Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science
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A Century of Geology in Indiana. W. S. Blatchley. A wise man oiiee said that the Good Lord made the Geology of Indiana simple so that it could be easily understood by the State Geologists elected by the people. Whether the Almighty had that idea in mind, when the geological formations now constituting the area comprising the State were laid down, is and always will be a matter of conjecture. Suffice it to say, that according to the best knowledge obtainable, those formations were de- posited in the order and manner set forth by the writer in another paper presented to this Academy in 1903.* Prior to 1837 there is but little record of work done toward utilizing the mineral resources or determining the geology of Indiana. It is known that as early as 1804 the location of outcrops of coal was noted and marked on the land survey maps of the State, and in 1811 a small mine had been opened at Fulton, Perry County, from which it is said Robert Fulton obtained a supply of fuel for the first steamboat descending the Ohio River. In 1817, William McClure, who afterward came to New Harmony with Robert Dale Owen, published a work "Observations on the Geology of the United States of America, etc." in which was a colored geological map of the Eastern United States. This shows Indiana in one color, the entire area of the State being included under what he called the "secondary" or area of stratified rocks. Indiana is not mentioned in the text of this work. First Accounts of Wyandotte Cave. In 1819, appeared the first i)ublished account of any cave in the United States, that of Wyandotte Cave, of Crawford County. It appeared in Wm. McMurtrie's "Sketches of Louisville and its Environs", under the heading, "The Mammoth Cave of Indiana." The cave at that time was owned by one Dr. Benjamin Adams who had preempted the land on which it is situated for the purpose of making saltpetre. McMurtrie says: "At what precise period it was first discovered must be left to tradition and wild conjecture to determine, but it is evident, from circumstances hereafter to be mentioned, that many ages must have elapsed, since that terrible convulsion of the earth, which has, in some places, rent asunder the solid rock for a hundred feet to- gether. Although its existence was generally ascertained in 1798, it is only since the year 1814 that we have any account of it that can he relied on." He states on the next page, however, that Gen. Wm. H. Harrison visited the *"The Indiana of Nature; Its Evolution," Presidential address by W. S. Blatchley, delivered December 28, 1903. (89) 90 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. cave in ISOB. "This gentleman informed Dr. Adams that there were at that time, enormous lumps of some saline matter scattered over the floor, indi- vidual pieces of which, he was persuaded, would have weighed from one to 200 pounds. The whole of this crystalized body must have been an impure sulphate of magnesia, which is still found there, though in small crystals, and only on the sides and in the interstices of the rock, which is owing to all the larger ones having been removed, several wagon loads of which were taken to Frankfort and other places." McMurtrie's brief description is of the old ca^e only, the new portion not having been discovered until ISoO. He says that the earth in the old passage "contains about five pounds of the nitrate of lime or magnesia, to the bushel, and is composed of decaying animal and vegetable matter, principally of bats' dung, Avhich may be seen hanging in tufts on everj- rock." From the wording one does not know whether he meant that the bats or the dung clung to the rocks, but probably the former." "Continuing on the main route for some distance further" saj's McMurtrie, "the eye is involuntarily attracted by immense pebbles, weighing from one to five hundred tons, which lie precisely in the middle of it. I say pebbles, because, although they are composed of carbonate of lime, they are as comf)l('tely I'ounded as any fragment of a primitive rock that can be i)roduc('d in a water course." Some one must have needed these "rounded jx'bbles" and removed them from the cave, as I have never seen any signs of them. Continuing, hesajs: "The first serious impediment that presents itself consists in the ceiling or roof of the gallery descending so low as to touch the floor, leaving a small arched opening, through which, whoever wishes to penetrate further, must crawl and scuffle, not on his hands and knees, for that is impossible from the shallowness of the arch, but, literally speaking, on his l>elly. This spot has been styled by the guide, and not inaptly, the bat's burial jjhice, the soil on which you creep, to the depth of a foot, being composed entirely of their remains." After reaching the hirgc room at the end of the old cave Avhich he calls the "Chaml)er of Fountains," and descanting upon the wonders of what is now known as the Pillar of the Constitution, McMurtrie says: "I think that T may safely assert that the cave bears along with it most unequivocal proof of its having originated in an earthquake, which has split the rock, and opened a passage for a superincumbent body of water that has rushed in and filled a part, if not the whole of tlie cavity." In Vol. I, "Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society," i)ublished in 1S20, is an Ajjjjendi.x entitled "Account of a (Ireat and very Extraordinary Cave in Indiana, in a letter from the owner to a gentle- man in Frankfort, Kentucky." This letter was written by Dr. Adams, February 27, 1818, to John H. Famham of Frankfort , but was not published till 1820, or one year after McMurtrie's work above cited. In transmitting it, Farnham said: "To the chymist and natural philosopher, the Indiana cave presents a most interesting theatre of experience and speculation; A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY IN INDIANA. 91 and I congratulate the piiblie that it is in the possession and owiiersliip of a gentleman of the enlarged and liberal mind of Dr. Adams." The letter of Adams set forth but more briefly the same facts as given in McMurtrie's account. He called the column at the end of the old route the "Pillar", states that it is about one and one fourth miles from the entrance and, as did also McMurtrie, that it is composed of "satin-spar." The main idea of Dr. Adams in this letter seems' to have been the advertising of the salts of the cave. He called it his "Epsom Salts Cave," and stated that the "first in importance was the sulphate of magnesia or epsom salts, which abounds throughout this cave in almost its whole extent and which I believe has no parallel in the history of that article. The quality of the salt in the cave is inferior to none and when it takes its proper stand in regular and domestic practice must be of national utility. Every competent judge must pronounce it inexhaustible. The worst earth that has been tried will yield four pounds of salt to the bushel, and the best from 20 to 25 pounds. The next production is the nitrate of lime or saltpetre earth. There are vast quantities of this earth and equal in strength to any that I have ever seen. There are also large quantities of nitrate of allumina or nitrate of argil, etc." Dr. Adams carried on the business of leaching these salts between 1812 and 1820 on an extensive scale, and as late as 1905 remains of his old wooden hoppers and troughs were to be seen in the vicinity of the mouth of Wyandotte. In 1823 the legislature passed "an act concerning saltpetre caves and for other purposes." The preamble to the act recited that "it has been repre- sented to this General Assembly that great loss has been sustained by the owners of stock, cattle and horses, from the use of substance extracted from saltpetre caves, epsom salt caves and others of different kinds, in consequence of the same having been left unenclosed by the owners or occupiers thereof, for remedy whereof, etc." The act provided that the owner of any such cave who should allow it to remain unenclosed and exposed to the stock of the neighborhood, should be liable to a fine of SIO for every day it was left so exposed, and also liable in damages for stock injured. This act continued in force many years and was embodied in the Revised Statutes of 1843. In Plint's "Geographj' of the Mississippi Valley," published in 1833, there is also a brief account of Wyandotte under the name of "Epsom Salts Cave," but it was evidently compiled from the two articles al>ove quoted. Survey for Canal to Connect Waters ok Lake Michigan and Wabash River. In April, 1829 Howard Stansburj^ a civil engineer in the employ of the United States, was instructed "to ascertain the practicability of uniting by a canal the waters of Lake Michigan with the Wabash River." With a party of assistants he spent two seasons, those of 1829 and 1830, in the field. From his report, dated October 17, 1831, 1 have taken a few facts of general geological : 92 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE.