OUTLINES. 
133 
and marked change in this respect. These rocks have been so fully de- 
scribed by Dr. Emmons, that there is no need to particularize further. 
The strike is conformable to the general trend of the mountains and 
coast, and of the preceding formation, and the dip is prevalently west at 
high angles, but towards the western side of the tract, and conspicuously 
in widest part of it there is a breadth of several miles of easterly dips. 
Besides the minerals already named, one of the most characteristic and 
abundant is specular iron, micaceous, granular and massive, which occurs 
in large veins and bedded masses, sometimes associated with slaty and 
jointed quartzytes, and silicious slates, and again with white, red and dark 
banded and jaspery slates. Magnetic iron is also not uncommon, and in 
a few localities there are large veins of brown hematite. Several of the 
most noted copper mines in the State occur in this formation, and it 
abounds in gold mines, both vein and gravel. Several silver and lead 
mines have also been wrought along its western border. The list of its 
minerals however, will be found in Dr. Genth’s paper in the appendix. 
The belt is bounded on both sides by the Laurentian, already described, 
on which it lies unconformably, and from which its materials were derived. 
The stratigraphy therefore indicates the horizon of these rocks to be the Hu- 
ronian,and the lithology agrees well with that determination ; and the rea- 
sonable course therefore seems to be, to place them as Huronian, until 
some evidence shall be found of an organic character, to lift them to a 
higher geological plane. The absence, or at least the non-discovery of 
fossils hitherto, in an extensive body of slate3 like those of the middle 
and w T e3t portions of this tract, so little altered and so well adapted to the 
preservation of even the most delicate organisms, and in a region so much 
studied, and on account of numerous mines, offering so good opportuni- 
ties for the discovery of fossils if any existed, is certainly so far confirma- 
tory of the sub-Silurian theory of these deposits. This is the principal 
area of Emmons’ Taconic in this State. 
The third belt, broken and interrupted, and of small extent, may be 
identified as the King’s Mountain belt. Its greatest breadth is only five 
or six miles ; its direction is marked by the high ledges of cpiartzyte slates 
which constitute King’s Mountain, Crowder’s Mountain, Spencer’s Moun- 
tain and Anderson’s Mountain, disappearing towards the great bend of the 
Catawba River. The rocks are quartzytes and clay slates; the former, 
sometimes cyanitic, often micaceous and slaty, and passing into mica 
schists occasionally ; and the latter often talcose, or hydro-micaceous. 
Limited lenticular beds of crystalline limestone occur at intervals all 
along the outcrop. The strike of the rocks coincides with the general di- 
rection of the belt, which is 10° — 20° north of east, and the dip W., at 
