ECONOMICAL GEOLOGY. 
261 
mountainous region, timber for fuel is abundant, and water power also ; 
and the proximity of magnetites and hematites, to be presently mention- 
ed, completes a very favorable combination of circumstances for the es- 
tablishment of iron manufactures. 
Specimens of magnetic ore are of frequent occurrence in Burke county, 
and the western part of Catawba, of which there are several very fine 
examples in the Museum, — sent, one from a point, near Hickory, and an- 
other from near Morganton, &c., but nothing is known to me of the 
quantity or special mode of occurrence. On Steele’s Creek also in the 
northwestern part of Burke- county, there is an outcrop of magnetic and 
hematite ore of the best quality. The bed or vein has not been exposed, 
and the quantity cannot be safely conjectured. It occurs on a spur of 
Brown Mountain on the land of Mr. Estes. Limonite also occurs in 
Brindletown, among the spurs of the South Mountains. 
A bed of superior magnetic ore occurs on Warrior Creek, not far from 
Patterson, Caldwell county, and within a mile of the bend of the Yadkin 
River. It is traceable hundreds of yards by large surface fragments of 
a fine grained heavy metallic ore, remarkably free from rocky admixtures ; 
and a similar ore is reported as occurring in large mass a few miles west 
on Mulberry Creek. Another very fine ore, a shining metallic, slaty 
hematite, of great purit} 7 , is found a few miles above on the spurs 
of the Blue Ridge, flanking the Yadkin River, in a cove known as 
Richlands. The smooth faces of the slaty masses of ore, as well as of 
the walling slates, are sprinkled quite thickly with small shining octahe- 
dral crystals of magnetite, many of which have been converted into 
hematite, constituting a fine example of martite schist. The bed at this 
point outcrops only a few inches in thickness, among the thin bedded 
and shaly, argillaceous and arenaceous micaceous slates of Linville, which 
show themselves in force along the flanks of the Blue Ridge in this sec- 
tion. The analysis of this ore, by Hanna, is as follows : 
63 
Sesquioxide of Iron,. . . . . .... ............ 96.14 
Sulphide of Iron, ............. 0.08 
Sulphuric Acid, 0.01 
Phosphoric Acid, .......... . 0.00 
Manganese, trace 
Silica, ...... . 2.25 
Alumina, 0.87 
Water, &c., ......... .85 
Metallic Iron, 
67.32 
