394 MINING mDTJSTET. 



from Kalston Valley on the south, being at its highest point not more than a 

 thousand feet above these valleys. 



The town of Belmont, which is 30f miles in a straight line, south 51° 

 east, from the mouth of Ophir Canon, is situated in a ravine on the southern 

 slope of this ridge, at an elevation of 7,393 feet above sea-level. The Granite 

 Mountain is a triple-pointed peak, having an elevation of between 9,000 and 

 10,000 feet; its mass is, as its name indicates, of granite, whose weathered 

 surfaces are somewhat rounded by the action of the atmosphere, but not de- 

 composed to as great an extent as that in the immediate vicinity of Belmont. 

 From it extends down to the southeast, toward Belmont, a long, continuous 

 spur of granite, on whose northern side are metamorphic slates dipping to the 

 northeast ; at the line of contact are nodular shales having a bronze color and 

 a curiously wavy or rippled surface, as if rounded pebbles were crushed in 

 between the layers. Beyond this belt of slates are limestone strata, conform- 

 ing with it in dip and strike ; the line of contact between the slates and lime- 

 stone can be traced for miles down the ravine on the north of this spur. To 

 the south of the spur, on its slope toward Ralston Valley, and west from Bel- 

 mont, is a very picturesque little tract of country, still well wooded, as are most 

 of the hills around Belmont, where the granite, here easily decomposed by the 

 atmospheric agents, has been worn into various curious shapes — castellated 

 peaks and table-topped mounds ; columns consisting of blocks standing one 

 upon the other, originally square, but now so rounded that they seem boulders 

 piled up by man's hand, and in imminent danger of falling off. In all these 

 ravines are small springs and rivulets, around which are small extents of green 

 grass, 



Belmont itself is built over the line of contact between the granite and 

 the slates ; the foot-hills below it and the crest and southern slope of the ridge 

 to the south are all of granite, a coarse-grained, easily decomposed rock, con- 

 taining large twin crystals of orthoclase, which remain after the surrounding 

 mass has crumbled away. In this granite are frequent dikes of white fine- 

 grained granulitic rock, composed mostly of quartz and feldspar. To the east 

 of Belmont, qiiartzite is the contact rock next the granite on the north, beyond 

 which are metamorphic slates, while the foot-hills of the Smoky Valley Eange, 

 still further north, are composed of strata of blue limestone, in which were 



