DIAMOND.	9
	actually made in this locality will not lead to deceptions, which would greatly retard any natural development of interest. It is quite possible that diamonds may be found widely distributed throughout the auriferous belt of the Carolinas and northern Georgia; and that, in the often rude and hurried methods of gold-washing employed, they may have been overlooked in the past, and now lie buried in the piles of sand that stretch for miles along the water-courses.8 It is stated that 3 diamond crystals were obtained many years ago on Koko Creek, at the headwaters of the Tellico River, in Bast Tennessee, on the "Bench lands" of the Smoky or Unaka Mountains. If this statement be correct, it probably points to a western extension of the diamond belt of North Carolina, or to the transportation of the stones thence by streams." Franklin County is far removed, both geographically and geologically, from all the other points above noted; and indeed in both aspects, a possible relation is suggested rather with the celebrated Manchester, Vir­ginia, diamond. In both these cases, if the diamonds came from the Blue Ridge, they must have been carried a long distance by streams. There is, however, a possible nearer source, in the belt of " Atlantic" or "Tide­water " gneiss, which runs down from New York to and through the Carolinas, forms the rapids in the James at Richmond, and goes on directly toward Franklin County, North Carolina. This is merely a suggestion, however, caused by the geographical isolation of these two occurrences; nowhere else along this gneissic belt have diamonds ever been found.