Letters from the East and from the West

Front matter

LETTERS FROM THE EAST AND FROM THE WEST. BY FREDERICK HALL, M. D. Formerly Professor Math, and Nat. Philosophy in Middlebury College, Vt. and late President Mount Hope College, Maryland; Member of the Conn. Acad. Sci.; American Geol. Society; Acad. Arts and Sci. Mass., Cor. Mem. Lyceum, N. Y., Columbian Institute, Washington, and of several Foreign Societies, Cor. Sec. American Historical Society, Washington. PUBLISHED IT J. TATLOB AND ¥». M. MOBBBI80N, WASHINGTON CITT BELL AND ENTWIS1EL, ALEXANDBIA, D. C. — T. LUCAS, JB. AND PUBLICATION BOOMS, NO. 7, SOUTH LIBF.BTT STBEET, BALTIMORE. [Entered according to law, may 6, 1840.] TO THE PUBLIC. Dear Friexd: — Being about to send you a Book, it is deemed very important to say a word to you about it, in the manner of a Preface, and this may be all, which you will wish to read.

The work is small, and this circumstance, being in the present age, accounted a high recommen dation, may procure for it a limited persual. The " Letters from the East, or from the valley of the Connecticut river," were first published in the National Intelligencer of this city. These letters, it was reported, a few individuals, of your large family, would be glad to preserve, provided they were in the form of a book. For their gratification, they are now reprinted in the desired shape. The history of the " Letters from the West" is brief. They were written more than two years ago, and transmitted, by mail, to the writer's wife, to cheer her loneliness. He cannot say, that they were composed for her amusement, only. It was his design to spend a part of the follow ing winter in re-writing, and preparing them for the type.

Sickness con fined him, the whole of that dreary winter, to his couch. His health kind Heaven, in the spring, restored, and he set himself to the work of trans cription. When the business was completed, the manuscript was offered, for sale, to three or four publishers, but they would not buy it. " We are willing," said they, "to print it, at our own risk. But the world is full of books ; none sell, except novels ; the taste of the age is so dainty, it will accept of nothing, which is not strongly peppered; times are haid; money is scarce, and we cannot run the hazard of buying a work of travels." The author, like every tender hearted father, fancying his offspring too good to give away, concluded to lock up the scroll in his scrutoir, where it has had a long sleep. When the other Letters come to be printed, it was found that they form ed a bulk, too diminutive for a bound volume.

Letter I

Haddam, (Conn.) July 24, 1838. I took passage at New York, yesterday, in a steamboat bound for Hartford. For a conveyance from one of these cities to the other, by steam power, I have, many times, paid five dollars. Now the demand was fifty cents! The distance is, I believe, about one hundred and forty miles. I could not pass by Haddam — a place known all over the civiliz ed earth, for the richness and variety of its mineral productions. I therefore begged the captain to put me on shore, that I might have the pleasure of spending a few days in rambling among the rocks, and examining the fine quarries of granite and gneiss, which are very numerous, and are said to be extremely lucrative to their proprietors. The barren hills are, indeed, alive with human be ings, hard at work, with the wedge, the crowbar, the drill, and the sledge-hammer.

Thousands of tons of the stone are already got out, and prepared for the builder's hand, waiting to be transported to New York, and other more Southern markets. To-day I have been to visit the locality of lolite, situated on what is here termed "Tim's Hill,1' about a mile north from the meeting house. This beautiful gem is unequally distributed in an im mense mass of imperfect granite, constituted of all the ingredients requisite to form good granite, but badly mixed. The quartz, which is white, exists in too small proportion. The feldspar is abundant and interesting, being principally of that variety called albite, (from the Latin albus, white.) I found, also, in different parts of the rock, fine specimens of adularia — a name derived from one of the Alps, in Switzerland, once known by the name of Adula, but which is now called Stella, where it was first discovered.

