The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-03-01
GOLD MAY BE IN WATER WE
 DRINK
(Continued from Sixth page.)

DRINK.
 (Continued from Sixth Page.)
 Assure from which the ore had been taken had remained under water for over one hundred years. When the water had been pumped out found in- crustatlons on the walls half an inch thick in places containing the same minerals which were in the original ore. In this same mine a number of speci- mens of native silver were found. Some of them had formed on the timber. If this open Assure had been allowed to remain under water for ten thousand years there is but little doubt that it would have been found filled with ore similar to that mined out. In the crev- ices of a piece of petrifed wood taken from the Cunningham gravel mine in New Mexica crystallzed gold can be seen. This gold formed on the wood af- ter the wood was deposited in the gray eI.
 It is true that gold, silver and copper
 re being formed on wood, substance
 hich cannot resist intense heat. It is \ ually true that all metals are formed sM the same way, as nature does not SgtlAe two ways of doing one thing. Gold x fver found in its natural condition
 ature in paying quantities, except
 2 Assures or in the cavities of the
 CC i've rocks in place in combination 4. Silica, which is quartz The same x 1ul Twill be found to produce a great Ai y of minerals each after it's own $# in the same way that the same soil
 produce an endless variety of plants % fruits. All gold found in the soil N fknoWn as placer gold is gold that s& been freed by the decomposition of quartz caused by erosion. When We 4 I)k at nuggets of gold, called wash
 Id, mined from the placers, we are apt 9F think that such metals must have
 cen produced by some intense igneous
 seat instead of being worn smooth by che action of the water and grinding be- tween the rocks. If, however, a piece of quartz carrying free gold is examined through a glass it will be seen that the smallest as well as the largest piece of free gold which it contains is irregular and presents a rough surface, identical with the surface found on gold formed in the humid way by electro magnetic action Take any number of these pieces of gold as they come from the quartz and attempt to grind them so that they will be smooth and will cor respond in shape to those taken from the placers, and you will find that you have worn away fully one-half of the gold in the operation. It has been esti- mated that fully as much gold has been worn away in this manner by natural erosion as has ever been mined from the placers. When we consider that seven- tenths of all the gold that has been mined has been taken from the placers, we get some idea of the billions of dol lars worth of gold which have been wasted in this way, to say nothing of the billions worn away from the placer gold which has never been mined. This gold is still in existence. It has not been destroyed. It is in the same condi- tion that the gold rubbed off on the whetstone was in. It is taken up by the water, carried down the streams and more or less of it finds it's way to the ocean. This accounts in part for the presence of float gold in the sea water and on the seacoasts.
 Near the mouth of the Klamuth river, on the Pacific coast, there is for dis
  bluff of ofurfferous gravel. Tn places the bluff is from forty to fifty feet high and the gravel all carries more or less gold The surf has been wearing the bluff away for ages, freeing the gold un- til the beach sands in the vicinity of these bluffs have become very rich in gold and have been worked by miners for many years. There are large depos- its of these sands that carry from one float gold. A great deal of time and money has been spent in trying to find some method to save this float gold but without ess, because of the fact that the gold is lighter than the sand, and when brought into contact with water will float off.
 In making experiments with view to saving this float gold I made test of the water taken from the surf. I filled a forty-gallon cask with the surf water, adding to it a solution of alum water and allowed it to stand forty-eight hours. The water was then carefully drained off with the exception of one gallon An analysis of this gallon showed that the sea water at this point contained one and half grains of gold to every ton of water. The same exper- iment was made on the water taken from the surf near the Cliff House at San Francisco. That showed less than one-half grain of gold to ton of water. These tests proved that the water of the