88 JOURNAL OF THE 



gold is generally found in the iraraediate proximity of these 

 broken down quartz veins or down, never up, the slope from 

 them. In several cases good-sized nuggets have been found in 

 the veins themselves. Large nuggets have been found with the 

 edges sharp and angular, showing very conclusively that they 

 had not been transported any distance by water. Quite a num- 

 ber of small nuorojets have been found attached to frao:ments of 

 the vein quartz. 



These facts show that the larger part, if not all, of the gold 

 of this region first occurred in the small quartz veins, and that 

 with the breaking down of the veins the gold and the vein quartz 

 settled down into and formed part of the gravel in the 

 immediate vicinity or below it, and not, as Dr. Emmons had sup- 

 posed, that the gold found in the gravels had existed originally 

 in the country rock in minute quantities on a sedimentary 

 deposit. 



The Sam Christian Gold Mine property lies among the hills 

 at the southern end of the Uharie Mountains. The character- 

 istic rock of the region is quartzite in places quite cherty and 

 so thoroughly altered as to leav^e the original bedding in places 

 quite obscured. Here and there these rocks, everywhere quite 

 obdurate, rise into steep and irregular hills traversed by numer- 

 ous quartz veins, the great majority of which are small, but a 

 few of which are several feet in thickness, though quite irregular. 

 Only a few of the large, many of the small veins are gold-bearing. 

 In depressions ("channels'') on the slopes of these hills lies the 

 auriferous gravel one to four feet thick, composed of numerous 

 irregular angular fragments of vein quartz and a larger propor- 

 tion of quartzite of from very small size to two feet and more 

 in diameter and with a matrix of gritty sand, with a small por- 

 tion of clay. These gravels lie on the irreguhir surface of the 

 country rock and are in turn overlaid by one to six feet of a 

 gravelly loam soil. Tiie origin and distribution of tiie gravels 

 has been due lai'gely, if not entirely, to frost action.* 



■••■■Kerr, American Journal of Science, May, 1881 (reprinted as Appendix C, Ores of North 

 Carolina, 1888, p. 329). Also Transactions American Institute Mining Engineers, Vol. 

 VIII, p. 462 (reprinted as Appendix A in Ores North Carolina, 1888, p. 321). 