The mica is jet black, some of it a little inclining to green. These articles, quartz, feldspar, and mica, are, you are aware, all that is necessary to constitute granite ; which is often, the repository of many other minerals. Among these foreign substances are, in the present instance, the lolite and Schorl, the latter scattered with a liberal hand, and in perfect crystals, terminated at each end by three faces. The prisms sometimes have three, sometimes six, and sometimes nine lateral faces, moderately striated. These crystals are usually short and small ; most of them less than an inch in length, and some smaller than a pea ; but generally about the size of a hickory nut. They are very beautiful, and so abundant, that I obtained a quart of them in half an hour. The lolite is procured by blasting the rock.

There had been so much of it torn to pieces by the force of powder, and so many large fragments were left unbroken by the hammers of other min eralogists, that 1 did not deem it expedient to repeat the operation. Aided by two individuals, who were accustomed to work amon«r the rocks, I was enabled, by means of the hammer and chisel, to obtain a number of good specimens. The crystals, however, were none of them complete.1 The name, formed from the Greek ion, violet, and lithos, a stone, does net, in my apprehension convey to the mind a full and accurate idea of its color. It exhibits, it is true, a tinge of the violet, but several other colors, and particularly the green, have lent their aid in making up the compound present ed. The lustre which it displays, when viewed in certain positions, is very peculiar, and cannot easily be described.

An individual who has once seen the stone will, ever after, be able to re cognize it. Haddam furnishes beryl of an excellent quality, in most of its granite quarries, and particularly at those on Long Hill, and at one on the eastern side of the river. From the quarry last mentioned, I have just procured two of the finest crystals I ever had in my possession. One of them is a perfect hexagonal prism, about two inches long, and an inch and a half in diameter. The faces form ing its terminations are at right angles with the sides, and wear as fine a polish as the hand of Nature can produce. The color is a brilliant emerald green, and, indeed, the crystal appears to possess more of the characters of the emerald, than of the beryl. I may write to you again to-morrow, if I feel in the humor for it, after hard working.

Letter II

Haddam, July 25, 1838. I had engaged two of the quarry men to work for me to-day at the famous chrysoberyl locality. They were on the spot with their blasting apparatus at an early hour. The rock to be opera ted on is situated four or five rods east from the meeting-house, and is owned by a Mr. Brainard, whose house rests on a part of it. Blasting has, in former times, been executed with success in the cellar, where small particles of the chrysoberyl may now, by close inspection, be discovered in the rock. Most of the digging and blasting, however, has been effected on the north side of the house, and within three or four feet from it. Here, directly under the windows, I purchased the privilege of making an experiment on the following conditions: I was to pay the owner five dollars for a single blast, and to satisfy him for any damage which might be done to the building.

The preliminaries being settled, the men set themselves, with good heart, to the work of boring; the one holding the drill, and the other plying the massy hammer. The rock to be penetrated is a sort of granite. Professor Shepard calls it talcy granite. It might as well be named albitic granite, for nearly all the feldspar belongs to the variety called albite. The mode of operating is this : the orifice is sunk to the depth of twelve or fourteen inches ; about a pound and a half of powder is poured in and confined in the ordinary manner ; planks are placed before the lower windows ; the upper ones are taken out ; poles are brought and laid over the digging, to diminish the force of the rising fragments; all is ready; the train is laid ; the family seem fearless ; but I acknowledge myself a coward, and have no liking for the smell of gunpowder ; I retire into the corn field ; away goes the charge ; the solid granite is shattered ; the explosion was a heavy one ; the fragments flew in all directions ; a mass, weighing, perhaps, a quarter of a ton, was thrown com pletely over the house, and lodged a rod or two beyond it, and yet no injury was sustained by the edifice, except the fracturing of a few panes of glass.

