Sapphire Sapphires Wodiska: A Book of Precious Stones Page 118



	The Sapphire 95 there is found in a light sandy clay within two feet of the surface. The " mines" are small rough pits, the clay is washed away from the excavated mass, and the sapphire picked out of the residue. In America, sapphires are found at Cowee Creek in Macon County, North Carolina, where fine crystals appear in dunite, an olivine-rock. The sapphires of Montana are found in auriferous gravel in the Missouri River bed near Helena, a field of operations for placer-miners for years; these miners doubtless panned out sapphires and rubies for a long time and threw them away without identifying them as precious stones. Sapphires are found at the source of the Iser River in the Iser Mountains, in Bohemia in Europe; stones of the finest quality have been found there, but they have seldom exceeded four carats in weight. Blue stones which resemble sapphire, and have been sold as sapphire, are cordierite (called "water-sapphire "); kyanite (" sapphire "); blue tourmaline (" indicolite"); blue topaz; and blue spinel. To this list might be added haiiy-nite, and aquamarine; all of these are softer than sapphire, and all are less in specific gravity.