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near the seaboard. It is used extensively as a fertilizer by the best farmers, and will some day be of great value for fuel.
Limestone , though not abundant in the State, is found in more than 20 counties ; some of them in the eastern, some in the middle, and some in the western region. That in the ■east is of Eocene age and is a shell conglomerate, valuable both for building purposes and for the manufacture of lime. The limestones of the middle and western regions are of Huronian (Pre-Silurian) age, and are frequently crystalline, and in several counties constitute a very good marble, in Cherokee and Macon especially, where are found several fine varieties and colors of this stone, white, grey, red, flesh- colored and mottled.
Gold is very widely distributed through the older rocks of the middle and western sections, being found in workable quantities in 29 counties. The first gold mines in the United States were found here about 1820, and they were wrought on a very large scale until 1847, yielding many millions of dollars. There has been comparatively little done in these mines since the discovery of the California deposits, although a number of mines are still wrought from Halifax to Cherokee. The mineral is found in various gangues, besides the free gold of the drift or gravel beds ; chiefly in quartz, quartzitic slates and conglomerates, talcose slates, felspathic slates, limestone and gneiss. Before the discovery of the California deposits, the largest nugget in the world had been obtained from this State, weighing 28 pounds.
Silver, Lead and Zinc have been mined to some extent for more than 30 years in middle region, chiefly in Davidson county, at Silver Hill and the neighboring mines, and recently they have been discovered in several of the western ■counties.
Copper has been found in more than a dozen counties, and a large number of mines have been opened in the last 20 years throughout the middle and mountain regions, and