Stevenson.] ^^^ [Nov. 21, 



var}'ing greatly in color and structure. It is almost white on the unweath- 

 ered surface, but many parts contain so much iron as to weather yellow to 

 a considerable depth. Much of it is very soft and readily breaks down 

 into loose sand. Many layers are conglomerate with pebbles seldom much, 

 larger than a good-sized pea, and the sand covering the mountain sum- 

 mit contains great numbers of these white pebbles. This great sandstone, 

 which in all probability is the "Bee Rock," or topmost bed of the Lower 

 Coal measures, is almost horizontal until within little more than a mile of 

 Guest's river. From the summit to that river no exposures were found ; 

 but just above the ford at 585 feet, by barometer, below the last exposure, 

 this rock is shown in the river bank dipping north of north-west at between 

 six and eight degrees. So the great Stone Mountain anticlinal has dimin- 

 ished wonderfully from Little Stone gap, where the dip is almost vertical 

 on this side of the axis. 



Guest's station is on Little Tom's creek on the road to Gladesville or 

 Wise Court-House. Between it and Guest's river, the exposures are poor 

 and indefinite. A thick sandstone is shown at several places near the 

 station. The dips grow gentler beyond the station and become insignifi- 

 cant towards Roberts knob, a conspicuous hill half a mile or so northward 

 This hill is capped by a thick sandstone with conglomerate layers, while 

 in the hollows about its base, nearly 700 feet below the top, is a coal bed, 

 which, exposed in the beds of runs, has supplied blacksmiths for half a 

 century. The bed is said to be not far from six feet thick, and its place 

 seems to be near that of the Kelli/ or of the Imbodeii bed of the Powell 

 River sections. 



On the pike leading to Wheeler's ford, variegated shales are shown at 

 barely half a mile from the station dipping west of north at not quite seven 

 degrees ; with them is a coal bed, of which the "blossom" is shown at a 

 little way beyond. The road is but little off the strike for some distance, 

 and soon rises to a massive sandstone, under which the "blossom " of a 

 thin coal bed is shown at the first summit. Exposures, however, quickly 

 become indistinct as the road descends to a broad basin eroded by several 

 small branches of Guest's river. Here one should cross the axis of the 

 Stone Mountain anticlinal, but, though not far from 050 feet below the 

 "Bee Rock," on the crest of Powell-Stone mountain, yet that rock is not 

 reached, which shows a flattening of the arch at the rate of certainly more 

 than 150 feet per mile. 



The Dry fork of Bull creek is reached beyond the next summit, and 

 exposures become as unsatisfactory as can well be imagined. A coal 

 blossom was seen near the summit, but thence only fragmentary exhibi- 

 tions of cross-bedded or irregularly flaggy sandstones occur, which afford 

 no definite measurements of dip. A southerly dip was observed at several 

 places, but it could not be measured. At about a mile up the Dry fork, a 

 sandstone is shown, thirty to forty feet thick, somewhat cross-bedded, and 

 containing small pockets of pebbles. The dip is distinctly northward on 

 Bull creek, where reached by the road, the dip being influenced by the 



