ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY. 
257 
There are five furnaces on this range of ores, one on the High 
Shoals tract, — the southern part of it, and four on the northern. 
One of these has been in operation between 90 and 100 years, the 
others 80,00 and less, down to 12 years for the last and most northern, 
• — the Stonewall, at the base of Anderson Mountain, built during the war. 
These are all charcoal-furnaces, of a capacity ranging from 3 to 6 tons. 
And there are many Catalan forges, both in these and the adjoining 
counties, which have long supplied the local market, and with a much 
better quality of iron than could be gotten in the general iron market of 
the country. The belt of limestone, which forms an unfailing term of 
the King’s Mountain slates through their course, lying generally about a 
mile west of the iron ore-beds, and the abundance of timber and water 
power have furnished the most favorable conditions for the cheap produc- 
tion of good iron. And the itacolumitic sandstone of the series furnishes 
excellent material for hearths, a “firestone” much superior in durability 
to any fire bricks procurable. 
Iron Ores of Yadkin, Surry and Stokes . — The ores of this region 
occupy a relation to the Pilot and Sauratowu Mts. similar to that of the 
Gaston and Lincoln ores to the King’s Mountain range. They are found 
along the base and among the spurs and foot hills of the range. And 
like them too, these deposits divide themselves into two groups, geo- 
graphically, one in Stokes and the other in Surry and Yadkin. They 
are all magnetic and granular, but differ, in the two groups, in their 
mode of occurrence. In the latter case the ore is disseminated in grains, 
for the most part through mica slates and gneiss rocks, and the earthy 
and rocky matter often bears a large proportion to the ore and requires to 
be separated by stamping and washing before it is sufficiently concen- 
trated for the forge. The rock is generally decomposed to a great depth 
and the grains of ore are easily separated by very rude and cheap means. 
The ore-beds of this group have been long known, and have been used 
to some extent as a source of local supply of iron. They were described 
by Dr. Mitchell in 1842, as follows : “ There is a series of beds extend- 
ing in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction from the Yirginia line to 
the Yadkin River. There are also some beds on the south side of the 
river.” An example of this magnetiferous gneiss, and of the mode of 
occurrence and the method of mining, concentrating and reducing the ore 
is seen on Tom’s Creek, in Surry county, a few miles northeast of the 
Pilot Mountain. The decomposed gneiss of the ore-bed has little ap- 
pearance of an iron ore, and is in fact distinguishable mainly by its su- 
perior weight, the grains of magnetite merely replacing, in varying pro- 
portions, the mica and hornblende of the rock. And consequently the 
