History of Westchester County, New York, Volume 1. Frederic Shonnard
constitute a series of parallel belts and are coarsely crystalline dolomites (double carbonates of lime and magnesia) , generally of uniform white or whitish color, and have no rocks associated with them that can represent the quartzites and argillites of Vermont."
Still another opinion regarding the origin of the rocks of the Westchester County regions is that of Prof. I. S. Newberry, who believes that they date from the Laurentian age.
The limestone beds are distributed through every geographical section of the county. At Sing Sing occur marble deposits— very heavy beds which have been extensively quarried. It was, in fact, largely for the purpose of employing convict labor for the quarrying of the marble that this place was chosen as the location for the New York State Penitentiary. The Sing Sing marble, however, although an admirable building stone for many purposes, is of comparatively coarse and inferior quality, becoming stained in the course of time by the action of the sea air on account of the presence of grains of iron pyrites. Marble is also quarried at Tuckahoe.
Abundant indications are afforded of extensive and radical glacial action. " Croton Point, on the Hudson, and other places in the county, show evidences of glacial moraines. Deep striae and lighter scratches still remain upon many exposed rock surfaces, and others have been smoothly polished." A prominent feature is the presence in great profusion of large granite bowlders, undoubtedly transported by glaciers from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with an intermingling of bowlders of conglomerate from the western side of the Hudson, the latter containing numerous shell fossils. The so-called " Cobbling Stone," in the Town of North Salem, is a well-known specimen of the glacial bowlders of Westchester. It is a prodigious rock of red granite, said to be the solitary one of its kind in the county.
The minerals found in the county, in greater or lesser quantities, embrace magnetic iron ore, iron and copper pyrites, green malachite, sulphuret of zinc, galena and other lead ores, native silver, serpentine, garnet, beryl, apatite, tremolite, white pyroxene, chlorite, black tourmaline, Sillimanite, monazite, Brucite, epidote, and sphene. But Westchester has never been in any sense a seat of the mining industry proper, as distinguished from the quarrying. In early times a silver mine was operated at Sing Sing, very near where the prison now stands and not far from the same Locality an attempt was made some seventy years ago to mine for copper. Both of these mining ventures are of mere curious historical interest, representing no actual successful production of a definite character. In the ridges along the northern borders of the county considerable deposits of iron ore are found. It is stated by Mr. Charles E. Culver, in his History of Somers, that the iron ores of that town have, upon assay, yielded as high as 61 per cent." Peat swamps, affording a fuel of good quality, exist in several parts of the county, notably the Town of Bedford.
There are various mineral springs, as well as other springs, yielding water of singularly pure quality, The latter being utilized in some cases with commercial profit. A well-known mineral spring, for whoso waters medicinal virtues are claimed, is the Chappaqua Spring, three miles east of Sing Sing.
The prevailing soil of Westchester County is the product of disintegrations of the primitive rocks, and is of a light and sandy character, for the most part not uncommonly fertile naturally, although the methods of scientific farming, which have been pursued from very early times, have rendered it highly productive. It is not generally adapted to wheat, summer crops succeeding best. Drift deposits and alluvium occur along the Sound and in some localities elsewhere, with a consequently richer soil. Agriculture has always been the representative occupation, although daring the last half century extensive manufacturing industries have been developed in several localities.
CHAPTER II. THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS
It was not until 1609, one hundred and seventeen years after the discovery of the New World, that European enterprise, destined to lead to definite colonization and development, was directed to that portion of the North American continent where the metropolis of the Western hemisphere and the Empire State of the American Union have since been erected. The entire North American mainland, in fact, from Florida to Hudson's Bay, although explored by voyagers of different nationalities within comparatively brief periods after the advent of Columbus, had been practically neglected throughout the sixteenth century as a field for serious purposes of civilized occupation and exploitation. The early French attempts at settlement in Canada, in the first half of that century, and the colonizing expeditions sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to the shores of North Carolina, in the second half, were dismal failures, and in the circumstances could not have resulted differently. For these undertakings were largely without reference to intelligent and progressive cultivation of such resources as the country might afford, being incidental, or, at least, secondary, to the absorbing conviction of the times that the riches of India lay somewhere beyond the American coast barrier, and would still yield themselves to bold search. Naturally, few men of substantial from ax old print. character and decent antecedents could be persuaded to embark as volunteers in such doubtful enterprises. The first settlers on the Saint Lawrence were a band of robbers, swindlers, murderers, and promiscuous ruffians, released from the prisons of France by the government as a heroic means of providing colonists for an expedition which could not be recruited from the people at large. The settlers sent by Sir Walter Raleigh under his patent from Elizabeth in 1585 for establishing colonies north of the Spanish dominions in Florida were, according to Bancroft, a body of -broken-down gentlemen and libertines, more fitted to corrupt a republic than to found one, with very few mechanics farmers, or laborers among them— mere buccaneering adventurers, who carried fire and sword into the land and had no higher object before them than to plunder and enslave the natives. It is true that very early in the sixteenth century the fishermen of Normandy and Britanny began to seek the waters of Newfoundland for the legitimate ends of their vocation, and soon built up a gainful trade, which, steadily expanding and attracting other votaries, employed in 1583 more than four hundred European fishing craft. But this business was conducted almost exclusively for the profits of the fisheries, and although the vessels devoted to it ranged all along the New England coast, there was no consecutive occupation of the country with a view to its earnest settlement until after the dawn of the seventeenth century.
Throughout the era of original American discovery and coast exploration, the returning mariners had agreed in describing the region to the north of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea as utterly lacking in indications of accumulated riches, inhabited only by savage races who possessed no gold and silver or other valuable property, enjoyed no civilization, offered no commodities to commerce except the ordinary products of the soil and the chase, and could communicate nothing definite respecting more substantial wealth farther to the west. The ancient civilizations of Mexico, Central America, and rem having been subverted by the Spanish conquistadores, and their stores of precious metals largely absorbed, it was fondly hoped that the unpenetrated wilds of the north might contain new realms with similar abundant treasures. Narvaez, in 1528, and De Soto, in 1539, led finely appointed expeditions from the Florida coast into the interior in quest of the imagined eldorados— emprises which proved absolutely barren of encouraging results and from which only a few miserable survivors returned to tell the disillusioning tale of dreadful wilderness marches, appalling sufferings, and fruitless victories over wretched tribes owning no goods worth carrying away. The impressive record of these disastrous failures, in connection with the uniformly unflattering accounts of the lands farther north, deterred all European nations from like pompous adventurings. The poverty of the native inhabitants of North America saved them from the swift fate which overtook the rich peoples of the south, and for a century preserved them even from intrusion, except of the most fugitive kind. This fact of their complete poverty is by far the most conspicuous aspect of the original comparative condition, in both economic and social regards, of the North American Indians, as well as of the history of their gradual expulsion and extirpation. Possessing nothing but land and the simplest concomitants of primitive existence, they did not present to the European invaders an established and measurably advanced and affluent organization of society, inviting speedy and comprehensive overthrow and the immediate substitution on a general scale of the supremacy and institutions of the subjugators. Dispersed through the primeval forests in small communities, they did not confront the stranger foe with formidable masses of population requiring to be dealt with by the