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had accumulated durlntr the island existence of these 

 mountains. There is a ^ood talus all around, rather 

 more on the eastern side, where it is shino'h', than on 

 the west. A search for the stratified deposits imme- 

 diately around the mountains was not at first so suc- 

 cessful; but in the cut of the Charleston, Cincinnati 

 and ChicajLJfo railroad, at Blacksburg-, S. C, just back 

 of the Cherokee Inn, is a ver}^ g-ood exposure showing- 

 two or three feet of quartzite pebbles covered with 

 about the same thickness of mottled clay closely resem- 

 bling- the Miocene clays of eastern North Carolina. 

 Later, I found the same strata of quartzite pebbles 

 and clays in the old cutting- at the Catawba Gold Mine, 

 about one mile from the mountain, and also pebbles, 

 clays and reg-ular stratified sands in a basin like regfion 

 on the road from All Healing- Springs to Gastonia, two 

 miles southwest from Gastonia. The general absence 

 of these deposits, however, is to be explained by their 

 looseness, and the ease with which they could be washed 

 awa}^ by the currents. The taluses have in every case, 

 I think, been formed since the sea departed from the 

 reg"ion, as the materials composing- them are ang-ular 

 frag-ments, and never the round pebbles to be found in 

 the deposits mentioned above. Not onl}^ have the de- 

 posits of this time been largely washed away, but the 

 older crystallines, which are here decayed to g-reat 

 depths, have yielded readily to the rains wherever the 

 land has been deforested. The accompanying- photo- 

 g-raph, taken on the Gastonia road two and a half miles 

 from All Healing Spring-, shows a gully twenty to 

 thirty feet deep made b}' the rains since the Civil War 

 when the field was abandoned. It ma}^ be noted that 

 the trees which have come upon the field since its 



