Arizona silver belt., 1883-01-20
ORE SAMPLiNG.
How Ores are Bought and Sold by
 Sample.
Virginia Enterprise.l


 Owens Valley next summer, at some convenient point on the line of the Carson and Colorado railroad. This will make that region the paradise of "chloriders" and other mining men whose pluck and muscle are their principal capital. The mountains on both sides of the line of the railroad are filled with gold and silver-bearing quartz veins of all kinds and sizes. Many of the small veins and feeders yield paying ore from the start. Heretofore most of the work on such veins has been done by Mexicans and others who reduces their ores in aras- tra9 nropel.ssfy donkey power. There are ih the vgaatry immense quanti- ties of ore that was not rich enough to be worked in this primitive way which will now pay well for mining.
 A properly and honestly conducted sampling mill does equal justice to both buyer and seller. By means of properly taken and assayed samples both parties know exactly what they are bargaining about. Not few miners who have sent away ores to California, to be sampled and sold, have fared so badly that they are in- clined to look upon sampling mills as so many traps for swindling honest la Dor out of its just reward. However, there are swindlers as well as honest men in all kinds of business.
 In Colorado and in Utah the greater part of the ore mined is sold by sam pie. In those localities the plan proves perfectly satisfactory to all concerned. In Salt Lake City immense quantities of ores of all kinds and grades are sold, and all by sample. That city being sort of center of the business, de- scription of a leading sample mill of the place will be of interest to the miners of many parts of this State. Following is description of the sam pies of J. c. Conklin, Salt Lake City, as given by the Chronicle of that place:
 The modus operandi of sampling is about as follows: If the ore is of high grade, running from say $1O0 to $50 per ton, it is customary to crush the entire shipment; if the ore is of me- dium grade, like much of that sent down from Park City, every fifth sack is taken out and milled, and samples obtained therefrom. This, however, is only done where the character of the ore is well known to producer, sampler and purchaser alike. After being put through the crushers, the reduced ore is spread out on the floor of the room, turned over and over by a corps of men with shovels, thrown into a cone-shaped heap, and then spread over the floor again, when the pile is reduced by taking up and sack ing one-half (two opposite quarters) of the lot. This process is repeated until not more than peck of the treasure-laden dirt remains to be dealt with. It is then taken up in pans and conveyed to the plate-room for further and similar manipulation on 
 The plate-room---in this department IS found large cast-iron table about five feet in diameter, on which the re- duced ore from the sampling-room is placed. The pulverizing, seiving, mix ing, coining, quartering, etc., is re- peated on this table until the sample is reduced to the proper quantity, when it is weighed on pair of very fine scales kept for that purpose, prop erly dried in a furnace, weighed again to ascertain the amount of moisture evaporated, and finally sealed up in bottles, labeled with the name of the mine, the number of the lot of ore and | the weight thereof, and the bottles sent to an assayer for the determina- tion of the amount of precious metals contained in the samples.
 While this process is going on, no person other than the sampler is al- lowed access to the plate-room, unless it be for the simple purpose of wit messing at distance the operators manipulation of the samples. The reason for this is obvious. If inter- ested parties were allowed in the room and permitted to handle samples at their pleasure there would be no se- curity for parties who might purchase lots of ore from samples that might have been tempered with. Hence the strict rule of locking the plate-room door while work is in progress there.
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 The opposition to the production of the Passion Play is an example of in- creasing bigotry and vulgar prejudice not uncommon but, all the same, un- welcome in this advanced aUe and this