453 { Lesley. 
the down-thrown limestone prism to the south of it. Whereas in the 
Embreeville (or northern) fault, the lower part of the shale prism has 
been lifted and thrust violently against the limestone prism to the north, 
so as not only to override it, but to curl up the ends of its beds into a col- 
lapsed synclinal. The force has therefore come from the south, and acts 
northward, or north-northwestward. This is not only in accordance with 
the law of anticlinal structure, made out in Pennsylvania by the survey 
under Prof. H. D. Rogers, 35 years ago, but with nine-tenths of the fault 
exhibitions in Virginia aifd Tennessee.* 
What the rock system is, a prism of which has thus been upheaved be- 
tween the two Lower Silurian districts of Jonesborough to the North, 
and Greasy Cove to the South, is still a subject for discussion. Mr. Saf- 
ford, State Geologist of Tennessee, gives it the name of Chilhowee, with- 
out identifying it closely with any of the great Formations of the 
Northern States. It probably underlies immediately the Lower Silurian 
Limestones. 
One thing is remarkable: its apparent total lack of iron ore and 
limestone. There is no appearance of metamorphism throughout the 
6,000 feet of rock trenched by the Nolichuckee. 
The cross-fault of Bompas Cove, on the west side of which the L. Silu- 
rian Limestones are dropped to water level in an almost undisturbed 
(horizontal) condition, is, perhaps, the most interesting feature of the dy- 
namic scene I am trying to portray; but it must remain for some geologist 
to study who has more time at his command than I had, in my hurried 
visit to Embreeville. Y, 
These cross-faults are incidentally mentioned by Mr. Safford, on page 
200 of his Report of the Geology of Tennessee for 1869, when he says: 
«484, At the ends of these mountains, the sandstones which form them 
are suddenly and curiously cut off, and wholly disappear. The moun- 
tains and their rocks, of course, lie generally immediately on the south- 
east side of a fault. The sandstones, broken in wide blades, appear to 
have been thrust up endwise to the northwest, through the overlying 
formations. ‘The displacement is, in some cases, very great. In the case 
of Chilhowee Mountain (see section page 190), the sandstones, or, rather, 
Ocoee conglomerates, have been brought up and abutted against Carbon- 
iferous Limestone.” 
The expressions used in the above description are calculated to obscure 
the picture to the eye of the reader. The sandstones are prominent 
objects in the landscape ; but they are integral and very subordinate 
items in the mass of the upthrown (and often but slightly tilled) prism of 
earth-crust. To a depth unknown to the observer, the earth-crust in all 
this region of Virginia and Tennessee has been cracked along straight, 
parallel lines of great length (some of them a hundred miles), but of no 
*T have recently exhibited to the Society cross-sections of this structure, in Tasewell, Wise, 
ginia, which, when published in the next Number of these Proceedings, 
and Scott Counties, V 
will make this law sufficiently comprehensible. 
