Kansas City daily journal., 1896-10-18

Inc WoTlG
up mills The Amer AT
lean agent told me nv ~
that he had recently D~
contracted for mills
in Montana and Ne F. G. Carpenter.
vada, and that a number We're going up in
Utah, Colorado and Arizona. In Juab
county. the old dumps of gold mines are
now being worked over by means of cyan
ide, and the same is to be done with many
of the abandoned gold mines of Mexico.
am surprised at stories / daily hear as to
the new developments Of our gold terri
tory. The old districts are being repros-
pected and from the results it is safe to
say that the best of our mining regions
have not yet been touched. The great
mountain chain running from Alaska to
Nicaragua seems to be an almost unbroken
mineral bed. Gold and silver are found in
the continuation of the chain IN South
America, and miners are working to-day
at intervals all along the western part of
our hemisphere from the Yukon river even
to Patagonia.
Gold In Gas and Water.
The most of the gold which has made
the world rich in the past has come from
nuggets and from veins so large that you
could see them. The flood of the precious
metals which is now beginning to deluge
the earth comes from infinitesimal par
ticles. so scattered through the rock that
not a CLEAN nor CLINT of them can be
detected by the naked eye. According to
some scientists this gold has been depos-
ited in the rock in the form Of gas. Ages
ago, say they there was an eruption in
the bowels of the earth, at which time this
gas mixed with gold rushed up through
the vertical fissures with great force and
soaked its way into the porous rock in
which the gold is now being found. 1t was
by this means that the little bits of gold
were dropped throughout the rock, the
precious particles being SO small that they
could not be detected. Many of the old
miners had no idea of their existence, and
their extraction now is only possible by
means of the cyanide process. There Is
plenty of gold in salt water. Scientists say
that gold is generally diffused in the
waters of the ocean, and one eminent
chemist states that the sea water of the
British coast contains one grain to every
ton of water. The proportion is much
larger In the Great Salt Lake, and the
man who can invent cheap process of
getting out such gold will have fortune.
Forms in Which Gold Is Found.
Few people have any idea Of the queer
forms in which gold is found. Dame Ma
ture is the most wonderful of jewelers..
and she has decorated the bosom Of old
Mother Earth with gold in a thousand diff
erent shapes. I saw a box of gold mug
gets and crystals taken from the Little
Johnnie mine near Leadville. Many of
them would have made beautiful brooches
without redecoration. Some of them ap-
peared frosted, and others had been torn
from the rock in the form of sheets and
plates. A great deal of gold Is found in
crystals. Not long ago there was brought
to the Philadelphia mint $1,000 worth of
Australian gold. 1t was made up of little
gold crystals, ranging in size from that of
a marrowfat pea to that of the head of a
pin. Gold is found in cubes, and eight
sided crystals are common. Some Of the
gold nuggets from the California mines
are shaped like moss The Little Johnnie
has produced a great deal of wire gold.
/ have seen bits of rock from Cripple
Creek upon which when subjected to an
intense heat the gold would bubble out
and stand up like little gold pin heads
upon the dark stone. Gold in its natural
state is usually mixed with silver. The
new Utah gold deposits are associated
with arsenic. In the Mercur mine you
find the yellow ore in connection with
quicksilver, and in South America 1t Is
sometimes mixed with bismuth.
Placer Mining and Gold Nuggets.
have spent some time in watching the
placer miners in different parts of the
west. Placer mining was the chief source
of gold production in the days of 1Si9. 1t
is still carried on, but the output is much
less than in the past. The chief placer
mines of to-day are in Siberia, where the
earth has sometimes to be dug up in a
frozen state and melted before the gold
can be extracted. This is the case in some
parts of the Yukon river mines. The fact
that there is a gold placer is an evidence
that there Is gold-bearing rock near by.
and miners pretend 10 tell from the char
acter of the gold of the placer as to the
nearness of the gold-bearing rock from
which il comes. If the gold dust is very
fine II Is supposed to have been carried a
long distance. If coarse it is thought that
the lead is not far off. Some of the first
mining of California was of gold scales,
which measured less than 1-16 of an inch
In length and one millimeter in diameter.
Placer miners usually find their biggest
nuggets in streams where the powders are
large. Where the streams are fine gravel
the gold is generally small and scaly. The
biggest nugget ever discovered in this
country was taken out Of a mine at Car
son Hill, in Calaveras county, Cal. II
weighed 1875 pounds and was worth more
than $4,000. A number OF other large mug.
gets were found in this same region rang.
ing in value from 200 upward. In 1855 a
nugget of gold was discovered in Sierrs
county, Cal. worth $4,000. and in 1850 &
mass of quartz and gold was picked up in
Tuolumne county which was worth $50 900
Outside of California some of the biggest
Jumps of gold discovered in the United
States have come from the South. North
Carolina has produced three nuggets rang
ing in size from 1872 pounds to 81 pounds
and in Georgia a number of big nugget.
have been discovered, the largest of which
weighed 7S7 pennyweights.
The Wonderful African Mines.
Through the mining engineers whom
have met here in the West and information
which has recently come TO the director o
the mint at Washington / am able to Civ.
some facts as to the mines of Africa which
are making such a change in the golt
product of the world. These gold mine
surprise to biologists. One famou
man said that he would have rather eS
pected 10 find gold in the fens of Scot
land than in the Rand district of Soutl
Africa. Mr.. William Weston. a Ieadin
mining engineer OF Cripple Creek. and
graduate of the Royal School of Mines o
London, tells me that he believes that tn
South African gold deposits originally con
sisted of the bed of a great lake. which
having been dried up and snlidified wa
by the action of the elements SO heaye
up that II stood half on end The r,ppe
part of the great gold deposit is now bein
mined. but as the region is further deye
oped the miners will have to go deeper an
deeper into the earth and the cost will b
much greater. AS 1t is, the prospects ,
an enormous quantity of gold from Sout
Africa are excellent. Hamilton Smith, who
perhaps one of the best mining engineer
of the world and who was here not Ion
ago as the agent for the Rothschilds
look up their American investments. est
mates that the Rand gold district of Afric
will produce a billion and quarter dollar
worth of gold. He says that gold has bee
found there as far down in the earth