The experiment proved to be a fortunate one. And here permit me to remark, that this singular deposite of mongrel granite gives lodgment, I hesitate not to affirm, to a greater number of stran gers and foreigners than any other rock in the United States. In it have been found not only the chrysoberyl, but talc, bismuthine, zircon, beryl, columbite, garnet, pinite, automolite, and I know not how many others. Good samples of most of these substances, I had the fortune to obtain. The chrysoberyl, however, was the mineral which I was most solicitous to procure, and my exertions were crowned with a good degree of success. It occurs massive ; also in hexagonal prisms, and hexagonal tables. The color is olive green, sometimes slightly approaching to yellow. It ranks among the hardest of the gems. It is translucent, and some of the thin nest and purest specimens are semi-transparent. I have done with Haddam.

Letter III

MlDDLETOWN, (CONN.) JULY, 26, 1838. On my way from Haddam, and about three miles before I reached this city, I came to the China stone quarry, so called, I suppose, on account of the feldspar it furnishes, having been employed, at New York and abroad, in the manufacture of china or porcelain ware. This quarry has, within a few years become much celebrated, in consequence of its being the repository of a number of rare and interesting minerals. It is situated on land a little elevated above the road, and but a rod or two distant from it on the eastern side. The rock is of a very peculiar charac ter. I was struck by its appearance. It is granite, but composed principally of feldspar and mica ; not minutely divided and intimately blended together as in common granite, but almost entirely separate, the one from the other, each presenting itself in distinct parcels or nests, and in a state of unusual purity.

The mica is of a greenish brown color, and occurs both in crystals and in irregular masses. I obtained two specimens in regular six-sided tables, a form which, according to my observa tion, is of rather rare occurrence. Their surfaces exhibit a splendid polish, and are somewhat iridesent. An oblique angled prismatic crystal which I found here, and shall have the pleasure of show ing to you, has one of its acute angles truncated. Mica, you know, is always foliated, and its folia are easily reducible by a knife or other sharp instrument, to a degree of tenuity almost inconceiv able. I procured plates in this quarry of a large size, several of them measuring ten inches each in length, and seven or eight in width. It might be, and, I believe, has been, wrought to some ex tent as an article of commerce.

It is used, you are aware, in the place of glass in stoves, in lanterns, and by the Russians in ships of war. But the pecuniary value of this quarry is derived chiefly from its feldspar. This substance constitutes the major part of the de posit. It is of a milky white color, and occurs under several different forms. The crystals found here are of wonderful magnitude. Professor Shepard says, "imperfect crystals of the sex decimal figure exist here one foot in length, and six or eight inches in thickness." With my hammer and chisel I removed from the rock a number of crystals, some of which were nearly or quite perfect, but none of them of the enormous size above mentioned. The feldspar is quarried with great facility. Much of the rock lies above the surface. Little or no digging is yet required.

Masses of it are obtained, weighing many hundred pounds, entirely free from quartz or mica. Such cases, however, are, it is believed, of unfrequent occurrence. It is seldom found in large sections wholly unmixed with one or the other, or both of its sister sub stances, mica or feldspar. The fragments when dislodged from the rock by the force of gunpowder or by other means, are broken into pieces of the size of a man's fist or smaller, and the feldspar carefully separated from the other substances, with which it may be connected, and thrown into a heap by itself. It is now fit for the market. "Seven hundred tons were conveyed to Middletown the year before last, of which six hundred were shipped to Liver pool, and one hundred to the porcelain factory at Jersey City, near New York." — {Prof. Shepard's report.)

The material exists in this locality in vast abundance — enough to supply any demand for the article which our own country, or even Europe, will make for centuries to come. What, you will ask, is the particular use to which this feldspar is applied 1 Is it made to form a part of the body of the porcelain ware, or is it employed in its glazing or enamel ? The latter only. It is, in fact, the petunze of the Chinese. The body of the china or porcelain ware is formed of kaolin or porcelain clay, which, it is now universally acknowledged, is produced by the decomposi tion of graphic granite, a substance composed of quartz and feld spar. I have witnessed the process by which this clay (brought from the vicinity of Limoges) is converted at the famous porcelain manufactory of Sevres, in France, into superb vases and other elegant articles.

