442 ANCIENT MICA MINES IN NORTH CAROLINA. 



silver, he found a vein containing large crystals of mica. When mica was 

 brought into use among us and assumed an economic value, subsequent 

 working on the vein settled the question as to the object of the ancient 

 miners. This mine has been a very profitable one. There are several other 

 old diggings in Mitchell County, some of which have been opened and 

 valuable mica veins found in them. It is manifest that the ancient miners 

 understood their business well. Indeed, they seldom committed a mis- 

 take. In every instance which has come under my observation, where 

 they did work along the mica zone, mica veins have been found by 

 opening the old works. It is also a noteworthy fact that where the old 

 excavations are extensive, the veins yield usually large crystals of firm 

 mica of good cleavage and in every way of excellent quality. The mica 

 that they procured in their mining operations has been removed except 

 the refuse, such as our people generally reject. I have one case to the 

 contrary. In that case the mica had been taken one hundred feet perhaps 

 and buried. It was found to the amount of several cart-loads. It had 

 been packed down with great regularity in an excavation. In this couuty 

 (Macon) there are a dozen or more of these old diggings known to exist. 

 Most of them have been opened within the last six or seven years and 

 operated upon by our present mica miners. I have had two of these old 

 works opened, one of them upon my own farm. I have watched the 

 developments in these ancient excavations with unusual interest, and I 

 think I see very clearly corroborative evidence that the people who did 

 this ancient work had no implements superior to stone. They only 

 operated upon such veins as contain a decomposed and consequently 

 soft feldspar. 



I have observed another interesting fact. Wherever there was a 

 hard point in the vein they worked over it, and then descended again. 

 If they had known the use of metallic implements, it seems that they 

 would have removed such points. The ancient works on my own farm 

 are the most extensive I have yet seen, and are therefore worthy of 

 description. The vein, as I have proved by my drifting upon it, has a 

 general strike of N. 73° W., S. 73° E. So far, however, as I have drifted 

 upon it, it runs in a zigzag along this general strike. The old exca- 

 vation commences at a small branch and runs at a right-angle from it 

 into a ridge that juts down with a gentle slope. The dump- material 

 has been thrown right and left for the first hundred feet. I tunneled 

 in diagonally and struck the vein 60 feet from the branch, and have 

 drifted along it 40 feet. Here we reach an immense dump-rim, 05 

 feet higher than the level of the branch, and which seems to have been 

 thrown back upon their works. It forms at this end a circular rim to 

 the continued excavations higher up the ridge. The whole length of the 

 excavation from the branch to the upper end of the cut is about 320 feet. 

 The material removed from the upper part of the cut was carried up 

 the hill as well as down it. The dump on the upper side of this upper 

 part of the cut, and at the widest point, is about 25 feet above the pres- 



