describe the surrounding country. In 1876 Merrimac township was created out of the territory of Amesbury; in 1886 the west part of the old township of Salisbury was united to Amesbury.
See Joseph Merrill, History of Amesbury (Haverhill, 1880); S. T. Pickard, Whittier-land, A Handbook of North Essex (Boston, New York, 1904).
AMETHYST, a violet or purple variety of quartz used as an ornamental stone. The name is generally said to be derived from the Gr. ἀ, “not,” and μεθύσκειν, “to intoxicate,” expressing the old belief that the stone protected its owner from strong drink. It was held that wine drunk out of a cup of amethyst would not intoxicate. According, however, to the Rev. C. W. King, the word may probably be a corruption of an Eastern name for the stone.
The colour of amethyst is usually attributed to the presence of manganese, but as it is capable of being much altered and even discharged by heat it has been referred by some authorities to an organic source. Ferric thiocyanate has been suggested, and sulphur is said to have been detected in the mineral. On exposure to heat, amethyst generally becomes yellow, and much of the cairngorm or yellow quartz of jewellery is said to be merely “burnt amethyst.” Veins of amethystine quartz are apt to lose their colour on the exposed outcrop.
Amethyst is composed of an irregular superposition of alternate lamellae of right-handed and left-handed quartz. (See Quartz.) It has been shown by Prof. J. W. Judd that this structure may be due to mechanical stresses. In consequence of this composite formation, amethyst is apt to break with a rippled fracture, or to show “thumb markings,” and the intersection of two sets of curved ripples may produce on the fractured surface a pattern something like that of “engine turning.” Some mineralogists, following Sir D. Brewster, apply the name of amethyst to all quartz which exhibits this structure, regardless of its colour.
The amethyst was used as a gem-stone by the ancient Egyptians, and was largely employed in antiquity for intaglios. Beads of amethyst are found in Anglo-Saxon graves in England. Amethyst is a very widely distributed mineral, but fine clear specimens fit for cutting as ornamental stones are confined to comparatively few localities. Such crystals occur either in cavities in mineral-veins and in granitic rocks, or as a lining in agate geodes. A huge geode, or “amethyst-grotto,” from near Santa Cruz in southern Brazil, was exhibited at the Düsseldorf Exhibition of 1902. Many of the hollow agates of Brazil and Uruguay contain a crop of amethyst-crystals in the interior. Much fine amethyst comes from Russia, especially from near Mursinka in the Ekaterinburg district, where it occurs in drusy cavities in granitic rocks. Many localities in India yield amethyst; and it is found also in Ceylon, chiefly as pebbles.
Purple corundum, or sapphire of amethystine tint, is called Oriental amethyst, but this expression is often applied by jewellers to fine examples of the ordinary amethystine quartz, even when not derived from Eastern sources.
Amethyst occurs at many localities in the United States, but rarely fine enough for use in jewellery. Among these may be mentioned Amethyst Mountain, Texas; Yellowstone National Park; Delaware Co., Pennsylvania; Haywood Co., North Carolina; Deer Hill, and Stow, Maine. It is found also in the Lake Superior district.
See G. F. Kunz, Gems &c. of North America (1890), and Report for 12th Census (vol. “Mines and Quarries”). (F. W. R.*)
AMHARA, the central province of Abyssinia. The chief town, Gondar (q.v.), by which name the province is also known, was the residence of the negus negusti, or emperor, of Abyssinia from the middle ages up to 1854. The speech of the inhabitants, Amharic, which differs in several features from the dialects spoken in Tigré and Shoa, is the official language of Abyssinia.
