of
ruby-red color, " upwards of twenty years ago," from a gentleman of
Macon, Ga., who said that it came from a gold mine in Habersham County
of that State. The specimen was apparently a loose crystal that had
been washed down to the placers east of the Blue Ridge. About the same
time Gen. Thomas L. Cling-man sent him several pounds of a coarse blue
sapphire broken from a large crystal " picked up at the base of a
mountain on the French Broad River in Madison County, N, C."
This
is probably the same discovery as that in 1846 or 1847, for at that
time Madison County was part of Buncombe County. Dr. C. L. Hunter
discovered the Gaston County corundum, and Professor Emmons refers to
it in his report on the midland counties of North Carolina in 1853.1
The civil war began soon after, putting a stop to further research, and
it was not until its close that investigations were resumed.
Rev.
C. D. Smith, of Franklin, N. C, who had served as an assistant to
Professor Emmons on the State Geological Survey, discovered most of the
important localities in North Carolina. In 1865 a specimen was brought
to him from a point west of the Blue Ridge which he recognized as
corundum; he visited the locality, found the mineral, collected
specimens, and announced the occurrence. This was the origin of the
mining industry now so valuable. These discoveries led to further
exploration, and many localities were found in the same region which
have since been more or less developed. The principal deposits that are
now worked are the Jenks, Lucas, or Culsagee Mine; Corundum Hill Mine,
near Franklin, Macon County, N. C.; the Buck Creek or Cullakenee Mine
in Clay County, also at Laurel Creek in Rabun County, Ga., and near
Gainesville, Hall County, Ga. The Jenks Mine is on the Culsagee or
Sugartown fork of the Tennessee River. Its two names are derived from
the locality and from the name of its first operator, Charles W. Jenks,
of Boston, Mass. Prof. Washington C. Kerr, State Geologist of North
Carolina, placed the mica-bearing rocks in the upper part of the
Laurentian series, identifying them provisionally with those called by
Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, Montalban. Thomas M. Chatard, of the United States
Geological Survey, has described quite fully the occur-
1 Am. J. Sci. II., Vol. 15, p. 373, May, 1853.