But I have no time, at present, to describe it, nor would you have, to read the description. It is enough to say, that when the vessel made of porcelain clay, has received from the wheel or the potters hand its proper form, it is placed in an oven and partially baked. It is thus brought into what is called its biscuit state — white nearly as snow, porous, destitute of beauty, and easily destructible. Here the feldspar comes in play. It is reduced to a fine powder, made into a paste of about the thickness of cream, and applied to the biscuit ware, which now undergoes an additional baking. The paste, formed principally of feldspar, is completely fused, fills up the pores, rendering the vessel impermeable to water, and imparting to it a degree of beauty and durability of which no other species of pottery can boast.

I have now told you theuseofthe porcelain earth, and also of the Middletown feldspar. I said too, that other interesting minerals exist in this quarry. I found several perfect crystals of albite, and some of them nearly transparent. This substance differs from feldspar in only one res pect: it contains soda instead of potash. It occurs here not only in crystals, but also massive and granular. In no other locality in this country, have I met with it in its crystalized state. Apatite, which is a variety of the phosphate of lime, exists in short regular hexaedral prisms in various parts of this china stone quarry. The colors are quite different in different specimens ; some a bluish white, some a pale red, and others asparagus green. I procured a number of very pretty samples. Zircon and pitchblend or black oxide of uranium, are said to have been detected in this locality, but I was not fortunate enough to obtain a view of either of them.

The mineral the most interesting to mineralogists, which has been discovered in this quarry, and which is by no means of un frequent occurrence here, is the columbite. A sample of this ore was, in old time, when America was but an infant, a suckling, in the arms of its royal mother, sent by Governor Winthrop as a nonde script to Sir Hans Sloane for his museum. It was known to have been discovered in some part of Connecticut, but at what particular point was a matter of mystery. It rested on the shelves of the London museums, and was gazed at by their visiters as a natural curiosity from the New World, for more than a century. In 1801 Mr. Hatchett, the celebrated English chemist, took it from the Brit ish museum, and, analyzing it, was the discoverer of the new metal which it contains, and which was. in honor of the country where it originated, named Columbium.

The ore is called Columbite. Within a moderate period this ore has been brought to light, not only in Europe, where it is called tantalite, but in several places in Connecticut; in none, however, where it occurs so plentifully, as at the locality which I am describing. The largest crys tal which the earth has, as yet, offered to man, was found here. It weighed fourteen pounds. The ore occurs in the feldspar, amor phous, and in prismatic crystals both perfect and imperfect. The color is bluish or brownish black. No use has, I believe, as yet, been made of the new metal, columbium, in either the arts or sci ences, owing, perhaps, till recently, to the scarcity of the article. Human ingenuity will, without doubt, devise, ere long, some use ful purpose, to which it may be advantageously applied.

Should I write you again, Messrs. Editors,* you may be assured, and so may your readers, that the letter will have the merit of being shorter. LETTERIV. July 27, 1838. I am still at Middletown. In the early part of this day I went, accompanied by a gentleman of the city, to visit the locality of bi tuminous shale at Westfield, four and a half miles northwest from Middletown. This locality is already well known to those who study the wonders of Nature's handicraft. It has been described by Professors Silliman and Cleveland, and by other eminent mineralogists. It has been the subject of a number of important re marks by a distinguished scientific foreigner, Mr. Alexander , These letters were first published in the National Intelligencer, Washington, D. C. Brongniart, of France, Director of the national manufactory os porcelain at Sevres, a gentleman for whose polite attentions, shown me in years long since gone past, I still feel myself deeply indebt ed. From specimens of the shale, containing impressions of shells and vegetables, which were forwarded to him by Professor Silli man, he was enabled to discover a similarity in the Westfield bituminous formation to that of Mansfield and Hesse in Germany and thence predicted what substances might be expected to be found in this cis-Atlantic formation.

