Mr.
C. W. Jenks, who opened the Corundum Hill mine, at Franklin, N. C,
about 1870, and was the first to find gem sapphire in its original
matrix. During the same period, numerous valuable scientific reports
and analyses were prepared and published by such authorities as Prof.
F. A. Genth, Dr. J. Lawrence Smith, and Dr. T. M. Chatard; and the
North Carolina corundum, its history, mineralogy, and composition, was
thus made widely known.
Although
the main value of the mineral as mined was for use as an abrasive
material, yet pieces were obtained that had color and transparency
enough to rank them in some cases as true gems and largely as valuable
specimens. Among the first fine crystals were some obtained by Prof. C.
U. Shepard; one of these, now in the Shepard collection at Amherst
College, Mass., weighs over 300 pounds. Besides the collecting tours of
Professor Shepard, many annual visits were made to the corundum region
by Mr. Norman Spang, of Pittsburg, Pa., a wealthy and noted collector,
who encouraged exploration, and brought back with him much of the
choicest of the " treasure trove." Mr. W. E. Hidden, of New York,
devoted a large part of 20 years to energetic and intelligent search
for minerals and gems with wonderful success; and recently the State
Geologist, Dr. Joseph H. Pratt, and Prof. J. V. Lewis have given
extended and detailed study to the whole subject of the various
occurrences of corundum in the State. All this activity has not only
developed the industry itself, but has led incidentally to other
discoveries. It may be, indeed, that more has been spent in the search
and in attempts at mining, not always judicious, than the product
itself has yielded; but the effect on the development of the State has
been immense. In the matter of gems and remarkable specimens, these
years of exploration have successively brought to light one and
another fine gem, crystal, or rare mineral, to such an extent that
to-day, were the North Carolina specimens removed from the great
collections of the world, a gap would be left that could not be filled,
in such places as the American Museum of Natural History, New York, the
British Museum of London, the Imperial Museum of Vienna, the U. S.
National Museum at Washington, the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago,
the Musee de Historie Naturelle, Paris; and many others, important but
less famous.
During
the same general period, the mining of mica came to be another
important industry in the revival of the State, and this also led to
discoveries of other rare minerals in the search for valuable
localities for mica. One of the most curious and interesting facts
brought to light in this connection, was the clear evidence that some
of the best mica mines had been long and extensively worked by ancient
aborigines, either Indians
