42 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
On the South Fork of the Catawba in Gaston county, is a third noted 
power at High Shoals. The fall is some 30 feet, and although it has 
been utilized to the extent of driving the machinery of extensive roll- 
ing mills and some half dozen forges and puddling furnaces, not a tithe 
of the force is turned to account. 
And there are many other important powers on the same stream, which 
is a succession of rapids for many miles as it breaks through the ledge of 
Spencers’s Mountain, of the King’s Mountain range. 
A fourth valuable water power, as yet only utilized to a very small ex- 
tent, is that at Loekville, in Chatham county, on Deep River. The fall 
here is 36 feet. And along this river, and the Cape Fear, are nineteen 
dams built by the State for the improvement of the navigation ; and 
most of these are still standing at least in part, and aboul half of them 
have been recently put in repair by private enterprise, in developing the 
iron and coal interests of the region. Here there is a force of over 
50.000 horse powers, (or 2,000,000 spindles), already rendered available, 
and yet wholly unused, although it is within the cotton region. There 
are about a dozen factories on this entire system of rivers, some 10 or 
12.000 spindles, requiring some 300 or 400 horse powers, that is, about 
a four hundredth part of the whole. 
But the most remarkable water power in the State is yet to be men- 
tioned, and is one which has never been turned to the smallest account, — 
that at the the Narrows of the Yadkin, in Montgomery county. 
At this point the whole immense volume of the waters of this, the 
largest river in the State, is suddenly compressed into a narrow, rocky 
gorge of the Uwharrie Mountains, a broad, navigable expanse of more 
than half a mile contracted into a defile of about 30 feet breadth, — 
through which the torrent dashes with an impetuosity to which the “ar- 
rowy” sweep of the Rhine, in its most rapid mood, is but sluggishness 
itself. The total descent of the Narrows and the Rapids, in a distance 
of some two miles, is not less than 50 or 60 feet ; at the termination of 
which, at the confluence of the Uwharrie, the river attains a width of 
more than one mile. 
This locality is about 30 miles from the nearest railroad. Those pre- 
viously named are either on, or very near to some line of rail, and all 
are within, or on the margin of the cotton-growing zone, and in a region 
of abundant and various agricultural products, and except the first men- 
tioned, are among the hills of the middle section, which is noted for its 
salubrity of climate. 
Elevations, Profiles, &c. — A large mass of materials has been col- 
lected with a view to the construction of an approximative topographical 
