4 Gold Region of North Carolina. 



1. The discovery of gold in considerable quantity, in veins 

 of quartz, traversing the rock formations of the district, in a 

 number of different places remote from each other, renders 

 less probable the opinion that it belongs, in any instance, to a 

 proper diluvial formation. Our attention is drawn at once 

 to the rocks themselves, as the probable source from which 

 the whole of it is derived. 



2. It does not appear that any such formation or stratum 

 as the diluvial occurs in any of the central or western parts 

 of N. Carohna. 



As the opinion expressed in this proposition, together with 

 some others enunciated in a former communication to the 

 Journal, and to be treated of at some length in the following 

 pages, is at variance with what has been heretofore advanced 

 and believed in relation to the geology of this part of the 

 United States, it is perhaps proper that I should mention the 

 circumstances under which a full and undoubting confidence 

 in their correctness has been created. 



a. Professor Andrews and myself commenced together an 

 examination of the geology of N. Carohna in the latter part 

 of the year 1825, and were led almost immediately to the 

 adoption of some new views upon the subject ; especially we 

 were induced to suspect — 1. That no stratum of any kind 

 whatever, except what has been derived from their own de- 

 composition, covers the rock formations of the upper coun- 

 try ; and 2. That an extensive tract, extending into Virginia 

 on the one side, and into S. Carolina on the other, laid down 

 as primitive by Maclure, and denominated " The Great Slate 

 Formation," by Professor Olmsted, (see last Number of the 

 Journal, page 236) is in fact a transition formation — the for- 

 mer opinion originating, as believed, with Mr. Andrews, and 

 the latter with myself. During the three years (nearly) that 

 have intervened, all the counties of the upper country have 

 been visited, and many of them traversed in a number of 

 diiferent directions. Throughout the whole examination, 

 one object — the ascertaining whether our views upon the 

 points above mentioned were correct or erroneous, has nev- 

 er been lost sight of; and though it is impossible to keep the 

 attention at all times so thoroughly awake, thai we may be 

 sure nothing has escaped us — the limits of such a stratum, if 

 it exist, must be exceedingly circumscribed, since no where, 

 excejjt in the immediate neighborhood of the rivers, has any 

 soil been observed, which did not appear to have resulted 



