BATTLE MOUNTAINS. 667 



They are separated from the Shoshone Range by a wide meridional de- 

 pression, and from the Fish Creek Mountains by a low arid valley. 



Although the group thus occupies an isolated position, it lies directly in 

 the trend of the Augusta and Fish Creek Mountains, and topographically 

 would appear to be a prolongation along the same line of upheaval, forming 

 but one range, a counterpart to the Shoshone, the next range to the east- 

 ward. As already described, the Shoshone Range in the southern portion is 

 found to consist mainly of rhyolitic flows along a line of older crystalline 

 rocks and sedimentary uplifts, and that in the neighborhood of Carico Lake 

 they abut against a massive series of highly-inclined quartzites and quartz- 

 itic schists dipping to the eastward. To the westward, in the Augusta and 

 Fish Creek Mountains, the same volcanic accumulations are found forming 

 the great mass of the range, and concealing in a similar manner the older 

 underlying rocks, which reach the surface in but few localities along a con- 

 tinuous line for over 70 miles. But to the north, the rhyolites, unlike those 

 in the former range, terminS^te abruptly without reaching the Battle Mount- 

 ains, which in many respects resemble in their geological structure the 

 northern end of the Shoshone Range. 



The Battle Mountains are for the most part made up of heavy beds of 

 dark quartzites and quartzitic schists, slates, sandstones, and cherty beds, 

 overlaid by beds of dark bluish- gray limestone. 



These strata, wherever observed, dip to the westward, that is, in the 

 opposite direction from the beds of the Shoshone Range, and the two masses 

 would appear to form a broad anticlinal fold, whose axis lies in the de- 

 pression now occupied by Reese River Valley. In their main lithological 

 characteristics, the beds represented in the Battle Mountains resemble those 

 from the Shoshone Range, although a close correspondence of the two series 

 has not been worked out, and some peculiarities of composition recognized 

 in the Battle Mountain rocks have not as yet been observed in the former 

 range; but, as nearly all the strata are more or less altered and metamor- 

 phosed, an exact correlation of beds could only be obtained by careful 

 examination. From the evidences derived from the structural position of 

 these beds, and from the fact of finding in the overlying limestones several 