A part of his prediction has been fully verified. As this kind of shale is usually an indicator of coal, it was supposed that there existed here a deposite'of this valuable substance. It was sought for. A shaft was sunk to a considerable depth, though not to one-twentieth of the depth to which it is necessary to descend in some places in England in older to reach the desired object; but, no coal, of any importance, being encountered, the search was abandoned. The shale is very bituminous, and there fore burns without difficulty, generating a clear, bright flame, and a strong odor of asphaltum. The odor may be produced by rub bing two pieces of the shale together, or by smiting the stone with a hammer, and I cannot distinguish the odor from that which I have often occasioned by scratching with a knife a sample of bituminous limestone, taken, a few years since, from the margin of the Dead Sea in Palestine.

I rode to Westfield in the belief that I should find, in the shale, impressions, in abundance, of perfect fish and vegetables, but was sadly disappointed. This belief had been created by a passage in Professor Cleveland's Mineralogy. He says, the shale here "abounds with distinct and perfect impressions of fish, sometimes a foot or two in length, the head, fins, and scales being perfectly dis tinguishable." Such may have been found here in other times, but I had not the happiness to meet with any of their like. I found shale, it is true, in great plenty, filled with curious impressions. The best samples I brought away were obtained by splitting the slate to pieces, which forms the sides and bottom of a little brook, which flows, muttering, over this locality. They presented a niedley of broken fish and organized vegetables.

Not a singl e specimen contained an entire fish. The whole were mere fragments — heads, fins, tails, and sections of the different parts of the body — enough, however to convince the most skeptical observer that they were once — perhaps before Adam's clay was moulded into man — real, bona fide, living, nestling fish. What disaster buried, em balmed them here, to be gazed at by men centuries after? When did the event happen? Who can tell? O that I had a glass, by which I could look up the stream of time, even to its fountain, and survey leisurely, this ball of earth, in all the odd mutations it has been doomed to undergo since its Creator flung it from his hand a whirling! I would then save the torture of many a philosophic brain, now pinched, and racked, and worn out, in useless theorizing.

Have you seen any of the bird tracks on stone which have been brought to light, in Europe, or this country, by recent geologists? As I was walking in one of the principal streets here, an example of these strange tracks was pointed out to me, in one of the stones in in the pavement. It was sandstone. The tracks were tolerably distinct, and of enormous size; much larger than the foot of any winged biped of which I have any knowledge. They occur in the sandstone of this region, and, I believe, the first published account we have of these is from the pen of Dr. Barratt, a mineralogist of this city. Will you permit me, Messrs. Editors, before I conclude this let ter, to say five words about one of the youngest, and yet one of the most prosperous, of the Collegiate Institutions of our young country?

I mean the Wesleyan University of Middletown. I have to-day passed several hours, pleasantly, within its walls, and in the inter esting family of its President. The head of this establishment is, you know, the Rev. Dr. Fisk, a gentleman admirably qualified to fill the arduous and responsible station he occupies. I knew him, by reputation, many years since, and had formed a high estimate of his character; but, as accident lately associated us with each other, in a voyage across the Atlantic, and as I then became intimately acquainted with the qualities of his head and his heart, my opinion of him, as a gentleman of talents, a scholar, and a Christian, has been greatly enhanced. He conducted me first to the library. The books are, in gen eral, of the best selection — conveniently arranged, and neatly kept.

Among them I saw a complete set of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London; a full set of the Latin Classics, and many of the Greek, and the most valuable of the modern scientific publications, both of the English and the French. The books amount, in number, including the libraries of the college societies, tc between nine and ten thousand volumes. The collection, it must be acknowledged, is small, when compared with that of Paris, or of the Vatican, or even with that of Cambridge, but, considering the age of the institution, it is very respectable, and large enough for the students1 use. The rooms appropriated to the departments of mineralogy and geology are spacious, and well furnished with samples illustrative of those sciences. Here I met with some old acquaintances — four or five massy blocks, or rather joints, of pentagonal or hexagonal columns of basalt, obtained, by the personal efforts of Dr. Fisk, at the Giant's Causeway in the North of Ireland.

