1 4 Gold Region of North Carolina. 



As this formation stretches quite across the state, in a north 

 easterly and south westerly direction, and is from ten to forty 

 miles in breadth, it is not to be expected that its characters 

 will be uniform in all its parts. Those geologists who de- 

 light to accumulate in their cabinets every anomalous and 

 unheard of variety of rocks, might here add largely to their 

 mineral riches, especially a long series of substances varying 

 between compact feldspar and simple quartz or hornstone, 

 colored green by chlorite and epidole ; differing too widely 

 from each other to be easily and naturally comprehended 

 under one species, and presenting varieties enough to de- 

 mand a nomenclature for themselves. The name of green- 

 stone is more appropriate to them than any other, but they 

 are quite a different affair from the rock generally designated 

 by that title in the geological books. It is of fragments of 

 this rock, connected by finer particles of the same, that many 

 of the conglomerates mentioned above are composed, espe- 

 cially those at three of the principal gold mines, Chisholm's, 

 Parker's and Read's. In Mecklenburg and Anson counties, 

 we have very little besides simple clay slate, but as we ad- 

 vance northward, these compounds become more abundant. 



The claim of this formation to a place amongst the transi- 

 tion rocks, is founded on such characters as the following. 



1. It is not known to include, as one of its component 

 members, any of those rocks which are universally acknowl- 

 ed«ed to belong to the primitive class, such as mica slate, 

 gneiss, granite, &c. 



2. Much of the clay slate included in it has a dull, earthy 

 appearance when broken, and differs widely therefore from 

 that shining argillite which is usually referred to the primitive 

 rocks. It resembles very much such of the clay slate of the 

 western country, (Tennessee,) as I have had an opportunity 

 of examining, and this last is universally allowed to be tran- 

 sition. Any one who will look at the map will see that it 

 must be to a prolongation of this formation, that Maclure has 

 wiven the name of " transition clay slate," at Camden, South 

 CaroUna. 



3. Starting from the University of North Carolma, and 

 travelling a little south of west, I can point out conglome- 

 rate rocks — rocks that appear to have been formed of the 

 shattered fragments and ruins of older strata, at short inter- 

 vals, through a distance of eighty miles, to within three or 

 four miles of the westernborder of the formation ; and these 



