Lawson.1 



The Upper Kern Basin . 



299 



These rocks are for the most part distinguished from the granite, 

 even at a distance of many miles, by the rusty, reddish brown 

 color which they assume under the weather, and by their 

 smoother and more conical profiles. 



Isolated areas of such metamorphic rocks appear to be by 

 no means infrequent in the granites of the southern Sierra 

 Nevada, and, as our knowledge of them is but scant, it may be 

 well to here say a word about the occurrence at Mineral King. 

 This belt has a width from east to west at Mineral King of 

 about four miles. Its western limit against the granite is 

 observable on the canon walls of the East Pork of the Kaweah 

 a mile or less below Mineral King. Its eastern limit is splen- 

 didly exposed in the fine glacial cirques which lie to the south- 

 west, west, and northwest of Sawtooth (Plate 43, A and b). 

 These contacts show clearly that the granite is intrusive in the 

 sedimentary rocks. The metamorphism of the latter is referable 

 to their contact with the granite. On both sides of the belt 

 which lies within these limits, the contact plane is in general 

 nearly vertical, but in some places on the eastern edge of the 

 belt it dips to the east so that the granite is resting upon the 

 sedimentary rocks. This contact is observable again to the east 

 of Mt. Florence and on the mountain slopes to the east of Bullion 

 Flat on the Little Kern. From this point the belt may be fol- 

 lowed down the canon of the Little Kern, on the west side, for 

 about four or five miles, but appears to be very much naiTower 

 than at Mineral King and eventually tapers out. In its northern 

 extension the belt may be followed over Timber Gap and across 

 Cliff Creek, but does not cross the main stream of the Middle 

 Fork of the Kaweah. Beyond Cliff Creek it must either pinch 

 out rapidly or swing around to the northeast, cross the Great 

 Western Divide, and connect with the similar rocks of the 

 Kaweah Peaks, in the basin of the Upper Kern. Whether this 

 connection now exists was not positively determined. It seems 

 not improbable, however, that the rocks of the Mineral King 

 belt and those of the Kaweah Peaks are parts of the same belt of 

 strata. In the Mineral King belt, at least, we have a remnant of 

 a once extensive pre-granite sedimentary terrane, which, in a 

 sharply plicated and appressed condition, sank deeply into the 



