundred miles, and thence to the lead mines one hundred and twenty. It is two hundred and eighty yards wide at its mouth.

The Little Kanhawa is one hundred and fifty yards wide at the mouth. It yields a navigation of ten miles only. Perhaps its northern branch, called Junius's creck, which interlocks with the wellern waters of the Monongahela, may one day admit a fhorter paffage from the latter into the Ohio.

Befides the rivers we have now mentioned, there are many others of less note, nevertheless the State does not abound with good fish; turgeon, fhad and herring are the moft plenty; perch, fheeepfhead, drum, rock fith, and trout, are common; befides thefe, they have oyfters, crabs, fhrimps, &c. in abundance. The fprings in this State are almoft innumerable. In Augufta there is a remarkable cascade, it bears the name of the Falling Spring. It is a water of James river, where it is called Jackfon's river, rifing in the warm fpring mountains about twenty miles fouth-welt of the warm fpring, and flowing into that valley. About three quarters of a inile from its fource it falls over a rock two hundred feet into the valley below. The feet of Vol. IV. D 2

water is broken in its breadth by the rock in two or three places, but not at all in its height. Between the sheet and rock, at the bottom, you may walk acrofs dry. This cataract will bear no comparifon with that of Niagara, as to the qua tity of water compofing it, the fheet being only twelve or fifteen feet wide above, and fomewhat more fpread below; but it is half as high again.

Soil, Productions, &c.

THE foil below the mountains feems to have acquired a character

for goodness which it by no means deferves. Though not rich it is well fuited to the growth of tobacco and Indian corn, and parts of it for wheat. Good crops of cotton, flax and hemp are also raised and in fome counties. they have plenty of cyder, and exquifite brandy, diftilled from peaches, which grow in great abundance upon the numerous rivers of the Chesapeak.

The planters, before the war, paid their principal attention to the culture of tobacco, of which there used to be exported, generally, fifty-five thousand hogfheads a year. Since the revolution they are turning their attention more to the cultivation of wheat, Indian corn, barley, flax and hemp. It is expected that this State will add the article of rice to the lift of exports; as it is fuppofed a large body of swamp, in the eaftearnmost counties, is capable of producing it.

Horned or neat cattle are bred in great numbers in the western counties of Virginia, as well as the Sates fouth of it, where they have an extensive range, and mild winters, without any permanent fnows, They run at large, are not houfed, and multiply very fast. "In the lower parts of the State a difcafe prevails among the neat cattle which proves fatal to all that are not bred there. The oxen from the more northern States, which were employed at the fiege of York-town, in October 1781, almost all died, fometimes forty of them in a night, and often fuddenly dropped down dead in the roads. It is faid that the feeds of this disease were brought from the Havannah to South Carolina or Georgia in som hides, and that the disease has made a progress northward to Virginia. Lord Dunmore imported fome cattle from RhodeIsland, and kept them confined in a fmall pafture, near his feat, where no cattle had been for fome years, and where they could not intermix with other cattle, and yet they foon died."

The gentlemen of this State being fond of pleasure, have taken much pains to raise a good breed of horfes, and have fucceeded in it beyond any of the other States in the Union. They will give one thousand pounds flerling for a good feed horfe. Horfe-racing has had a great tendency to encourage the breeding of good horfes, as it affords an opportunity of putting them to the trial of their fpeed. They are more elegant, and will perform more fervice than the horses of the northern States.

With refpect to the fubterraneous productions, Virginia is the moft pregnant with minerals and folhils of any flate in the Union. Mr. Jefferfon mentions a lump of gold ore of about four pounds weight found near the falls of Rappahannock river, which yielded feventeen penny-weights of gold, of extraordinary ductility; but no other indication of gold has beendifcovered in its neighbourhood.

On the great Kanhawa, oppofite to the mouth of Cripple creek, and alfo about twenty-five miles from the fouthern boundary of the State, in the county of Montgomery, are mines of lead. The metal is mixed, fometimes with earth, and fometinres with rock, which requires the force of gunpowder

open it; and is accompanied with a portion of filver, but too fmall to be worth feparation under any process hitherto attempted there. The propor tion yielded is from fifty to eighty pounds of pure lead from an hundred pounds of wathed ore. The most common is that of fixty to the hundred pounds. The veins are fometimes moft flattering; at others they difappear fuddenly and totally. They enter the fide of the hill, and proceed horizontally.

