82 PEGMATITES AND ASSOCIATED ROCKS OF MAINE.
later, when the same students sent similar crystals for identification to Professor Silliman, of Yale.
The
winter's snows setting in the night after the discovery pro-vented
further exploration until the following spring, when the two students
searched the bare ledge and the overlying soil and were rewarded with
thirty or more crystals of tourmaline of remarkable beauty and
transparency, with which were associated masses of purplish red to
pink lepidolite and splendid crystal groups of white and of smoky
quartz.
Subsequent
examination indicated that the ledge was perforated with cavities in
which the tourmalines and other minerals had been deposited and that
the crystals that had been gathered by the students had been set free
from their cavities by the
disintegration of the surface of the ledge. Parts of the ledge were
fairly honeycombed with small cavities and soft spots where the
decomposing feldspar was crumbling away. In these cavities and decayed
places other tourmalines were obtained by breaking away the edges of
the cavities or removing the decomposed material.0
The finding of the first of the large pockets is described by Mr. Hamlin6 as follows:
Two
years after the discovery (1822), the two younger brothers of the
discoverer, Cyrus and Hannibal Hamlin, although scarcely in their
teens, resolved to make a more complete exploration of the ledge.
Having borrowed sonie blasting tools in the village, they proceeded to
the hill and managed in a rough way to drill several holes in the ledge
and blast them out. These operations, though of trivial
magnitude, were attended with unlooked-for results, for the explosions
threw out, to the astonishment of the boys, large quantities of
bright-colored lepidolite, broad sheets of mica, and masses of quartz
crystals of a variety of hues. The last blast exposed a decayed place
in the ledge, which yielded readily to the thrusts of a sharpened stick
or the point of the iron drills. As the surface was removed, great
numbers of minute tourmalines were discovered in the decomposed
feldspar and lepidolite. The rock became softer and softer as the boys
proceeded in their work of excavation, and soon they reached a large
cavity of two or more bushels capacity. This hollow place, or rotten
place, appeared to be filled with a substance resembling sand, loosely
packed. Amongst this sand or disintegrated rock, crystals of tourmaline
of extraordinary size and beauty were found scattered here and there in
the soft matrix. Scratching away with renewed energy, the boys soon
emptied the pocket of its contents, and found that they had obtained
more than twenty crystals of various forms and hues. One of these was a
magnificent tourmaline of a rich green color and a remarkable
transparency. It was more than 2-1/2 inches in length by nearly 2
inches in diameter, and both of its terminations were finely formed and
perfect.
Several
others possessed extraordinary beauty, and some of them were quite 3
inches in length and an inch in diameter. The colors of these
tourmalines were quite varied, but were chiefly red and green. * * *
The exact number of the crystals obtained by the boys is not known, but
when collected together with the fragments of others they filled a
basket of nearly two quarts capacity. Besides the tourmalines, the
quantity of lepidolite, mica, and other choice minerals thrown out by
the blasts or found in the sides of the cavity was so great that the
boys were obliged to seek for an ox team to transport them home.
From
1822 until 1864 the locality was visited by many mineralogists,
geologists, and mineral collectors, who excavated to some extent
