KINGS MOUNTAIN MINE. 95 
levels on the vein have been run from the Rock shaft at a depth of 140 feet, mostly to the 
southwest, and from the 270-foot and 330-foot levels to the northeast to connect with the 
Holliday shaft. There are two shallower shafts farther northeast and two southwest of 
these workings. A large amount of stoping has been done on each side of the Rock shaft. 
Considerable decomposed rock from the outcrop of this deposit southwest of the Rock shaft 
has been removed and washed in rockers. Besides a shaft house, hoist, steam pump, and 
Cornish pump at the Rock shaft, there is a substantial 30-stamp mill with concentrating 
tables. 
The geology is not well shown by surface exposures. As this mine is situated on the 
slope of the Kings Mountain Range, the rocks all strike to the northeast, and at this place 
the dip is northwest. A somewhat micaceous schist incloses an interstratified bed of lime- 
stone. The limestone is impure and schistose and is often closely interbanded with the 
biotite schist. The limestone is shot through with interlaminated stringers of quartz and 
is somewhat silicified and pyritized, especially along the planes of most intense foliation. 
A zone of impure graphite, in many places heavily impregnated with coarse-grained pyrite, 
underlies the limestone. Southwest of the Rock shaft the ground is strewn with lumps of 
iron oxide, probably derived from the decomposition of pyrite. Some of this iron is 
naturally magnetic. There are indications of a small lateral fault south of the Rock shaft, 
by which the northeast side of the vein is thrown 10 to 12 feet to the southeast. It has 
been said that a granitic dike was encountered in the workings.^ This might be a dike of 
pegmatite, which occurs abundantly a mile or so to the northwest. 
The richest ore of the Kings Mountain mine is contained in the narrow veins or stringers 
of quartz bearing gold and auriferous pyrite. These seem to have been rather more 
abundant in the upper portion of the mine than at the depth where the last work was done. 
The inclosing schistose limestone, however, has been sufficiently penetrated by the solutions 
which circulated in the veins to have deposited in it as impregnations enough gold and 
pyrite to make it an ore. In the upper decomposed portion, which is stained by the oxida- 
tion of the iron sulphides and called "brown ore," the gold occurred free, and so long as 
amalgamation was the only recovery process employed, this ore was eagerly sought for. 
There is no doubt, however, that this oxidized ore was really richer than the corresponding 
unchanged ore below. The quartz stringers were so charged with pyrite that when that 
mineral oxidized they were honeycombed and crumbled almost as easily as the softer 
decomposed schists, and thus the whole outcrop could be easily worked in rockers. It was 
only when development penetrated fresher rock that the presence of limestone was dis- 
covered. Whether the appearance of limestone at some depth is to be attributed to the 
fact that it is a lens-like body, not reaching to the surface, or that it was sufficiently impure 
to furnish, on oxidation and solution, the residual material occurring near the surface, it is 
impossible to decide, but the latter seems the more reasonable conclusion. Alternating 
bands of limestone and schist, when carrying workable values, were known as "calico ore." 
Both in the quartz and the impregnated limestone other minerals were present in addition 
to pyrite. Pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, galena, and zinc blende were not uncommon, and 
among the rarer ore minerals were mispickel, tetrahedrite, nagyagite, altaite, and bismite; 
and besides the calcite and graphite of the limestone were the gangue minerals — quartz, 
sericite, and fluorite. The mineralogical character is thus seen to have been pretty complex. 
Whether the ore-bearing solutions differed correspondingly from that type of solution 
which seems to have formed most of the other gold deposits of the region, or whether the 
difference lies in the greater chemical instability of the limestone, it is impossible to deter- 
mine. The fact that arsenic, antimony, and tellurium have not been found in the other 
mines described would lead to the conclusion that the solutions were of different character, 
while the presence of bismuth compounds at the Brewer mine and of fluorite at the Schlegel- 
milch and the general character of the Kings Mountain deposit, make it easy to believe 
that the two classes of deposits are intimately related in origin. Chalcanthite, which is 
present as a coating on the stope walls, has doubtless been derived from oxidation of the 
a Becker, G. F., op. cit., p. 309. 
