lead and silver ores, intermixed, were brought to light in Nelson County, and so abundant were the deposits of gold in Fluvanna, that in the same year, a mill for crushing the ore was erected in that county by Commodore Stockton.[1] It is an interesting fact that even at the present day, a very considerable quantity of fragments of gold, which have been picked up in the streams by the inhabitants, is brought to the stores in this part of the State to be exchanged for articles of various kinds.[2] In Buckingham County, lying immediately to the south, on the further side of James River, gold mines have been systematically worked for several generations, and at a sufficient rate of profit to compensate the owners for the expense which has been entailed.
Copper was one of the most common ornaments of the Indians when the first colonists arrived, but it seems to have been procured by trading with the tribes living in the northwest, and probably came from the vicinity of the
- ↑ Va. Hist. Register, vol. V, No. II, p. 111. See Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. II, p. 322, for reference to a silver mine in Chesterfield County.
- ↑ Richmond (Va.) Times, Oct. 14, 1893.
of the Falls. Harvey, in a letter to Secretary Dorchester (British State Papers, Colonial, McDonald Papers, vol. II, p. 32, Va. State Library), dated April 15, 1630, says: “I intend about September, when the heate is over, to travaile about 8 or 10 dayes journey above the falls to informe myself truly whether there be anie such silver mine as is or hath been commonly reported or not.” In the autumn, a levy of one hundred and seventy men was raised, and this number was sent, under the command of Captain Mathews, to make the search which the Governor had ordered. Randolph MSS., vol. III, p. 215, also Neill’s Virginia Carolorum, p. 80. The arrival of winter cut the expedition short, and the hunters of gold and silver returned empty-handed. Twenty years later, Colonel Hill was summoned before the Council of the Colony because, without obtaining the license required, he had collected fifty men to accompany him on an expedition to the lands west of the Falls, with the avowed purpose of finding gold and silver in those parts. Randolph MSS., vol. III, p. 445.
