262 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA.- 
In the same neighborhood, on the farm of Mr. J. Curtis, on the banks 
of the Yadkin River, 7 or S miles above Patterson, is a heavy ledge of 
titaniferons iron ore in a massive, granular, talco chloritic gneiss of a 
light greenish-gray color. The ledge is exposed in a cliff rising sheer out 
the river, and again in the steep face of a hill 150 yards distant. The 
exposure is not less than 12 to 15 feet thick, and the surface is covered 
with heaps of angular fragments of all sizes, up to a hundred pounds 
and more. The bed also contains a small proportion of sesquioxide of 
chromium, amounting, according to Hanna, to 0.10 per cent. 
Some 10 or 12 miles northeast of this point, on the flanks of the Blue 
Ridge, near Cook’s Gap, in the edge of Watauga county, occurs another 
outcrop of the specular (martite) schist of Richlands. The bed at this 
locality, which is called Bull Ruffin, is reported to be 3 or 4 feet thick at 
the outcrop, and the neighboring and enclosing rocks, granular quartzose 
schists and other characteristic schists and slates of the Linville belt, are 
often impregnated, as well as the ore schist itself, with fine to coarse crys- 
tals of magnetite and martite. The ore so exactly resembles that at Rich- 
lands that it is impossible to distinguish them. There is also an outcrop 
of limonite near the same point, of which the Museum contains a speci- 
men, but I have no information of its extent. The quality of this ore is 
so high as to justify an exploration of this promising outcrop, and indeed 
of the whole range ; which however does not stop at this point, but fol- 
lows the line of the Blue Ridge for a distance of 75 miles, showing itself 
in the notable magnetiferous and martitic schists of Fisher’s Peak, near 
the Virginia line, on the Surry-Alleghany border. 
In McDowell county there are several beds of limonite. These are 
mostly aggregated along the top of Linville Mountain, southern part, and 
the western slope, near the foot, and in the spurs of the southern end. 
One of these ore-beds was worked by Mr. Conolly twenty-five or thirty 
years ago. Another bed, Fleming’s, was opened also, 2 or 3 miles 
south of Linville, on the slope of Graveyard Mountain ; the thickness 
appeared to be 2 to 3 feet. These Linville limonites made an inferior 
iron when worked alone; but mixed with the magnetites and hematites 
of the region, they would become available for the manufacture of good 
metal. There are ores of the last named species in the Linville River 
region, of which however, I have seen hand specimens only. 
The limestone beds of the same belt, in North Cove and along the 
flanks of Linville, are conveniently located for furnishing a flux, and the 
forests of these mountains will furnish, indefinite quantities of fuel. 
Ore Mountain, one mile west of Swannanoa Gap, (and therefore just 
over the Buncombe line), is named from the occurrence on its flanks of a 
