The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-09-20

with nearly every other piece of mining prop
erty in the eight-nile stretch which 1 have
| described. The upper blanket is not quite
SO thick nor does it average quite as much
] gold as the two below and still it carries
| about i've dollars worth of gold to the ton.
| In one place they have gone through the
blanket lengthwise 1000 feet. and at others
they have run into the blanket at right angles
| distance of 200 feet. l was shown places
in which the gold crops out in the side Of the
mountain, and I walked into tunnel which
had begun thus at the surface, and which
went down, down, down for 1000 feet. The
blankets of ore dip at an angle of 60 de-
| grees and they spread out in wavy shape
| over the territory
| The tunnel which we entered was high and
! wide 1t was cut as have said, right out of
the ore, and as we went down into the earth
We found on each side of us great chambers
reached by other tunnels, the whole making
me think of the catacombs near Rome. Some
OF the chambers were so large that you might
| put the capitol at Washington inside of tn EN-.
| Some have many stories, the floors being up
held by great umbers, the structure being
built upward as the gold ore is taken out.
The tunnels were so wide that we could walk
through them without STOPPING, and so high
that we appeared at times to be passing
through vaulted corridors. Every few yards
we passed openings where other tunnels
| quite as wide jutted off,. and in many places
| there were spouts or chutes down which
the ore was rolled and loaded into the cars
by gravity. Every tunnel had its railroad
| track within 1t, and here and there we found
| cars loaded with ore. There were hundreds
Of miners at work dressed in blue overaIls.
| blue shirts and slouch hats. Each man had
pick with him. and each carried a curious
! candlestick OF steel, which looked like a ring
| fastened to what looked to be an immense
knitting needle and of such a nature that
| q man could stick the handle Of the candle
| into the earth. In some places men were
| drilling. and in others they were getting
ready to blast with dynamite.
| MINING WITH FINGER NAILS.
In all the tunnels and in every room the
| gold-bearing rock was pointed out to
| AS we looked we could see how easily and
how cheaply it could be gotten out. In some
places the strata is like clay and you can
scratch it Off with syourafingers. I took out
my peEknife and dug out the soil containing
the ore. Think OF mining gold with your
fingernails Still, that is what. might be
actually done IN some parts; OF this mine.
In other places the gold is part of the
gravel or crushed quartz. You could easily
dig 1t down with pick. Again it is found
IN solid quartz mixed with deposits of ar
senic and sulphur. The arsenic is pure You
could commit suicide at almost every step if
you wanted to, and the sulphur is so strong
in places that with your candle you can burn
1t and fill the caverns about you with flames
of birthstone. In other places the gold is found
in a black rock which looks for all the world
like slate, and other where it appears in solid
rock. 1t is not found in nuggets, or grains,
or pockets, but it seems to be a consistent
part Of the clay and rock, distributed in
1nnnitesimal particles at the rate of a quarter
OF an ounce and upward to the ton of rock.
quarter of an ounce to the ton would be
about as much one part In sc, 000 and II you
will take sc, 900 shot and imagine one of them
to be ground up and its dust to be distributed
equally through all the others you will have
some idea of how the gold runs through a
ton of this rock.
The average last year was only s12 to the
ton, or just little more than half an ounce
to the ton, or about part in As 000 Still
1t is out of these low grade ores that much
Of the product of the worlds gold is coming
today. The ore Of this region Is so easily
gotten out that 1t can be mined at a great
profit The rock of the Golden Gate mines
Is said to be much richer than that of the
Mercur, but it is mixed with arsenic to such
an extent that great loss occurs in redu ction
All of the large mills about Mercur have
their chemical laboratories, and at the Golden
Gate there is an experimental MILL in which
the most expert chemists and metallurgists
that money can command are at work trying