OUTLINES. 
139 
the Smoky range, making tlieir final disappearance into Tennessee; the 
Smoky Mountains beyond this point being composed of older formations. 
This series of rocks pass south westward across Shut-In Greek and up 
Warm Springs Creek and Meadow Fork, through the New Found Moun- 
tains, across Pigeon Fiver, and over to the head waters of Oconaluftee 
RiVer, widening out so as to take in almost the whole course of that 
stream to the Tuckasege. But the limestones which pass out on the 
Pigeon Valley from Warm Springs do not again cut into the Smoky, 
which is composed, for this interval, from Pigeon to the Tennessee, of 
clay slates, blue and grey, micaceous and taleose, and of qnartzose slates 
and gneiss-like beds, schists and quartzytes. 
This belt of rocks is colored on the map throughout like the other Flu- 
ronian belts, and for the same reasons, viz: that they succeed the Lauren- 
tian, and differ from them strongly in degree of metamorphism and gen- 
eral lithological character, so that the transition from one to the other is 
obvious along the whole extended line of contact, and that they have 
yielded no fossils, which alone could authorize their reference to a later 
age. And although the fact of unconformability can not be asserted for 
any one of the sections, this may arise from the circumstance that the dis- 
turbance and dislocation of the strata along this line are extreme, and 
that no detailed or minute examination has ever been attempted, and of 
course nothing short of such examination would suffice in such a region. 
And another circumstance of weight is the immense body of these rocks, 
which must be allowed, on the French Broad for example, after every 
reasonable reduction for folding, a thickness of several miles. Add these 
to the primordial or the lowest members of the Lower Silurian and they 
receive a most incredible development downwards, since the rocks along 
the Tennessee border referred to this horizon have already a very great 
thickness. 
However, as stated above, these rocks have only been located provis- 
ionally. And it is right to say further that the only examination I have 
made of this western Smoky belt, was a mere recon noisance, mostly on 
horseback, made in a few weeks of the autumn of 186 G. The only hope- 
ful way of attacking the complicated problem of their age is to trace their 
connection with the 
SILURIAN, 
As this formation is developed in Tennessee, where they have been so 
thoroughly studied by Prof. Salford. And I am glad to acknowledge 
the service which he has rendered towards the solution of the problem by 
