GEOGRAPHICAL AXD GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF GOLD BELTS. 25
small belt lying on the northwest side of the main Blue Ridge divide, in Towns, Union and Fannin counties, extending into Clay county, X. C.
7. THE ALABAMA BELT.
The Alabama belt might be considered a continuation of the Georgia belt. However, principally as a matter of convenience for reference, it is spoken of and described separately here. It comprises an area of about 3500 square miles, situated in the crystalline rooks of Cleburne, .Randolph, Talladega, Clay, Tallapoosa, Chambers, Coosa, Elmore and Chilton counties. This is the southwest extremity of the southern Appalachian gold field.
On the latest geological map of Alabama,1 the gold-bearing rocks of this area are distinguished as: 1. The semi-crystalline Talladega shales of Algonkian age, including argillaceous and hard, greenish, sandy shales (often graphitic); 2. The crystalline schists of Archaean age, including mica-schists, which, on the one hand, grade through gneisses into granite, and, on the other, into siliceous schists; garnetiferous hornblende-schists, probably of dioritic origin, also occur. The general strike is X.E. and the dip S.E.
The quartz-veins are interlaminated in these rocks, coinciding imperfectly with the dip and strike of the schistosity. From a structural geological standpoint, the veins bear much similarity to those of the Dahlonega type. From a mining standpoint, however, they are different, not forming the wide belts of numerous parallel leads, as in Dahlonega. The quartz is usually glassy; the sulphurets are in the main pvritic, and the gangue minerals are those of usual occurrence in gold-bearing quartz-veins elsewhere. The character of the placer deposits presents no novel features.
1 Geological Map of Alabama, with Explanatory Chart, Geological Survey of Alabama, 1894.
