| Queer Amethyst Quarrel - page two |
| "No doubt this was washed down from somewhere above here," Addison said. At last we found another fragment of amethyst of the same tint, but smaller, and feeling certain now that the amethyst came from higher up the mountain, we followed the gully to where it shallowed, toward the summit ledges, but found no fissure, vein, or matrix where the crystals had formed. We seemed now to be off the track of it, and after some further search went home; for it was nearing noon, and the bear hunters had long ago passed out of hearing. We learned later that they had got the bear and had gone back by another way. Tired out or grown desperate from the pain of the trap, the animal turned at bay in a swamp on the other side of the mountain, and was shot without difficulty or danger to its pursuers. They secured the bear's skin, but at that season of the year, it was of little value. Addison had much the prettier trophy to show the folks at home. The Old Squire, I remember, held the crystal in his hand for a long time. "This is as beautiful as a flower�and far more enduring," he said. As time passed, our thoughts often reverted to that watercourse at Birchboard Mountain, and late that fall, a party of we young people, including Halstead, Theodora, and Ellen, also Kate Edwards and Willis Murch, who had trapped the bear, went up there to search further. This time we took hoes and gave the bed of the rivulet another overhauling. But one little shim of amethyst was all that we found. Still another trip was made there two years later, after we had begun attending the village academy, when the preceptor and nine or ten of our classmates accompanied us. Merely a few broken bits of amethyst were picked up. Nonetheless Addison remained confident that some where up the mountain, if we could only find it, there was a fissure or a crack in the quartzose ledges where these amethyst crystals had originally formed. And I think it was on Sunday morning following that last school excursion, that he suddenly put his head�not yet combed�in at my chamber door and exclaimed, "I dreamed we found that amethyst vein last night!" "That so?" said I, not yet very fully awake. "Yes!" he cried. "And I believe I can find it, now. Let's go up there this afternoon, after meeting." I did not feel very enthusiastic, at first, but when our usual three o'clock Sunday dinner at the old farm was over he and I set off quietly, saying nothing to anyone else, and tramped up to Birchboard Mountain again. Truth to say Addison had not dreamed out very explicit directions, but I suppose that his mind had been running on the subject in sleep, and this had wakened new interest in it, as dreams often do. As we proceeded up the bed of the gully, a partridge flew across it and stirred the low hemlocks which at that point masked the left bank, and this led us to notice that, partly hidden by the evergreen boughs, a little side gully entered there�one we had not previously seen. It was, in fact, little more than a ditch only three or four feet deep and six or seven across, whereas the main gully we were in was thirty or forty feet in width and nine or ten in depth. "That looks to be a little watercourse," Addison remarked. We climbed up to explore it, and found that it was, indeed, the bed of a rill where water rushed down, after heavy rains, from farther along the summit of the mountain. It was much overgrown, but we followed it upward and coming to a bed of loose stones and gravel, Addison poked this over with his boot toe, when almost the first thing he saw was another amethyst crystal of the same deep, lovely, violet hue. "At last we are on the right track!" he exclaimed. "That vein is some where up this little watercourse!" We followed on, and less than a hundred yards farther up, came where there were ledges on both sides, and presently, under the over hang of a crag of coarse yellowish rock, caught sight of a slantwise fissure only a few inches wide, from both sides of which the points of amethyst crystals stood forth like the teeth of some huge saw. As far as we could thrust in our fingers the crevice was jagged with crystals some of which were two or three inches in diameter. To a lover of beautiful minerals it was, indeed, a glorious sight. "My dream!" Addison cried. "I guess it was that partridge!" I said. "I don't know but it was," he replied, laughing. "But never mind that. We've found it at last. And aren't they beautiful!" The outermost crystals, however, had been sadly marred and broken, as if someone had pounded them with stones. A wandering hunter or Indian, perhaps, in earlier days, had found the place and attempted to break off the points of as many of the crystals as were easily accessible. Shims and fragments lay at the foot of the ledge, and afterwards, all along the bed of that little gully down to where it joined the larger watercourse, we found numerous clear bits and purple fragments, washed along by the rush of water in time of freshets. We had brought no tools, as it was Sunday, and after feasting our eyes on what we could discern in the fissure, and picking up what we found lying loose below, we returned home, agreeing on the way to say nothing of our find outside of our own family, since if it were told, many persons might hasten there and do still further damage by rude efforts to secure specimens. The Old Squire, who was almost as much interested as Addison, went up to the mountain with us on the following Tuesday, and after packing the fissure with cotton batting, we drilled holes in the abutting rock, and made three powder blasts, in order to reach the more perfect crystals that lay deep within the fissure. In spite of every pre caution we could take, however, many of them were broken, but we secured eleven that were quite perfect, and gathered up fully half a bushel of the less perfect or broken crystals�all of the same deep, full, royal purple tint. "I really think this amethyst is valuable," Addison declared. "I do believe it is fit for gems." "Well, valuable or not, they are very beautiful," the Old Squire said. "We will make a cabinet and keep them to look at." We returned there on three other days that fall, did considerable further blasting, and in fact worked the fissure as far as the amethyst appeared to extend. Deeper down the fissure appeared to close solidly in. Altogether we had secured enough to fill a good-sized cabinet having five shelves. While there one afternoon the noise of the blasts attracted two hunters who came where we were at work and picked up specimens to carry away. They told us they were from Lurvey's Mills, five or six miles to the westward of the mountain. I suppose these men may have spread reports of our discovery. Till then no one had learned of it. The lines of forest lots were not carefully marked. In a general way we supposed the place was on land, owned by the Old Squire, which included the birch growth on the side of the mountain. At first, how ever, we had not deemed the matter of ownership of the land of much consequence, for the locality was far back in the woods, and anything found on unimproved forest lands had always been held to be the property of the finder. About a fortnight later Addison and I were therefore disagreeably surprised at receiving the following curt, badly spelled note from our former schoolmaster, the incredibly inept Sam Lurvey, of Lurvey's Mills. It will be as well for you to give up them perple stones you took off our land, and not be too long about it either, if you don't want to be sued. Samuel B. Lurvey |