ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY. 
251 
of one or two feet depth exposed only small seams of ore, but of the 
best quality 7 . Some explorations were made also in the southern part of 
Mecklenburg at the same time, in the Sugar Creek neighborhood. Nu- 
merous blocks of a remarkably pure granular magnetic ore were found 
scattered over several acres of surface of an old field, and along the public 
road ; and several trenches were cut, which exposed two or three veins of 
one to three and four feet thickness. Adequate search would no doubt 
bring to light still larger veins, judging from the size and number of the 
surface fragments. Some twelve or fifteen miles north of Charlotte, in 
the Hopewell neighborhood, a very notable quantity of surface fragments 
of large size are found in an old field and skirt of woods adjacent. This 
is a specular ore in agangue of quartzite, not unlike the Chapel Hill Ore. 
No exposures of the vein, however, have ever been attempted. Speci- 
mens of a very fine micaceous hematite have been brought from the upper 
end of this county also, but no information of precise locality or extent. 
The ores of the southern end of this county and of Cabarrus are found 
in the syenyte, so prevalent in the region. 
Iron Ores of Gaston , Lincoln and Cataioba . — In these counties is one 
of the most extensive ore ranges in the State. It is also the best known 
and best developed of them all, and has been the principal source of our 
domestic supplies of iron for a hundred years. Some of the furnaces of 
the region were put in blast during the Revolutionary war. The ores are 
predominantly magnetic, with a variable percentage of hematite, and are 
found in the belt of talcose and quartzitic slates, (supposed Hnronian), 
called elsewhere the King’s Mountain slates. The direction of this range 
of ore-beds is coincident with the strike of the slates, and is about 
N. N. E. from King’s Mountain on the southern border of the state, to- 
Anderson Mountain, near the Catawba River, in Catawba county. These 
ores are also mostly of a very slaty structure, and friable. In fact they 
may be generally described as magnetic and specular schists, being talcose,. 
chloritic, quartzitic or actinolitic schists impregnated with granular mag- 
netite and hematite (itabirite). These beds have a westerly dip, with the 
rock strata, at a very high angle, usually nearly vertical. The general 
range of the beds is accompanied and indicated by a iine of quartzose 
slaty ridges, or knobs, the quartzite lying usually to the west of the ore- 
beds, but occasionally on the east and sometimes on both sides. To Mr. 
G. B. Hanna, who has lately made an examination of many of the beds 
for the Survey, I am indebted for several valuable observations. He 
states that for a considerable part of the range there are two parallel beds, 
the more westerly being generally the larger and more productive, their 
thickness running from 4 feet (and sometimes as low as 2 feet) to 12 ; the 
