18 Gold Region of North Carolina. 
the primitive, and in the transition, and [have been disposed 
(though perhaps not on ground sufficiently strong,) to refer 
them especially to the upper members of the former and low- 
er-members of the latter. : ; 
It has been already mentioned that the rocks of the prim- 
itive district are mostly granite, including under that title un- 
stratified hornblende rocks, as well as what bears the name 
of granite in the more ancient geological books. But no vein 
of auriferous quartz has ever, within my knowledge, been 
found in contact with well defined granitic rocks, whether 
pro or syenitic. Small veins may traverse them, but no 
arge ones are embraced by them. A rock, of which it is 
much easier to say whatit is not than what it is, covering it- 
self by decomposition with a thick coating of soil of impalpa- 
ble firmness, which prevents our getting at it to study it, fre- 
quently schistone, yet, not well defined slate of any kind, is 
richer in these auriferous veins than any other. At the Guil- 
ford mines I have found chlorite slate tolerably well charac- 
terized. Though intimately connected with the formation 
in which it lies, it has been suspected that it is not without 
some relationship to the neighboring transition ; that some of 
the lower members of the transition strata, or rather of those 
rocks by which the one formation passes into the other, here 
cover the proper granite and furnish the gold. The explo- 
ration of these mines (in Mecklenburg and Guilford,) is going 
on with activity, and more of the precious metal will be 
brought into the market during the present, than has been 
in any former year. 
__ Within the limits of the transition only one auriferdus vein 
(Baringer’s) has hitherto been worked, and that was hard by 
its western border, and soon abandoned. And yet it was 
within the limits of this formation that from 1800 to 1825, 
all the gold of North Carolina was collected. The follow. 
ing circumstances have induced a belief that this gold was 
not derived from a vein, but lay disseminated through the 
whole body of the rock from the earth produced, by the de- 
composition of which it is obtained by washi 
tes, and frequently in the state of a fine brown 
which the eye can discern no trace of a metal, rendering the 
