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day laden with lead, saying that lie had found the mine, and subsequently, whenever lie wanted lead, he would go to the mine and bring this ore home and smelt it. This the parson well remembers. But his father died without telling where the mine is, more than he revealed to his son on his death bed, telling that it is at the base of the bank of the creek, in a field now cultivated. The creek has low banks, which have been ploughed nearly to the water's edge; so the ore is covered with earth, aid the parson cannot find it, nor any one else. The parson is a. middle-aged, healthy, intelligent man, and lie certainly can have no motive for misrepresenting. I have not been in Sabine county, and was going northward when I met the parson, near whose House we encamped at night.

The old limestones of the lower silurian, in Burnet, Llano and San Saba counties, have lead ores, as we know from authentic specimens received from that region; also the metamorphic rocks prevalent in those counties may have both lead and silver. These are gneiss, mica, schist and hornblende slates.

has been found in small quantities in the sands and schistose rocks of Llano and Mason counties, where there has been much labor given to obtain it. In the spring of 1861, 1 succeeded in getting a little gold from quartzose veins in mica slates, on the banks of the Llano river, about eight miles south of Fort Mason. Recently, in Llano county, on the banks of Sandy creek, I saw Dr. C. S. Smith pan out a very little gold from pulverized mica slates traversed by quartzose veins. This shows the native beds of the gold found in the sands of Sandy creek. Numerous ravines through these metamorphic rocks empty into the creek, bringing down the golden sand; hence we need not expect to find gold in the granites and their associated crystalline rocks, but rather in the still older metamorphic rocks, gneiss, mica slates, etc., which generally underlie the granite, or are in close proximity to it. Mining experience teaches this. Dana, in his Manual of Geology, page 413, in alluding to the paleozoic age, says: "Much of the gold of the world comes originally from rocks, which were metamorphosed and filled with veins at this lime. The same is believed to be true of platinum and diamonds. None of the precious metals are yet known to occur in the crystalline