100 RemarJcs on the Gold Mines of Virginia. 



Since my observations were made, I have seen, /or the first time, 

 the remarks of Professor Rogers on this point ; he regards these as 

 true veins of injection ; his observations having been more extensive 

 than mine, it is certainly possible I may be in an error ; I can speak 

 only from what I have seen. The auriferous or gold-bearing quartz 

 of the gold region of Virginia (and, as far as I am informed, of the 

 States farther south) forms, not strictly veins, but rather beds or lay- 

 ers — in general not interfering with, but conforming to, the regular 

 structure of the slaty rocks of the country, and like them, descend- 

 ing to an unknown and probably an unfathomable depth. There is 

 therefore no probability that the quartz will ever be worked out to 

 the bottom or exhausted, or that it will often be found heaved or 

 displaced by fractures and dislocations, usually called faults, except 

 so far as this accident may have befallen the rocks themselves. This 

 structure makes the working of these mines very simple; the miner 

 follows, unerringly, the bed or layer of quartz ; it is rarely diminished 

 to strings or disappears, and when that is the fact, it often reappears 

 at no great distance, in an enlarged size. The quartz is, therefore, 

 as regular a part of the structure of the country as the slaty rocks 

 themselves, and when it is auriferous, (as is not unfrequently the fact 

 in the gold region,) the gold is disseminated through it in spangles, 

 flakes and points, sometimes visible on breaking the quartz, but most 

 usually entirely invisible, even with a powerful magnifying glass. 

 In far the greater number of cases, the eye detects nothing but 

 quartz, or sometimes metallic sulphurets of iron, zinc or lead; and 

 the observer, unless previously instructed in the case, would never 

 suspect the presence of gold, either distinct, or in the metallic sul- 

 phurets. The gold, being generally disseminated in the quartz of 

 this gold region, it is obvious that it must have been laid by in its 

 stony bed, at the same time that the quartz and the slaty rocks in 

 which it is contained were deposited. This fact increases the proba- 

 bility that the gold will not be exhausted ; no one can indeed predict 

 with certainty, to what depth it descends or in what proportion it 

 exists below ; but no reason can be assigned, why it should cease or 

 be found in less abundance than near the surface. The same causes 

 would appear to have been in operation — at the same geological 

 epoch, from the Gulf of Mexico, through the gold region, quite to 

 Maryland — perhaps quite to Lower Canada, and possibly still far- 

 ther, as some facts would appear to indicate. Gold has been found 

 in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Lower Canada, and, as is reported, 

 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 



