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Ch. 10: Diamond Mining & Meteorites

Ch. 10: Diamond Mining & Meteorites Page of 448 Ch. 10: Diamond Mining & Meteorites Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
220
THE DIAMOND
has been reached. The mountain ridges above the streams are described as quartzose chloritic talcschist, and the sands lie on a bed of dolomite.
A few microscopic diamonds have been found in Rus­sian Lapland in the valley of the Pasvig river. Gneiss is the bed-rock, and the associate minerals are with one or two variations the same as in India and Brazil.
A few diamonds have been found in the Sierra Madre, southwest of Acapulco in Mexico, and one was found in sand with Pyropes at Dlascekowitz, in Bohemia. A re­port of one discovered in Ireland was not authenticated.
There is a Jesuit tradition that diamonds have been found on Jesuit lands in the district of Tena, 30 miles from Bogota, Colombia, but several years' search has failed to discover any.
Strata of clay said to be similar to kimberlite exists in the State of Trujillo, Venezuela, and a concession was obtained from the government some years ago to work them for diamonds, but none were found.
A few diamonds have been found at various times in the United States, but until the discovery of what is thought to be a diamond chimney like those of Africa, in Pike County, Arkansas, in 1906, the fields gave no promise of others, sufficient to induce prospecting for more. Single stones have been picked up at long inter­vals, chiefly along the eastern base of the Appalachians, in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Most of them have been found, associated with gold, in the Carolinas, though the largest, weighing 23-3/4 carats, was found by a laborer while working in an excavation in a street of Manchester, Virginia, in 1855. This crystal was an octahedron with rounded
Ch. 10: Diamond Mining & Meteorites Page of 448 Ch. 10: Diamond Mining & Meteorites
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