280 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
however, have claimed the attention of capitalists, and work has been re- 
sumed in several quarters. The King’s Mountain Mine, for example, was 
unwatered and a California battery of 20 stamps started within two or 
three years after the war ; and it has passed into the hands of a strong 
company, who have imported the latest forms of machinery for the elimi- 
nation of the metal from its ores. It is worth while to mention that the 
gold is found here in a bluish taico-argillaceous slate and in a gray and 
bluish limestone which constitutes one of the series of the King’s Moun- 
tain slates, described elsewhere. The gold is found disseminated through 
a large part of the thickness of the bed (above 60 feet), some strata, how- 
ever, being much richer than others. The mine has been worked to a 
depth of 200 feet, and is said to have yielded, in the aggregate, more than 
$ 1 , 000 , 000 . 
The Rhodes’ mine, also in Gaston county, on the South Fork of the 
Catawba, near Dallas, was worked by a Montana compay a few years ago 
on a considerable scale ; but the ores were found too poor to justify the 
expense of separating the metal. The mine is peculiar in that the gold 
is found not in a vein, but in a bed of ferruginous, decomposed, slaty, 
micaceous gneiss. 
The famous Gold Hill Mine in Rowan county has also been re-opened, 
and work has been carried on almost continuously ever since the close of 
the war. Experiments have recently been tried herewith new processes 
for the reduction of snlpliuret ores, and with new machinery ; but with 
what result I am not informed. The mine is described by Emmons. 
A mine was opened up in Cleaveland county by the Mountain Mining 
Company a few miles south of Shelby, a year or two after the war, but 
was soon abandoned because too poor. This is mentioned because the 
mode of occurrence of the gold is peculiar. There is no vein, but, as in 
the case of the Rhodes’ Mine, the gold occurs in the rock, which here is 
a brown and purplish, decomposed, garnetiferous hydro-mica-schist, the 
gold-bearing strata being more than 100 feet thick. 
Some mining has been done in several of the placer or gravel deposits 
of the state, within the past few years. In the neighborhood of the 
famous old Reid Mine, some line nuggets have been recently found, of the 
value of several hundred dollars, and in one case of two thousand dollars. 
A good deal of work lias also been done at the old Portis Mine in Rash 
o 
and Franklin counties, and at other localities in the neighborhood, where 
there are extensive gold-bearing gravel-beds. 
The Montgomery beds have also been worked on a small scale in a 
number of localities, but with no striking results. Something has also 
been done towards the re-opening of some of the numerous vein mines 