Here, too, I saw the wonderful specimen of Columbite mentioned in my letter of yes terday; the largest known. It is not, I understand, the property of the University, but has been placed in the cabinet, by its owner, for the inspection and gratification of the curious. The chemical and philosophical apparatus appears to be very complete. The electrical and astronomical instruments are as perfect and as elegant, though not as numerous, as those at any college which I have visited in the United States. The astron omer who happens here, will have his attention drawn to a splen did altitude and azimuth instrument, a large reflecting telescope, and Russell's magnificent orrery, "a new and unrivalled instru ment, and the only one of the kind in the world." It occupies the whole of a middle sized apartment.

The President is surrounded by an able corps of Professors, young, talented, and industrious, who seem determined by their exertions to do honor to the University, and to cause the Universi ty to honor and bless their country and the world. According to a college catalogue, which lies before me. the number of scholars belonging to the sour classes the past year is one hundred and thirty-five. It is now vacation. The annual commencement will take place on the first Wednesday in August. The prospect is fair, I am told, for a large accession of students the next term. The buildings occupy a very eligible site in the most elevated part of the city. The lookers out at the front windows, which face the rising sun, have before them a noble panorama of one of the most elegant and delightful villages in New England, now in a flourishing condition; [Middletown, though an incorporated city, is, in fact, nothing more than a large village;] the Connecticut river pouring its flood along, now through verdant meadows, and now pent up, in a narrow channel, by the granite hills, and on whose bosom steamboats and smaller vessels are always moving, or moored at the wharf; a broad tract of country, variegated with hills and valleys, woodlands and fields, farm-houses and hamlets.

But my paper is full. Should I address another letter to you, it will be dated at some point nearer the North Pole. L E T T E R V . Hartford, (Conn.) July 28, 1838. I bade adieu to Middletown late in the afternoon. The stage brought me into this thrifty city — the distance is fifteen miles — just as old Night was beginning to spread her sooty mantle over the works of man. The lamps were lighted, and showed me a number of elegant structures, which have sprung up since I was last in the "land of steady habits." Weathersficld, four miles from Hartford, lay on our route, the place of onions. The whole town is little else but a garden—pro ductive, too, as the valley of the Wabash, and devoted, almost ex clusively, to the rearing of this profitable plant. Many acres—per haps hundreds — were overspread by this vegetable, giving promise of a full harvest.

Cheer up, people of the Federal city. The onions are not sun-struck, if the potatoes are. Three months gone, and you will see AVeathersfield at Washington, dealing out her strings of onions for the mastication of the inhabitants, and their boarders, the members of Congress. These, you know, are better than potatoes, for they gratify two senses, instead of one. Hartford is a large, rich, pleasant, inland city, of perhaps twelve or fourteen thousand people. The location is auspicious for its growth, standing, as it does, at the head of sloop navigation on the Connecticut river, where most of the merchandise, demanded by the wants of the inhabitants of Western Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the eastern section of Vermont, is transferred from vessels to flat-bottom boats, for the purpose of making its way northward.

A small steamboat " walks in the water" between this place and Springfield. The people of Hartford are industrious, enterprising, and wise — consulting their interests, their duty, and their lasting honor. The quill has given to some here, who wield it, wealth and respecta bility — to others a fame which will never die. Here resides Dr. J. Comstock, the author of many valuable works on chemistry and its kindred sciences. Here lives Mrs. Sigourney. The type is not idle. Hartford, you know, is renowned for book-making. She prints a multitude of books, which are published in New York. Here the traveller finds all those institutions which knowledge, religion and humanity recommend and sanction — schools, of the first order, both for males and females, academies, churches of all descriptions, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, Unitarian, Bap tist, Roman Catholic, and Universalist.