AMHERST, JEFFREY AMHERST, Baron (1717–1797), British soldier, was the son of Jeffrey Amherst of Riverhead, Kent, and by the interest of the duke of Dorset obtained an ensigncy in the Guards in 1731. He served in Germany and the Low Countries as aide-de-camp to General (Lord) Ligonier, and was present at Dettingen, Fontenoy and Roucoux. He then served on Cumberland’s staff, and took part with the duke in the later campaigns of the Austrian Succession war, in the battle of Val, and the North German campaign of 1757, including the battle of Hastenbeck. A year previously he had been promoted to a lieutenant-colonelcy. In 1758 William Pitt caused Amherst to be made a major-general, and gave him command of an expedition to attack the French in North America. For the great plan of conquering Canada, Pitt chose young and ardent officers, with Amherst, distinguished for steadiness and self-control, as their commander-in-chief. The first victory of the expedition, the capture of Louisburg (July 26, 1758), was soon followed by other successes, and Amherst was given the chief command of all the forces in the theatre of war. In the campaign of 1759 Amherst’s own share was the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, while Fort Niagara fell to another column, and Quebec was taken by Wolfe. In 1760 a concentric march on Montreal was carried out with complete success. Amherst was immediately appointed governor-general of British North America, and in the following year was made a K.B. His conduct, of the operations against the Indians under Pontiac was, however, far from being as successful as his generalship against regular troops; and he returned to England in 1763, being made governor of Virginia and colonel of the 60th regiment in the same year. In 1768 the king, who had had a quarrel with Amherst, made amends by giving him another colonelcy; in 1770 he was made governor of Guernsey; and two years later, though not yet a full general, he was made lieutenant-general of the ordnance and acting commander-in-chief of the forces. In this capacity he was the chief adviser at headquarters during the American War of Independence. He was created a peer in 1776, was promoted general in 1778 and became colonel of the 2nd Horse Grenadiers (2nd Life Guards) two years later. He aided in suppressing the Gordon riots of 1780. The rest of his active life, with a short interval in 1782–1783, he spent at the Horse Guards as commander-in-chief, but he was no longer capable of good service, and in 1795 he was succeeded by the duke of York. In 1796 Lord Amherst was made field-marshal; and he died on the 3rd of August 1797 at “Montreal,” his residence in Kent.
AMHERST, WILLIAM PITT AMHERST, Earl (1773–1857), governor-general of India, was the nephew of Jeffrey, Baron Amherst, and succeeded to his title in 1797 by the remainder provided when the patent of nobility was renewed in 1788. In 1816 he was sent as ambassador extraordinary to the court of China, with a view of establishing more satisfactory commercial relations between that country and Great Britain. On arriving in the Peiho he was given to understand that he could only be admitted to the emperor’s presence on condition of performing the ko-tou (kow-tow), a ceremony which Western nations consider degrading, and which is, indeed, a homage exacted by a Chinese sovereign from his tributaries. To this Lord Amherst, following the advice of Sir George T. Staunton, who accompanied him as second commissioner, refused to consent, as Lord Macartney had done in 1793, unless the admission was made that his sovereign was entitled to the same show of reverence from a mandarin of his rank. In consequence of this he was not allowed to enter Pekin, and the object of his mission was frustrated. His ship, the “Alceste,” after a cruise along the coast of Korea and to the Loo-Choo Islands, on proceeding homewards was totally wrecked on a sunken rock in Gaspar Strait. Lord Amherst and part of his shipwrecked companions escaped in the ship’s boats to Batavia, whence relief was sent to the rest. The ship in which he returned to England in 1817 having touched at St Helena, he had several interviews with the emperor Napoleon (see Ellis’s Proceedings of the Late Embassy to China, 1817; M‘Leod’s Narrative of a Voyage in H.M.S. “Alceste,” 1817). Lord Amherst held the office of governor-general of India from August 1823 to February 1828. The principal event of his government was the first Burmese war of 1824, resulting in the cession of Arakan and Tenasserim to Great Britain. He was created Earl Amherst of Arakan in 1826. On his return to England he lived in retirement till his death in March 1857.
See A. Thackeray and R. Evans, Lord Amherst (“Rulers of India” series), 1894.
