stream
at a depth of some few feet below water level. Bad weather interrupted
the work at that time, but subsequently they resumed the search, and
several more diamonds were found by other members of the party. Nothing
more was done in 1887, but in panning three miles farther up the stream
Mr. Newell found another diamond, much distorted and off color, in the
summer of 1888 actual sluicing for gold was begun, and in three weeks'
time in the gravel at the washout four diamonds were found. One came
from the surface of the gravel bed and one from a pit some 30 rods
distant, at a depth of 5 or 6 feet below water level. The most perfect
stone was obtained by a workman, who secreted it. -ii 1889 prospecting
was resumed on the west branch of Plum creek, and here Mr. Nichols
found another diamond in gravel taken from the sluice. Two or three
small ones were also found in the tailings.
Gold
occurs all along the main branches of Plum creek, as well as along the
smaller runs of their extreme headwaters from 2 to 5 miles from their
junction. From Mr. Nichols the writer received a series of specimens
both of the gold-bearing sands in which the diamonds sent to him for
examination were reported to have been found, and three of the diamonds
weighing, respectively, 25/32 of a carat (160.5 milligrammes), 7/16 of
a carat (40 milligrammes), and 3/32 of a carat (19.25 milligrammes).
Only the largest of these would cut into a stone of any value. It is a
hexoctahedral crystal with rounded faces, white, with a slight tinge of
grayish green, and could be cut into a perfect brilliant of about 3/16
of a carat. On one side is an L-shaped depression with rounded faces in
which there are minute grains of saud. The next in size is a slightly
yellowish elongated hexoetahedron. The surface is less smooth than that
of the larger one and is entirely covered with small crystalline
markings. The smallest one is an elliptical hexoctahedral twin, with a
dull surface. In color it resembles the second.
The
sand sent by Mr. Nichols, when examined by the microscope, was found to
contain the following minerals besides the quartz grains: magnetic
iron, titanic iron, almandite garnet in grains and in minute perfect
dodecahedrons, small transparent brilliant crystals, none more than
one-third the size of a pin's head, of what appeared to be spessar-tite
or essonite garnet, numerous grains and rolled crystals of monazite and
one small grain reported to the platinum, but this was lost before the
writer could examine it. The whole material is thus seen to resemble
in many particulars the gold-bearing sands of Burke county, North
Carolina, and Hall county, Georgia. This matter is interesting as a new
locality for diamonds, but it is very doubtful if these sands will be
more prolific or the discovery have any greater commercial value than
the gold sands of the southern Alleghenies up to the present time.
Diamonds in meteorites.—A
remarkable account has been published by Prof. George A. Koenig, of the
University of Pennsylvania, regarding the discovery of what appears to
be diamond, or at least the dia mond form of carbon, in a meteorite
from Caiion Diablo, Arizona, sent
