| The Queer Amethyst Quarrel |
| by C. A. Stephens |
This short story appeared in the Youth's Companion in the 1890's. It is a work of fiction and should not be construed to have any more than a thread of truth in it. George R. Howe of Norway, Maine did discover royal purple amethyst crystals on Pleasant Mountain, Denmark, Maine, beginning about May 1, 1894 and continuing until the Great Norway Fire of May 9, 1894, when he returned to Norway, directing his attention to helping his father, Freeland Howe, Sr., with insurance claims. (The actual search for amethyst began in the Autumn of 1893 and resumed in the Spring of 1894, but no finds were made until May.) There apprently was a retraction of formerlly granted permission by Charlton Warren in continuing amethyst collecting on his land, but the fictional story should not be misunderstood as a parallel account. C. A. Stephens lived in Norway and was much interested in mineral collecting and a number of his stories have a mineral collecting theme. Stephen's cousin, Addison E. Verrill, was born in Greenwood, Maine and Verrill grew up as a fairly active naturalist. (Verrill did not discover Diamond Ledge, although he was one of the first to extensively collect there. Verrill probably did not discover Mount Rubellite in Hebron in the late 1850's as was claimed by his grandson. Verrill did write about his 1854 discovery of a 5 pound mass of cassiterite at Mount Mica which influenced the renewed mining there by Samuel R. Carter in 1864. Verrill went on to be a professor of zoology and geology at Yale University, although almost all of his prodigious output of research as an academician related to invertebrate zoology. Verrill's most famous new species description was that of the Giant Squid.) Stephens frequently included Verrill, internationally known geologist Nathaniel Shaler, and internationally famous paleontologist Alpheus H. Hyatt as characters in others of his fictional adventure stories. Click on the link to read the story and to see one of the amethysts which inspired the story. |