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4 / Mineralogy of East Tennessee. 6} 
champaign country at their mutual base. Through this whole 
extent of country we rarely meet with any remarkable falls 
of water: the obvious reason of which is, that the rocks are 
so soft that they are easily worn down to the level of the beds 
of rivers. But shoals, or shallows, are frequent, and are 
formed by beds of rounded sandstone, spread out into a broad 
base, over which the water often rushes with no small violence 
and noise. 
The mountains are generally, though not always, sterile, 
and produce nothing but forest trees; but the vallies are, 
with hardly an exceptien, rich, and productive of every variety 
of “ grass and herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding fruit.” 
Nor are they less favoured in the mineral kingdom ; possess- 
ing the greatest abundance of all the most useful and neces- 
Sary minerals, of which we shall now proceed to speak in 
er. : 
All the country, included under the boundaries mentioned 
above, with the exception of some primitive ranges of moun- 
tains on the southeastern side, is apparently transition. This, 
it will be seen by a reference to Mr. Maclure’s excellent map, 
will extend the boundary of his transition class considerably 
farther northwest, and make it include Cumberland Mountain 
and all East Tennessee. This would be evident from com- 
paring the northwestern part of Virginia, which Mr. Maclure 
has included in his transition tract, with all East Tennessee. 
Every mineralogist must observe the identity of the minerals 
of the two countries, as well as that of their stratification and 
general formation. The limestone in the valleys, and the 
sandstone on the mountains, lie in strata which make an angle 
of from 25 to 45 degrees with the horizon, The limestone 
bears the impressions of shells, but rarely, if ever, of vegeta- 
bles, and contains beds of hornstone, but not of flint, or what 
€an properly be called flint. 
; The rock, which lies in the lowest vallies, and often rises 
into pretty high hills, and is seen forming bluffs on the banks 
of the rivers, is dimestone : it is of a dark blue, approaching to a 
gray, as it is exposed to the air, and often appearing quite 
White. Its fracture is compact in one direction; in another it 
