extending through this region; but there are numerous auriferous tracts, occurring at intervals and generally parallel with each other, though often many miles distant. In North Carolina, from which the greatest amounts of gold have been obtained, there are two principal belts extending across the state in a S. W. and N. E. direction; one through Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, Rowan, Davidson, Guilford, and Caswell counties, and the other through Rutherford, McDowell, and Burke counties. The latter is the more westerly of the two, being from 10 to 20 m. distant from the base of the Blue Ridge; it is also more elevated, while the placer deposits are richer and more extensive than in the E. belt. In Georgia also the range appears to be divided into two belts, which are separated by unproductive rocks. Quartz veins closely resembling those of California are found in these regions. The gold is either free in coarse grains, or in fine particles disseminated in sulphuret of iron or copper. The gold veins of Virginia extend through Fauquier, Culpeper, Louisa, Fluvanna, Buckingham, and a few other adjoining counties. The production at times has been very large, but the veins have been extremely fluctuating in their yield; and though some of these still continue to be worked, their history on the whole is by no means favorable. Though gold has been found in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, on the range of the Appalachian chain, it has proved insufficient to justify mining explorations, except over a limited area in Vermont during the year 1859. The veins of the southern gold region are found in various rocks of a granitic character, and in the hornblendic rock called diorite, all of which are often in a decomposed condition to the depth of 200 ft. or more. They are also met with in a variety of slates, as talcose, micaceous, chloritic, and hornblendic. In North Carolina a belt of such crystalline slates several miles wide is traced through several counties on the E. side of another belt of granite and W. of one of hornblendic rock, in all of which the veins are found. In South Carolina the geognostical relations of the gold are very similar. Steatitic strata are met with near the mines, and dikes of intrusive rocks are often found cutting the veins and sometimes disturbing their regularity. The course of the veins is by no means uniform; they run in various directions, and are often tortuous as well as displaced by faults. Their most common general bearing is N. E. and S. W., with a dip toward the N. W. Veins in which the quartz gangue is highly crystalline commonly abound in iron pyrites; as they are explored, pyritous copper is generally met with at some depth. In most instances the gold diminishes with the increase of copper, and the latter metal not proving abundant enough to pay expenses, the mines are at last abandoned. Gold is said to have been discovered in Cabarrus co. in 1799, but until the early part of the present century the gold region of the southern states attracted no attention. Gold had been gathered to a small extent in various places along the ranges of hills on the E. side of the Appalachian chain, between the Potomac and the Coosa river of Alabama; but there was no regular market for its sale, and no account was kept of the quantities collected. These were altogether of placer gold. In 1825 a gold vein was discovered by Mr. Barringer in Montgomery co., N. C., and attention was directed to this source, which in some instances proved highly productive; but this branch of mining was afterward most successfully prosecuted in Virginia, the coarse gold disseminated through the white quartz being more conspicuous than in the North Carolina veins. In the more broken country of the Carolinas and Georgia also the deposits of the streams were more attractive. In 1824 native gold began to appear in the mint at Philadelphia, and the receipts increased rapidly, so that in five or six years it constituted the chief portion of the supplies of this metal. Up to 1827 North Carolina had been the only state producing gold in notable quantities, and the aggregate amount from 1804 is estimated at about $110,000. The first mint deposits from South Carolina were $3,500 in 1829, and from Virginia $2,500 in the same year. The first deposits of Georgia gold were in 1830 to the amount of $212,000. In 1837 the production had become so great that a branch mint was established by the government at Charlotte, N. C., and another at Dahlonega, Lumpkin co., Ga., both of which commenced operations the next year. They were suspended in 1861, but in 1869 that at Charlotte was reëstablished as an assay office. When the discoveries of gold in California were announced, the placer deposits and many of the veins in the south were abandoned. The total amount of southern gold deposited at the mints and assay offices of the United States, from the opening of the mines to June 30, 1873, was $1,631,612 from Virginia, $9,983,585 from North Carolina, $1,378,180 from South Carolina, $7,267,784 from Georgia, $79,018 from Tennessee, and $211,827 from Alabama; total, $20,052,006. Of the deposits in 1873, $2,423 came from Virginia, $120,332 from North Carolina, $160 from South Carolina, $35,437 from Georgia, and $599 from Alabama.—The existence of gold in California had been known from the time of the expedition of Drake, 1577-'9, being particularly noticed by Hakluyt in his account of the region. The occurrence of gold upon the placers was noticed in a work upon Upper California published in Spain in 1690, by Loyola Cavello, at that time a priest at the mission of San José, bay of San Francisco. Capt. Shelvocke in 1721 speaks favorably of the appearance of the soil for gold, and of the probable richness of the country in metals. The “Historico-Geographical Dictionary” of Antonio de Alcedo, l786-'9, positively affirms the abundance of gold, even in lumps of 5 to 8 lbs. The favorable appearance of the country for
