C. L. Hunter on Minerals, etc. in North Carolina. 375 
mines in the Southern States, or in California, to keep a “* sharp 
look ont”? for this rare and valuable gem? 
_ Gold.—In noticing this rather abundant metal, it is not.intended 
to tire the reader with a lengthy detail of golden statistics, with 
which our newspapers are almost daily teeming, but simply to 
present a few curious facts, not generally known, connected 
with the history of its discovery in this country. The first gold 
found in North Carolina, and probably in the United States, in 
valuable quantity, (always excepting the mysterious diggings, 
and unknown discoveries of our aboriginal predecessors,) was in 
1799, at the celebrated “ Reed Mine,” in Cabarrus County, N. C, 
It was found by a little son of Mr. Reed, about 12 years old, 
on a small stream called ‘‘ Meadow Creek.” The lump of ‘“yel- 
low metal” thus discovered, said to have been of the size of a 
t 
Reed carried the “ lump of strange metal” in his wagon to Fay- 
etteville, an inland town of considerable trade; and while there 
diately proposed buying it. To this proposal its owner readily 
~~ ying it. To this proposal i 
acceded, and sold it to the jeweller for the trifling sum of three 
800n afterwards was richly rewarded by finding the large mass 
80 extensively known, weighing ‘28 lbs. steelyard weight. 
In 1804, and ‘a few subsequent years, numerous other masses or 
“lumps” were found, weighing from one ounce to sixteen pounds. 
lu the “Medical Repository,” published in 1804, this 5 een 
( is 
North Carolina, whose contagious influences have spread, not 
only to her. sister states of Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, 
- to the distant shores of the Pacific, and now threaten to 
3 the equanimity of the “Green Mountain boys.” Thus 
both extremes of the Alleghany chain—its southern and northern 
tmini—and the auriferous valleys of the more lofty Rocky 
Untains, have been aroused to arms,—not of slaughter, but 
9 new employment of the pick and the shovel. 
