PRIMITIVE FORMATIONS. Ill 
water is employed as a remedy for diseases, because it has an of- 
fensive smell. In general the water of this primitive region is 
very pure and good. That of Deaver's spring, four miles from 
Ashville, contains a considerable quantity of sulphuretted hy- 
drogen. 
3. There is a body of very beautiful porphyritic granite in the 
counties of Anson and Richmond, bearing no resemblance to any 
that is met with elsewhere in the state, a few masses in the bed 
of the Cotentney above Stantonsburg excepted. It is on both 
sides of the Pedee below old Mount Pleasant, the former county- 
seat of Anson, and but for the circumstance of its being un- 
healthy, one of the loveliest spots in North Carolina. It forms an 
excellent soil by its decomposition ; millstones of a tolerable 
quality are cut from it in Richmond ; it is not known to contain 
any imbedded minerals. 
4. The small field of granite on which the University stands 
has been sufficiently noticed. East of the red-sandstone, in the 
counties of Cumberland, Wake, Granville, Warren, Franklin, 
Nash, Johnston, Halifax, and Northampton, is another body of 
ancient primitive rocks, largely covered by the sand. Amongst 
these, granite prevails more extensively than any other, and 
where the tertiary sand is absent, there is a fertile soil. The 
western and northern part of Wake county, where magnesian 
slates and quartz rocks come in, is probably inferior to any other 
in this whole area, the tertiary sand always excepted. The im- 
bedded minerals are few. Nodules and masses of Plumbago are 
found at intervals, from a point north-west of Raleigh, to near the 
Cumberland line. That of the principal bed, on the waters of 
Crab-tree, is pure and good, and has been explored to some extent, 
and with profit, for many years. Above the falls of the Neuse 
is a large body of serpentine and other magnesian rocks. Much 
of the serpentine is too highly charged with small grains of oxide 
of iron, to admit of its being cut and polished as an ornamental 
stone, but in so large a mass, it may be expected that a diligent 
search would discover such as possesses every desirable quality, 
of solidity, strength, and beauty. With this notice of the lowest, 
and probably not the least ancient of our rock formations, we 
close this outline of the Geology of North Carolina. 
THE END. 
Mo*h r Carolina State Library 
Raleigh 
