OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 85 
on the banks, and contain veins of calespar. At this point they cross the river into Georgia. 
From this -locality they may be traced, with but little interruption, along the northern verge of the 
Tertiary, almost across the State. I examined them on the left bank of the Savannah, from Ham- 
burg nearly to the mouth of Stevens’s Creek, and along the creek, and between it and the river clay 
slate is the prevailing rock to the Abbeville line. Near the bridge, on the creek just named, fine 
exposures occur. It has been removed by denudation from the ridge on which Edgefield C. H. 
stands; but N. E. towards Martin 'Town, it abounds; and on the road from the village to a point 
within a few miles of Cambridge, it covers the surface nearly the whole way. On Little Saluda 
and on the Eastern side of the District there is scareely any other rock. In Lexington, on Dutch- 
neck, and on the right bank of Broad river, it is exposed in bold sections. North of Columbia, on 
the Fairfield road, and towards the river, it may be seen. In Chesterfield it is the first rock that is 
found emerging from under the sand of the Tertiary, and thence continues to Clay Creek, in the 
north-eastern part of the District, where it sinks under the New Red sandstone. 
It will be seen, from this brief sketch, that it is confined, as I have already stated, to a band of 
irregular width, overlying the slates at the verge of the beds of clay, sand, and pebbles that form 
the lower Tertiary beds of the State. On the surface it is, like the other slates, soft and disinte- 
grated ; but where the streams have cut into it to any depth it is hard, and frequently silicious. 
CHAPTER IIL. 
Gold Formation.—Deposit Mines.—Deposits of different ages——On the Blue Ridge.—Tomas- 
ste Valley—Of Tyger and Little River—Gold Mines of York.—Fair Forest Mines.—Ca- 
tawba and Lynch’s Creek Mines.—Hale’s Mine—Brewer’s Mine—Smith’s Ford Mines.— Mines 
of Abbeville—Of Greenville—Of Pickens. 
I believe that it is now satisfactorily settled that the gold formation of the United States is con- 
fined to a band of schistose rocks, extending from the Rappahannock, in Virginia, to the Coosa 
River, in Alabama. In North and South Carolina and Georgia, where the auriferous rocks are best 
developed, they seldom exceed a breadth of sixty to eighty miles. 'T’aleose rocks abound so much 
throughout this region, that they have been considered the only true gold-bearing rocks; but gold is 
found in veins in granite, sienite, gneiss, hornblende, and mica slate, both in North and South 
Carolina. 
On the gold-bearing rocks of Virginia an elaborate report, by Messrs. Taylor and Clemson, will 
be found in the first volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society of Pennsylvania. 
The mines explored for gold are of two classes, “deposit” or “ branch” mines, and those to which 
the miners give the name of “vein mines,” in which the preciéus metal is found in the solid rock. 
22 
