ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 79 



termediate points, however, are much lower than the Blue Ridge. 

 Thus, for instance, Bakersville, the county-seat and the mining 

 town for the district, is 2,550 feet, while the Watauga River, at 

 the State line, is 2,131 feet. The most productive mines in 

 Mitchell county lie within ten miles of Bakersville, on the east, 

 north-east, south and south-east, at an elevation from 3,000 to 

 4,000 feet. 



GEOLOGY OF THE VEINS. 



The geology of Mitchell county has been described as follows : 

 "Another considerable area of Laurentiau rocks is found beyond 

 the Blue Ridge,* occupying most of the mountain plateau be- 

 tween that and the Smoky Mountains, and in the places consti- 

 tuting the materials of these chains. The rocks are foliated for 

 the most part and consist of indefinite alternations of metamor- 

 phic strata, gneiss, hornblende, feldspathic and micaceous schists, 

 and occasionally chloritic and talcose slates." 



According to the same authorityf the roughly shaped hills 

 that occur through Mitchell county, scattered irregularly, and in 

 close connection with the greatest dislocations of the strata, are 

 to be referred to a very low horizon. He identified them as 

 chrysolyte ledges (dunite). Though they occur very frequently 

 in close association with the mica-bearing rocks proper, the con- 

 nection between the two has not yet been made out. These 

 chrysolyte or dunite ledges occupy the middle portion of the 

 plateau, and are sometimes "nearly a mile long and several hun- 

 dred yards wide." 



It is still, I believe, an unsettled question whether this plateau 

 is Laurentiau or Lower Silurian, Cambrian. The abseuce of 

 all traces of animal or vegetable remains (unless, indeed, graph- 

 ite be considered vegetable remains), the well-nigh exclusive 

 occurrence of the older crystalline rocks, such as horublendic 

 and actinolytic rocks, schists, syenites, and more or less porphyr- 



*W. C. Kerr, Geol. of X. C, Vol. I (1875), p. 128. 

 fldem, p. 129. 



4 



