UNITED STATES, CANADA AND MEXICO                         17
	it is from the "New York Evening Post" of April 28, 1855, where it says : " We were shown yesterday, on board the steam­ship ' Jamestown,' what is said to be the largest diamond ever discovered in North America. It was found several months ago by a laboring man at Manchester, Va., in some earth which he was digging up. It was put into a furnace for melting iron, at Richmond, where it remained at red heat for two hours and twenty minutes. It was then taken out and found to be uninjured and brighter than ever. It was valued in Richmond at $4,000." This stone next passed into the possession of Samuel W. Dewey, of Jackson, now of Philadelphia, and by him was named the Oninoor, or " Sun of Light," though it has more generally been known as the Dewey diamond. It was for a time on exhibition in New York, at the store of Ball, Black & Co., and was cut at an expense of $1,500 by Henry D. Morse, of Boston. Having passed out of Mr. Dewey's hands, through his failure to redeem it on a loan, it was then sold to J. Anglist, who received from John A. Morrissey a loan of $6,000 on it, and as he failed to redeem it, it became part of the Morrissey estate and was known as the Morrissey diamond. It had a large flaw on one side (see Colored Plate No. 1), and was an octahedron with slightly rounded faces. Its original weight was 23 3/4 carats, and after cutting it weighed 11 11/16 carats. As it is off-color and imperfect, it is to-day worth not more than from $300 to $400. Exact copies of it in glass, as well as copper electrotypes of it as it was found, and as cut, were deposited by Mr. Dewey in the United States Mint at Philadelphia, and also at the Peabody Museum in New Haven and in a number of cabinets. North Carolina, so rich and varied in mineral resources, has long been known to yield a certain amount of gold ; and in the same region have been found some diamonds, either loose in the soil, or taken from the washings of auriferous gravel. The por­tion of the State which has yielded these valuable substances is that known as the Piedmont region,—a belt of country lying, as its name indicates, at the foot of the mountains, along the eastern base of the Blue Ridge. The rocks here are metamorphic and crystalline, with some Cambrian beds a little farther west. There runs throughout much of this region a belt or belts of itacolumite,