252 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 60 



uiuler my oljservation. where they did work ahnig 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 100 feet, perhaps, and buried. It was 

 found to the amount of several cartloads. It had been packed down with great 

 regularity in an excavation. In this county (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 ttpened, one of them upon my own farm. 

 . . . The old excavation 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 tii-st 100 feet. I tunneled in diagonally 

 and struck the vein 60 feet from tlie Itrniich ami 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 tlie 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 :is 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 present bottom of the excavation, and at this point dump and excavation 

 measure about 150 feet across. At the upper end of my tunnel the old digging 

 has been carried down about 30 feet below the surface. If the excavation at 

 the point just mentioned was cari-ied as deep as the work at the upper end 

 of the tunnel, it would make the dump-heap on the upper side 55 feet higher 

 than the bottom of the old works. I have been thus particular in order to 

 show that with mere stone implements it nuist have required a series of years 

 and a large force to have accomplished such results.^ 



It is impossible to approximate the amount of mica removed by tlie 

 ancients from the mines, since the yield of the veins is necessarily 

 irregidar, but that the vast amount of the crystals obtained should 

 have been carried away to distant points and used by the aborigines 

 is hardly less a marvel than that a primitive people should have' 

 accomplished the work of remo\'al from the deep-seated veins. 



1 Smith, Ancient Mica Mines in North Carolina, pp. 442-443. 



