AURIFEROUS COPPER LODES. 
167 
as the best and most valuable mines for copper. As lodes or 
veins they furnish nothing new as to structure, or add to those 
facts which are interesting in the eyes of a geologist. The 
gold is sacrificed, or at least no successful attempts have been 
made to save it; although it has been proposed, first to separate 
it by the usual minera] process, and afterwards smelt the 
remaining cupreous material. 
While there is a general similarity in the structure of the vein¬ 
stone, and arrangement of the materials constituting the lode, 
there are a few peculiarities belonging to individual veins, 
which are worthy of a passing notice. The McCulloch vein, 
in Guilford county, N. C., for example, is remarkable for its 
width, and the extent or depth to which the decomposition of 
the ore extends, which can not be less than one hundred feet. 
The vein expands to seven and eight feet in width, and con¬ 
tains, notwithstanding this great expanse, very rich ore; and 
the proprietors did not work ore which yielded less than one 
dollar per bushel. It is a magnificent vein. 
The Gold Hill veins have also been very successfully worked. 
Their greatest width is seven and eight feet, and the principal 
vein has never been less than two feet. This vein has been 
worked to the depth of five hundred feet. It is an auriferous 
quartz and copper pyrites, in a green fissile slate. It often 
yields five and six dollars per bushel of ore. The Reed mine, 
Cabarras county, contains but little pyrites, but it is remarka¬ 
ble for the large masses of gold it has furnished; one of which 
weighed twenty-eight pounds, another sixteen, and another 
nine, and so on in respectable lumps, which have been very 
numerous; and another of sixty pounds: though it requires to 
be more fully authenticated, still the evidence of the fact is by 
no means slender. 
The Fentriss copper mine in Guilford county, North Carolina, 
has furnished a large amount of ore. This vein is forked, or 
consists of a flat vein, rising at an angle of ten degrees towards 
the surface. Its veinstone is a coarse quartz, carrying large 
lumps of sulphuret of copper and iron on' its inferior side. 
