gems, San Diego County, USA, California, tourmaline, kunzite, garnet, quartz, Himalaya Mine

The gem-bearing region in San Diego County, California, possesses to the eye no attractions, unless its sterile slopes and cactus-invaded valleys, in some lights, offer picturesquely desolate vistas. The prospector’s zeal, however, has broken through the arid crust of rock and uncovered a dazzling wealth that has made this inhospitable country a mineral Golconda. The pegmatite veins at the Himalaya Mine are coarsely developed granites wherein the three constituents of that rock, mica, feldspar, and quartz, are stronly individualized. Pegmatite forms the matrix of the tourmalines which, developed in it in highly colored crystals, form wonderful mineral aggregates with the limpid quartz and opaline feldspars, wherein, more rarely, the lialac kunzite is discovered.