1 8 Gold Region of North Carolina. 



the primitive, and in the transition, and I 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 

 proper or syenitic. Small veins may traverse them, but no 

 large ones are embraced by them. A rock, of which it is 

 much easier to say what it 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 auriferous 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 circiimstances 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 obtaineci by washing. 



1. It differs from the gold ot Mecklenburg and Guilford, it 

 being found in grains and fragments of considerable size, ad- 

 mitting of its being detected amongst the sand and gravel, 

 and taken up with the fingers, whilst that is in minute parti- 

 cles, and frequently in the state of a fine brown powder in 

 which the eye can discern no trace of a metal, rendering the 



