252 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
interval of 12 to 20 feet between them being occupied by talcose and 
chloritic slates, with a littte ore in layers. The beds generally occur 
in lenticular masses, or flattish disks, which thicken at the middle and 
thin out towards the edges, having nearly the same dip with the bed ; but 
they do not succeed each other in one plaue, their edges overlapping so 
as to throw the upper edge of the lower behind the lower edge of the 
upper. The ore has been generally mined in a very rude and wasteful 
fashion, the operations seldom penetrating beyond water-level, 50 or 60 
feet, and generally limited to surface openings. The range naturally 
divides itself into two groups of beds, the northern and the southern, the 
one lying ino-tly in Lincoln, and the other in Gaston. The most con- 
siderable of the Lincoln beds and the one which has been longest and 
most extensively wrought is known as the Big Ore Bank. This is sit- 
uated 1 or 8 miles north of the C. C. Railroad, and, as is usual with the 
outcrops of these beds, is on a hill or broad ridge. There are several beds 
evident, but the scattered and partially filled openings do not furnish the 
means of arriving at a satisfactory notion of their exact relations. The 
quantity of ore, however, seems to be very great, the thickness of the beds 
at some places being estimated at about 18 feet. The surface of the hill 
is still covered with a coarse dark magnetic gravel, after all the large frag- 
ments have been removed, and several crops of the gravel also, as they 
weather out in succession. Several furnaces and a number of forges have 
been supplied with ore from this point for a long period, Following the 
compass course of the outcrops, about hi. 20° E., a succession of ore beds 
is encountered at intervals of one or two miles, to the southeastern base 
of Anderson Mountain, — the Brevard Ore Bank, the Robinson Ore Bank, 
the Morrison Ore Bank, which last extends into Catawba county. The lat- 
ter of these was not much opened until the late war, when the Stonewall fur- 
nace was erected in the neighborhood, and a considerable quantity of iron 
manufactured. The thickness of the beds is given by Mr. Hanna in the 
general statement quoted above, as ranging from 4 to 12 feet. The qual- 
ity of iron manufactured from this range of ore beds has always been 
good ; and all the furnaces on this part of the range were put in blast 
after the war, for the purpose of supplying a high grade charcoal-iron for 
the northern market. 
Limestone for fluxing is found convenient, in the range of beds which 
accompanies these slates, one to two miles to the west, from King's Moun- 
tain to a point several miles beyond Anderson Mountaiu. 
A few miles northwest of the last named mountain is a bed of limo- 
nite 5 or 6 feet thick, which was opened during the war, and furnished 
ore for a Catalan forge erected on a small stream near by. 
