All meteorites are important from the standpoint of science, but a few
deserve special mention because of the human-interest stories connected
with them.
First place among famous finds should no doubt go to the massive Cape
York, Greenland, iron, the largest recovered meteorite actually to have
been weighed. The Eskimos called this enormous object “Ahnighito,” which
means “The Tent.” Robert E. Peary, the discoverer of the North Pole,
brought it to New York City by ship in 1897. His party had great
difficulty hoisting the 34-ton mass aboard. Later, when the ship had put
to sea, she encountered a serious navigational hazard. To the amazement
and alarm of the crew, the huge nickel-iron meteorite caused magnetic
disturbances that severely affected the ship’s compass.
Another of the giant meteorites, the 14-ton Willamette, Oregon, iron,
became the center of a long legal battle in the early 1900’s. The man
who originally found the meteorite and recognized its true nature felt
that because the iron was on the surface of the ground and not buried
beneath it (as the ore of a metal would have been), there was no reason
why he should not move the mass from the place of find to his own
property, three-fourths of a mile away. He did this very laboriously by
means of a log-timber car, a capstan with wire rope, and a small horse.
On learning what the finder had done, the company that owned the land
from which the meteorite had been removed put its attorneys on the job
of recovering the “purloined” meteorite. The Oregon courts, bowing to
decisions made in previous cases involving ownership of meteorites,
brought in a verdict favoring the owners of the land. Although the
finder of the Willamette meteorite lost the decision, he nevertheless
won the distinction of being the only man to have successfully made off
with a treasure weighing 14 tons!
[Illustration: COURTESY OF AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Peary’s photograph of the Cape York meteorite as it was being moved
for loading aboard his ship.]
[Illustration: COURTESY OF AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Arrival of the 34-ton iron mass at the American Museum of Natural
History, New York City.]
The biggest meteorite of all, of course, is the one that “got away.” In
1916, a captain in the Mauritanian army was taken by a native guide,
secretly and at night, to the site of a colossal iron meteorite located
in the dunes of the Adrar desert, in the far western reaches of the vast
Sahara. The officer described the mass as measuring 100 meters (over 300
feet) by 40 meters (over 120 feet), with the third dimension hidden by
the sand dunes. According to him, the mass “... jutted up in the midst
of sand dunes that were covered by a desert plant, the _sba_, and it had
the form of a compact, unfissured parallelopiped. The visible portion of
the surface was vertical, dominating in the manner of a cliff, the
wind-blown sand that was scooped away from the base of the mass so that
the summit overhung; and that portion exposed to eolian [wind] erosion
was polished like a mirror.”
The captain, at the request of his uneasy guide, returned from his
hurried excursion without taking notes or making a map. But he did bring
back a small 10-pound fragment of iron which he had found lying on top
of the giant mass. This small fragment later proved to be a genuine
meteorite, and is the only known specimen of the famous Adrar mass. It
is preserved at present in the Museum of Natural History at Paris.
[Illustration: J. OTIS WHEELOCK PHOTO
COURTESY OF AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Man and boy carrying off the famous “purloined” Willamette
meteorite on a homemade dolly car with wheels of tree-trunk
sections. Note hole piercing this 14-ton chunk of iron.]
What has been called a conspiracy of silence among the natives of the
Adrar area and the inhospitable nature of the region itself have
successfully preserved the secret of the location of the enormous
metallic mass described by the captain. The native guide died,
apparently of poison, and although many inhabitants of the region are no
doubt familiar with the whereabouts of the mass (whatever it is!), those
questioned have consistently denied knowledge of its very existence. All
recent attempts, not only by military but even by scientific
expeditions, to relocate the gigantic metallic mass have failed. The
whole Adrar case remains an intriguing puzzle to be unraveled, it is
hoped, by future generations of meteorite hunters.
Another “lost” meteorite is one composed of stone and iron. The Port
Orford, Oregon, stony-iron (as it is now named) was originally found in
1859 by a U.S. geologist who was engaged in a survey of what were then
the Oregon and Washington Territories. According to him, the mass was
quite irregular in shape and “4 or 5 feet [of it] projected from the
surface of the mountain,” while it was “about the same number of feet in
width and perhaps 3 or 4 feet in thickness.” He broke off a small
fragment of it (far smaller than the one taken from Adrar) and packed
this specimen away with his collection of rock and mineral samples.
Years later, the geological collection was cataloged and analyzed in the
East. At that time, the fragment collected in 1859 was found to be a
piece of a stony-iron meteorite. After that, scientists and others made
many attempts to rediscover the main mass of the large Port Orford
meteorite, all of them unsuccessful. Today the sum total of material
recovered from this stony-iron amounts to 25 grams in the U.S. National
Museum, about 4 grams in the Natural History Museum of Vienna, and a few
tiny specks in the Museum of the Geological Survey of India.
The Red River, Texas, iron is still another famous meteorite. It was
originally discovered by Pawnee and Hietan Indians, and a group of them
took a party of traders, in 1808, to the site. Two years later, two
rival parties, each led by a man who had been a member of the 1808
trading expedition, began a search for the meteorite. The members of one
of the two parties were from Nacogodoches, Texas. They reached the
meteorite first but had left home so hurriedly on their eager hunt that
they were not properly prepared to move so large a mass. They went away
from the site to get horses and a wagon, after they had laboriously
hidden the meteorite under a huge flat stone, to prevent the other party
from finding it. The members of the other party, hailing from
Natchitoches, Louisiana, set out better prepared. After a lengthy hunt,
they finally found the hidden meteorite. Using tools they had the
foresight to bring, they built a truck wagon and drove away with their
prize. Eventually, the Red River meteorite, weighing 1,635 pounds,
became a part of the collection at Yale University. But two other,
smaller, masses of the same metal, known in the early days to the
Pawnees and a few traders, remain still undiscovered in the Red River
area.