8o JOURNAL OF THE 



My expectations were more than verified when I found pieces of 

 Cassiterite from the size of an egg to the finest sand, loose and stick- 

 ing in quartz, scattered over the surface in a belt beginning about 

 the centre of the village, and extending southward a mile or more. 



When the clay of the hills or the gravel of the neighboring 

 creeks was panned, a heavy black sand was obtained which yielded 

 more or less tin. 



A number of shafts have been sunk and trenches dug along the 

 course of the hill-tops whence the tinstone appears to have come. 

 The rocks : re mica schist and slate, with frequent veins and streaks 

 of quartz and quartzyte. The rocks are nearly vertical, direction of 

 out-crop northeast and southwest with all of the rocks of this coun- 

 try. The tinstone is disseminated through the quartz and quartzyte 

 vein matter occurring in a belt of the rock 100 to 150 yards wide. The 

 chief tin-bearing territory is limited on the northwest by a large out- 

 crop of micaceous quartzyte, on the southeast side by very large 

 out-crop of tourmaline-bearing or massive toui-maline-stained 

 quartzyte. 



A number of these tin-bearing quartz veins have been exposed in 

 this territory^. The surface is covered with fragments of them which 

 the decaying mica schist and slate have left. These veins are from 

 2 — 4 feet in width. They run mostly with the other rocks, though 

 there are frequent cross and string- veins. At places these quartz or 

 quartzyte veins are left by the mica schist and stand up through the 

 clay nearly to the surface, while at other places they are broken 

 down to the level of the mica schist, Al still other places where 

 the schists and slates contained more silica, the whole formation is 

 found now near the surface. 



According to Dr. Emmons, the village of King's Mountain is near 

 the dividing-line between the Laurentian granite and the Huronian 

 slates. To the east of the village the rocks are micaceous and slaty 

 quartzytes, talcose slates and bluish crystalline limestone. A few 

 miles west are the hornblende slates, gneiss, etc. 



Nearly all of the adjacent rocks, the mica schists and slates, the 

 tourmaline-bearing quartz, and the massive black quartz— all show 

 amounts of tin varying from distinct traces to 1 — 2 per cent. 



The only remark on tin which I find in writings on North Caro- 

 lina mineralogy is the following from Dr. Genth (Mineralogy of 

 North Carolina) : "No tin ore has been found in North Carolina as 

 yet; traces of this metal have been found in the tungstates of Ca- 

 barrus county, and in a micaceous slate (Huronian) in Gaston county^ 

 jassociated with garnet and columnar topaz." [The italics and pa- 



