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profit than this vein. Many years ago large quantities of ore were excevated here for the purpose of obtaining silver. Trees ap parently forty or fifty years old are growing on the embank ments made by the miners. The old inhabitants of this section, when they first visited the mine found a large quantity of ore, which is said to have contained a large per cent, of silver, tied up in a sack of rawhide, lying near the excavation. None of these specimens have been preserved that their value might he tested, but even if they were rich in silver it is uncertain whether they were dug out at this particular locality. It is highly important to determine accurately the age of metamorphic rocks, because most of the gold bearing metamorphic series were formed near the close of the carboniferous age. The largest deposit of iron ore yet known in this county is on Jackson's creek, near a Mr. Epperson's. It is about twelve miles west of the town of Llano ; and from six to eight miles south east of the Smoothing Iron Mountain. It is an immense and apparently solid mass of iron, of an oblong oval form, surrounded by the azoic granite, having evidently been raised up from be low with the latter. It has a length of about eight hundred feet, and a width of about five hundred feet, with an elevation of from twenty-five to thirty feet above its visible base. Loose masses of ore, some of which are of several tons weight, lie scattered over the surface of the iron hill and on its outskirts. It is a magnetic iron ore being the magnetite of the mineralogists. It is the same ore which occurs in the celebrated iron mines of Sweden, and also of those in the northeastern part of the State of New York, all of which are noted for the great excellence of their me tahc iron. It is the best iron ore known, and yields the largest per cent, of pure iron. It seems to be a true vein, and like all true veins, to have been ejected up from unknown depths below, hence the supply is inexhaustible ; for no true metalic vein has ever been traced downwards to its' termination. However, there is evidently enough near the surface for the wants of the present generation. During the late war an attempt was made for its manufacture, and abandoned for want of funds. It was then tested on a large scale and found to yield seventy-five per cent, of metalic iron. This per cent, is equal to that of the best iron ores, and there are very few which give as much. Some ,of it was at that time made into horse shoes and nails by some black smiths, and pronounced by them to be equal to the best Swedish iron. The limestones of the paleozoic, and cretaceous rocks are in the immediate neighborhood from which abundant materials for a flux can easily be obtained. Soap-stones or steatites of
