4 HISTORY OF THE GEMS FOUND IN NORTH CAROLINA.
blocks;
but General Clingman was more interested in a brilliant pyrites in the
adjacent feldspar, under the impression that it was a silver ore. After
the war had closed, in 1869, the old mine, long known in the vicinity
as the " Sink-hole," was brought to the notice of a stove company in
Knoxville, Tenn., who began to operate it for the mica, with great
success. Another mica mine in the same section, the " Cloudland," was
discovered accidentally at about the same time, and proved to be also
valuable. Quite a local excitement sprang up, and much prospecting was
done for mica, with the result that several important mines were
discovered. One of these, the " Clarissa," has yielded as much as half
a million of dollars, by Mr. Bowman's estimate. It has been worked down
to 400 feet, and is now stopped by water; but only awaits improved
machinery and a rise in the price of mica, to be reopened with profit.
With
all that has been discovered, however, and all that has been done, in
North Carolina gems, there are evidently much greater possibilities in
the future. One suggestion of a practical kind may be made in closing
this introductory chapter.
A
wonderful development has gone on in North Carolina in the direction
of the great hotels at Asheville and Toxaway and the mountain resorts
at Linville, Cranberry and elsewhere, and a large tourist class visit
this Tegion every year. If some of the native prospectors should use
their spare moments as do those in Russia, they would gather, mine and
then cut the rock crystals, smoky quartz, and other stones of the
region, shaping them into ornamental forms, as the inhabitants of the
Ural Mountains have done since the eighteenth century, when Catherine
the Second sent two Italian lapidaries to educate them in the art. This
might well prove a source of interest and profit to the people of the
State.
