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OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 89 
thickness from one to six feet. As this level was driven with a view especially to exploration, the 
lodes have not been followed, to any extent, beyond what was merely necessary to prove them. 
Fig. 19 is a vertical section of a portion of the mine, showing the lodes passing upwards through 
the granite and overlying slates. The veins must branch, for they are more numerous on the sur- 
face than would be indicated by the number cut in the drift below. 
This is almost the only mine in the State where any attempt at regular mining has been made. 
The whole presents a workman-like appearance that was not a little refreshing. 
The granite, which is somewhat sienitic, is exposed in the beds of the surrounding streams; but, 
unlike that in the mine, which may be excavated with a spade, it is quite hard, and this change 
must be looked for in the mine, when the workings reach so low a level. I do not, however, 
expect any change to take place in the lodes, which are of massive quartz, and therefore not sub- 
ject to the alterations that occur in slaty lodes at various levels. If the efficient system commenced 
here be pursued, it will be productive of much good, both in the development of the mine itself, 
and the light it must throw upon the structure of the gold mines of the State. 
The phenomenon of the passage of auriferous veins through granite, I first had the pleasure of 
seeing at the Maxwell mine, near Charlotte, in North Carolina. Here beds in the slates were 
explored near the surface and towards the summit of the hill; a level was afterwards driven near 
the base, in order to intersect them at a greater depth ; veins of quartz and iron pyrites were soon 
detected, and were thought to have connection with the explored beds on the hill top. I soon 
found that this was not the case. The rock penetrated was granite, quite soft, while the rock on 
the hill was taleo-micaceous slate. The gold-bearing rocks in these slates were quartzose beds, and 
not veins. It is true that veins often follow the strike of the rocks, and may be mistaken for beds, 
but this could not have been the case in the present instance, for the quartzose portions of the beds 
were laminated and interstratified with the slates, in such a manner as to leave no doubt that they 
were contemporaneous with them. There must here, then, have been two systems of auriferous 
rocks; the veins in the granite consisting of quartz, oxide of iron, and pyrites with cavities filled 
with native sulphur in fine powder and delicate crystals ; and the beds in the slates. 
One circumstance at this mine it was difficult to account for: the hanging wall of the vein was 
composed of a thin partition, having a slaty structure, and in every respect resembling the over- 
lying slate, interposed between the granite and the vein. At first I umagined that the slaty matter 
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