eS ee 
OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 87 
Independent of the comparatively level surface over which the materials of these beds have been 
transported, and the size of the pebbles, there are other indications that show that the transporting 
current must have been a rapid one. It is found that where a deposit occupies a depression, and 
the hills approach, so as to cause the deposit to contract, it is usually found richer below this point. 
For the water, after passing this barrier, would suddenly expand and lose its velocity, and would 
consequently have its transporting power lessened, and the gold impelled forward would be depo- 
sited. Where depressions occur in the underlying rock, the deposit is found richer in such places; 
the eddies formed by these obstructions causing the gold to be deposited. 
In almost every mine there are peculiar indications known to the miners as favorable or other- 
wise. At Mr. Carson’s the presence of schorl is considered fortunate ; and Col. J. E. Calhoun showed 
me an interesting specimen, consisting of a crystal of schorl containing gold, found in his mine on 
the Estatoe. At other places the existence of ferruginous matter in the deposit is a favorable 
indication. It is difficult to conceive how there could be any difficulty in accounting for the gold 
in these deposits, even if it were not so often traced to the original veins from which it was derived. 
The beds of more recent origin are known, as has been already observed, by the angular frag- 
ments of quartz that predominate in them. Nearly all the “vein mines,” in the State have been 
discovered by tracing these beds to their sources. Not unfrequently the veins occur but a short dis- 
tance from the deposit, as is the case with those in the vicinity of the “vein mines,” worked at 
present. Sometimes the soil, in certain localities, contains gold in sufficient quantity to pay for 
collecting it; and when exhausted it often happens that not a vestige of a vein is found. A rich 
deposit of this description was worked near the Limestone Springs, but was soon exhausted. In 
such cases as these the gold was disseminated in the slates and not in veins. And as we know 
that both veins and beds thin out and disappear, it is not strange that they should not be found 
always accompanying the deposits. 
To this class of deposits must be referred all those around the vein mines; the deposits worked 
in Abbeville, on Estatoe; on Lawson’s Fork, in Spartanburg; and in Cherokee Valley. The 
latter is a most interesting locality, where the materials of the deposit present a complete view of 
the geology of the mountains on each side—being composed of precisely the same rocks. The 
gold is traced upwards in the bed of the stream, after the usual fragmentary beds have disappeared, 
and nothing remains but masses of gneiss that have fallen down from the mountain sides, and 
among which gold is found. 
The gold of the branch or deposit mines occurs in irregular particles, more or less water-worn, 
and of larger size and greater purity than the gold extracted from veins. ‘The mines in which the 
gold is extracted from the solid rock admit also of division: those in which the precious metal is 
found disseminated in the slates, or in beds between them, and called by the miners “slate mines,” 
and those in which the lodes are true veins. 'T’o the former belong, for the most part, the mines of 
Chesterfield, Lancaster, and some of the Fair Forest mines, in Union. And to the latter class 
belong Nott’s mine, Nuckols and Norris’s mine, those near the Limestone Springs, and the mines 
on the Broad River, near Smith’s Ford. 
These mines are comprised in two parallel ranges. 'The one extending from King’s Mountain to 
the Fair Forest mines, and embracing those found along the iron and limestone belt of York, the 
mines in Spartanburg, and those on the Pacolet and Fair Forest, in Union District. The other 
