MINERAL VEINS. 503 



in a lead mine newly discovered within its limits. There is but one other 

 entiy on tliis subject in the early records of the town, ^^z : 



At a legal meeting Oct. 16, 1679, they then having further Conference about the 

 lead mine which Robert Lyman found out, they then voted that all such persons 

 as would join in the Carrying on of that design. Should meet on the 23d of this 

 instant at Sun one hour high at night, and to them or to those persons that shall 

 then appear the Town do hereby give up all their right in that mine lying about six 

 miles off, at the west side of the Town. 



It can not be learned what came of this vote, but l)ullets were cast 

 from lead smelted here during the Revolution.' The shaft was opened 

 before 1769, and again in October, 1809. It was reported upon by Ben- 

 jamin Silliman in October, 1810, and the report was printed as an article 

 in Brace's American Mineralog-ical Journal.^ The shaft was then 60 feet 

 deep, the adit 2.5 to 30 feet, and the vein was "a very magnificent one, 6 to 

 8 feet in diameter." In 1815 the adit was 726 feet; the shaft entering 500 

 feet from the mouth was 90 feet deep.' In 1818 Amos Eaton described the 

 rocks of the adit carefully. It was then 800 feet deep, 666 feet in sand- 

 stone, 134 feet in granite-schist and serpentine, containing veins cairying 

 quartz, fluor, calcite, dial copy rite, and one small vein of galena.* In 1823 

 the adit was 990 feet long and had cost $20,000.^' 



In 1827 druses containing more or less calcite crystallized among the 

 crystals of quartz had occun-ed in the last 200 to 300 feet of the adit* and 

 a company opened a new mine with a drift on what was supposed to be the 

 same vein 3 or 4 miles southwest; the vein being 6 inches to a foot wide. 

 In the next year the vein was opened one-half mile north.' In 1832 Presi- 

 dent Hitchcock mentions with apparent regret that work had been stopped 

 on the adit at 900 feet, largely because the price of lead had decreased 

 greatly, from western competition, and expresses the belief that the vein 

 would have been struck in a few feet. The mine was opened again in 

 1855 "with prospect of success."' 



The mine was again opened in about 1862, and I remember visiting it 



' Evert's History of the Connecticat Valley In Massachusetts, Vol. I, 1879, p. 17. 



"Ibid., Vol. I, p. 63. 



•'E. Hitchcock: North American Review, Vol. I, p. 335. 



■•Amos Eaton: Am. Jour. Sci., Ist series, Vol. I, p. 137. 



■''E. Hitchcock : Am. Jour. Sci., 1st series, Vol. VI, p. 201. 



"^A. Nash, The lead mines of Hampshire County: Am. Jour. Soi., Ist series, Vol. XII, p. 25S. 



' E. Hitchcock: Am. ,Iour. Sci., Ist series, Vol. XIII, p. 218. 



*E. Emmons. American Geology, p. 183. 



