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Bluffton is go much disseminated through the rocks, it is said that its working did not pay well. It is also reported that the working at the mine will be renewed, and perhaps then richer and better veins will be found.
From Western Texas, rich specimens of lead ore are in the State collection. These were gent to the State survey before the war, during which their labels were lost. A specimen of it, rich in silver, hag been stolen from the collection during the past year. I allude to this, because, when in Llano county last October, I was told that a man had shown specimens there to certain parties, some of whom remembered to have seen the game specimens in the State cabinet; hence the rich specimens of silver and lead ore, said to have been recently found in Llano county, may have belonged to another part of the State.
Dr. Hunter, of Palestine, in Anderson county, who wag surgeon of a regiment, or part of a regiment, which passed through Western Texas far out towards the Rio Grande. On this route he saw at two different places, in the rocky sides of the mountains, ledges of rich galena. These were in the vicinity of a certain old fort, which is now unoccupied. Dr. II. pointed out the places on the map, and lie feels confident he could again find them.
From the limited knowledge we have of the geology of this portion of Texas, obtained from the Mexican boundary survey and other sources, there is little doubt of there being the same geological formation in the far western parts of the State as that of the rich lead and silver mines of Mexico.
In many of the old settled counties, we have reports of lead ores having formerly been known; so rich that lead for bullets was there obtained by the old hunters. Such things are now told in some counties where it is useless to expect to find lead ores.
Parson Watkins, a Methodist preacher, living in the northern part of Nacogdoches county, last summer told me that he knew there was a rich lead mine in Sabine county, not far from the town of Milam, in the Policy neighborhood, on the farm of John C. Burroughs, on a creek called Mine creek. The father of Parson Watkins was one of the first settlers of Sabine county. Re was informed of the mine by an old Mexican, and finally, after repeated hunting during two years, he succeeded in finding it. The parson said that, when he was a boy, his father came home one









