POSITION AND RELATIONS OF GOLD. 
159 
ORIGIN OF GOLD—THE GEOLOGICAL POSITION AND RELA¬ 
TIONS OF GOLD. 
§ 95. If we attempt to account for the origin of gold on facts 
and principles which are inapplicable to the origin of other 
metals, we entirely lose ourselves in conjecture. Indeed, the 
phenomena which accompany the auriferous quartz veins are 
by no means unlike those which accompany lead, copper, and 
iron. Its subterranean origin should therefore be admitted. 
The gold of North Carolina is connected with three divisions 
or sections of rock: 1. With granite and associated rocks; 
2. Gneiss and its laminated associates; and 3. With a series 
of slates which I am disposed to regard as sediments. The 
immediate repository of this metal is the ordinary constituted 
vein, differing in no respect, in its structural relations and ori¬ 
gin, from those of the other metals and ores. It will be 
observed that I have passed unnoticed the deposits of gold in the 
soil and grits of decomposed rock for obvious reasons. 
The slates are soft, greenish or reddish rocks, intersected by 
quartz veins and trap, and appear to repose upon granite so as to 
admit the outcropping of low and long ridges of this rock where 
the slates have thinned out. The rock, however, which I have 
noticed under the general name of slate, is really made of a 
series of rocks, which furnish a series of subordinate beds which 
have a wide range of lithological character. The following is 
a list of the most important kinds: 1. Soft green chlorite slate; 
2. Soft red, reddish, and purple and purplish slates; 3. Soft 
talcose slates, which contain, however, quartz in fine grains, 
and which are also reddish and purplish. This variety might 
receive with propriety the name of talcite as already proposed. 
Alternating with the foregoing soft slates are the harder masses, 
which consist of 
1. Quartzite, a mineral which in all respects resembles chert 
or hornstone. It is whitish, green, bluish, passing into black, 
and often coarsely agatized. It breaks with a flat conchoidal 
