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A PLEISTOCENE MANGANESE DEPOSIT.
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composed of sandstones, shales and limestones dipping at steep angles. The upturned edges of the rocks are well exposed from the summit of the mountain to its base, where they are covered by the small knoll or mound containing the manganese deposit.

The crest of the mountain is composed of a quartzite which is of a dark gray color, spotted with brown specks, of a granular structure, very hard and cut by numerous quartz veins. The lower beds of quartzite on the slopes resemble this one in all respects except that they show less trace of their original sandy structure and are more vitreous. The larger part of the slope of the mountain is composed of a more or less slaty shale. It is of a gray or purple color, contains large quantities of thin flakes of mica, has a wavy, undulating structure and in some places grades almost into a micaceous or talcose schist. The lower beds of shale are much thinner than this one, and in some places resemble it in general appearance, while in others they are more calcareous and blend into limestone. The shale which underlies the knoll containing the manganese (see figures) is of a light yellow color on its surface exposure, and is made up of thin friable laminæ. The limestone beds shown in Figure 2 are all of much the same character; they are of a light or dark gray color, sometimes with a reddish tinge, generally massive, though occasionally showing a tendency to a semi-crystalline structure, and are frequently cut by veins of white crystalline calcite.

THE ORIGIN OF THE DEPOSIT.

The Golconda manganese deposit is in the arid region lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, and known as the "Great Basin." Parts of this region, as is well-known, were, in Pleistocene, or Quaternary, times covered by several large inland bodies of water, of which lakes Bonneville and Lahontan, described respectively by G. K. Gilbert[1] and I. C. Russell,[2] were the largest. In subsequent times these were

  1. Lake Bonneville, Monograph U. S. Geological Survey, No. 1., 1890.
  2. Geological History of Lake Lahontan, A Quaternary Lake of Northwestern Nevada, Monograph U. S. Geological Survey, No. XI., 1885.