A valuable lead mine is faid to have been difcovered in Cumberland, below the mouth of Red river. The greateft, however, known in the weftern country are on the Miffiffippi, extended from the mouth of Rock river an hundred and fifty miles upwards. Thefe are not wrought, the lead ufed in that country being from the banks on the Spanish fide of the Miffiffippi, oppolite to Kafkafkia.

A mine of copper was opened in the county of Amherst, on the north fide of James river, and another in the oppofite county, on the fouth fide. However, either from bad management or the poverty of the veins, they were difcontinued. There are feveral iron mines in this State; a few years ago there were fix worked; two furnaces made about one hundred and fifty tons of bar iron each; four others made each from fix hundred to one thoufand fix hundred tons of pig iron annually. Befides thefe, a forge at Fredericksburgh made about three hundred tons a year of bar iron, from pigs imported from Maryland; and a forge on Neapfco of Potomack worked in the fame way. The indications of iron in other places are numerous, and difperfed through all the middle country. The toughness of the caft iron of fome of the furnaces is very remarkable. Pots and other utenfils, caft thinner than usual, of this iron, may be fafely thrown into or out of the waggons in which they are tranfported. Salt pans made of the fame, and no longer wanted for that purpose, cannot be broken up in order to be melted again, unless previously drilled in many parts.

In the western part of this State, we are informed, there are iron mines on on Chefnut Creek, a branch of the great Kanhawa, near where it croffes the Carolina line and in other places.

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Confiderable quantities of black lead are taken occafionally for ufe from Winterham, in the county of Amelia. There is no work established at it, those who want, go and procure it for themselves.

The country on both fides of James river, from fifteen to twenty miles above Richmond, and for feveral miles northward and fouthward is replete with mineral coal of a very excellent quality. Being in the hands of many proprietors, pits have been opened and worked to an extent equal to the demand. The pits which have been opened lie one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet above the bed of the river, and have been very little incommo ded with water. The first difcovery of the coal is faid to have been made by a boy digging after a cray-fish; it has also been found on the bottoms of trees blown up. In many places it lies within three or four feet of the furface of the ground. It is conjectured, that five hundred thousand bufhels might be raised from one pit in twelve months.

In the western country, coal is known to be in fo many places, as to have induced an opinion, that the whole tract between the Laurel mountain, Miffippi and Ohio, yields coal. It is also known in many places on the north fide of the Ohio. The coal at Pittsburgh is of a very fuperior quality; a bed of it at that place has been on fire fince the year 1765. Another cal hill on the Pike Run of Monongahela has been on fire for feveral years.

There is very good marble, and in very great abundance, on James river at the mouth of Rockfish; fome white and as pure as one might expect to find on the furface of the earth; but generally variegated with red, blue and purple. None of it has ever been worked it forms a very large precipice, which hangs over a navigable part of the river.

But one vein of lime ftone is known below the Blue Ridge; its first appearance is in Prince William, two miles below the Pignut ridge of mountains; thence it paffes on nearly parallel with that. and croffes the Rivanna about five miles below it, where it is called the South-weft ridge; it then croffes Hardware, above the mouth of Hudfon's creek, James river, at the mouth of Rockfish, at the Marble Quarry before spoken of, probably runs up that river to where it appears again at Rofs's iron works, and fo paffes off fouth-weftwardly by Flat-creek of the river Otter; it is never more than an hundred yards wide. From the Blue ridge weltwardly the whole country feems to be founded on a rock of line-ftone, befides infinite quantities on the furface, both loofe and fixed; this is cut into beds, which range, as the mountains and fea-coaft do, from south-well to north-east, the lamina of each bed declining from the horizon towards a parallelism with the axis of the earth. Mr. Jeferfon. being ftruck with this obfervation, made, with a quadrant, a great number of trials on the angles of their declination, and found them to vary from 22° to 60°; bur averaging all his trials, the refult was within onethird of a degree of the elevation of the pole or latitude of the place, and much the greatest part of them taken separately were little different from that; by which it appears, that these lamina are, in the main, parallel with the axis of the earth. In fome inftances, indeed, he found them perpendicular, and even reclining the other way; but these were extremely rare, and always attended with figns of convulfion, or other circumftances of fingularity, which admitted a poffibility of removal from their original position. These trials were made between Madifon's cave and the Potomack.

Near the eaftern foot of the north mountain are immense bodies of Schift, containg impreffions of fhells in a variety of forms. Mr. Jefferfon receiv. ed perrified fhells of very different kinds, from the fift fources of the Kentucky, which bore no refemblance to any he had ever seen on the tide waters. It is faid, that shells are found in the Andes, in South America, fifteen thoufand feet above the level of the ocean. This is confidered by many, both of the learned and unlearned, as a proof of an univerfal deluge.

There is great abundance, more especially when you approach the moun tains, of flone of white, blue, brown, and other colours, fit for the chiffe!, good mill-flone, fuch alfo as flands the fire, and flate-flone. We are told of flint, fit for gun-flints, on the Meherrin in Brunfwick, on the Miffiffippi, between the Ohio and Kafkafkia, and on others of the weftern waters. Ifinglafs, or mica, is in feveral places; loadstone alfo, and an asbestos of a ligneous texture, is Imetimes to be met with.

Marble abounds generally. A clay, of which, like the Sturbridge in England, bricks are made, which will refift long the action of fire, has been found on Tukahoe creek of James river, and no doubt will be found in other places. Chalk is faid to be in Botetourt and Bedford. In the latter county is fome carth, believed to be gypseous. Ochres are found in various par s.

In the lime-tone country are many caves, the earthly floors of which are impregnated with nitre. On Rich creek, a branch of the Great Kanhawa, about fixty miles below the lead miues, is a very large one, about twenty yards

The vault is of rock,

wide, and entering a hill a quarter or half a mile. from nine to fifteen or twenty feet above the floor. A Mr. Lynch, who gives this account, undertook to extract the nitre. Befides a coat of the falt which had formed on the vault and floor, he found the earth highly impreg nated to the depth of feven feet in fome places, and generally of three. every bufhel yielding on an average three pounds of nitre. Mr. Lynch having made about a thousand pounds of the falt from it, configned it to fome others, who have fince made large quantities. They have done this by purfuing the cave into the hill, never trying a fecond time the earth they have once exhaufted, to fee how far or foon it receives another impregnation. At least fifty of these caves are worked on the Greenbriar, and there are many of them known on Cumberland river.

An intelligent gentleman, an inhabitant of Virginia, fuppofes, that the caves lately difcovered yield it in fuch abundance, that he judges five hundred thousand pounds of faltpe:re might be collected annually.

Medicinal Springs.

THERE are feveral medicinal fprings, fome of which are indubi

tably efficacious, while others feem to owe their reputation as much to fancy, and change of air and regimen, as to their real virtues. None of them have undergone a chemical analyfis in fkilful hands, nor been so far the fubject of obfervation, as to have produced a reduction into claffes, of the diforders which they relieve; it is in our power to give little more than au enumeration of them.

The most efficacious of these are two fprings in Augufla, near the fources of James river, where it is called Jackfon's river. They rife near the foot of the ridge of mountains, generally called the Warm Spring mountain, bat in the maps, Jackfon's mountains. The one is diflinguifhed by the name of the Warm Spring, and the other of the Hot Spring. The Warm Spring iffues with a very bold stream, fufficient to work a grift mill, and to keep the waters of its bafon, which is thirty feet in diameter, at the vital warmth, viz. 96° of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The matter which thefe waters is allied to is very volatile; its finell indicates it to be fulphurcous, as alfo does the circumftance of turning filver black: they relieve rheumatifms: other contplaints alfo of very different natures have been removed or leffened by them. It rains here four or five days in every week.

The hot fpring is about fix miles from the warm, is much fmaller, and has been fo hot as to have boiled an egg. Some believe its degree of beat to be leffened it raifes the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer to 112°, which is fever heat; it fometimes relieves where the warm fpring fails. A fountain of common water, iffuing within a few inches of its margin, gives it a fingular appearance. Comparing the temperature of thefe with that of the hot fprings of Kamfchatka, of which Krachininnikow, gives an account, the difference is very great, the latter railing the mercury to 200°, which is within 12° of boiling water. The fprings are very much reforted to, in fpite of a total want of accommodation for the fick. Their waters are strongest in the hotteft months, which occafions their being vifited in July and Auguft principally.

The fweet fprings are in the county of Botetourt, at the aftern foot of the Allegany, about forty-two miles from the warm fprings. They are fil lefs known. Having been found to relieve cafes in which the others had

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