Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1900-12-08


4 up homestead. This has made bi,
. business for the land Office up to within
the last few weeks, but understand tn,
/. government is watching the entries
pretty closely, and is prepared to prose
cute wherever it is shown that the entry
is not bona fide. This has had the effec
Of shutting off some of the business
which makes it look as If some of the
: men who have been taking up land were
not acting altogether in good faith
, Pioneer-Times.
Primitive Mining Methods in the Philip.
pines.
Native mining is primitive at gold
mine in the Benguet district; the noun
tain is scanned with quartz veins from a
few inches to five feet across, all said to
be gold bearing; yet the Igorrote miner
has never got beyond the oxidized ore
Of the surface. He takes an iron pike
a simple stick, shod with a steel point
six inches long-and with this strikes
and prizes out blocks of disintegrating
rock. Perhaps during his working peri
cd, which seldom lasts more than two
hours day, he detaches 20 to 40 pounds
Of quartz, which he carries down the
gorge to his home for the next opera
ton of crushing. A miner succeeds, by
weeks of this labor. In letting himself
into a burrow 10 feet at the most, and
then only takes the trouble when the
vein is rich, as it necessitates his burn.
ing torch, prepared by the women
from thin sticks of resinous pine, which
every few minutes smokes him out. A
ritter says one is disappointed at this
method Of gold mining and the seams of
quartz suggest possibilities for a small
stamp mill but the next stages of crush.
ing and abstracting the gold entirely
overcome progressive mind. From b.
hind thin shade of boughs, near the
houses below, arose thud, thud, stop.
ping now for an instant, and then taken
up again monotonously. Peering be-
hind the screen one discovers an old
hag, wrinkled and dried by three score
years of toilsome life. swinging to and
fro from the hips, in her squatting po-
sition on the ground, and with out
stretched and rigid arm rocking slight
ly cylindrical stone of 80 pounds upon
another, larger in size and slightly con-
cave
Between the faces Of these two stones
is crushed the quartz. The big pieces
are first smashed into Jumps as large as
walnut by volcanic boulders, and then
these are taken, one at time, and
crushed to coarse dust under the primi-
tive arrasta described. The fairly uni.
form coarse dust is then fed between
the rocking stones, and finally comes
out after hours of patient labor as an
impalpable powder.
The men are lazy, but the poor old
women will sit for hours moving this
crusher back and forth, spreading the
grinding quartz into new positions with
dexterous swish of the hand, and then
after days labor, will have but scant
10 pounds of powder ready for the las
operation of "panning."
The panning is done principally il
calabashes, or the half shells of bi,
gourds. The powder is placed in th'
calabash, which is then filed with wa
ter. A circular motion is impaired t,
the water, which starts all the lighte
dirt in motion with it. At each turn O
the pan portion of the water is swishe,
over the edge. carrying out the bulk O
the dirt by the time the first water i
exhausted. By the addition of waite
several times and repititions of throw
+ ing it out by rotary motion. nothing bu
the gold and black magnetic iron ore
left in the bottom of the pan. A sti
more careful washing takes place i
some localities by the use of secon
smaller dish, and the iron ore is fnall
removed, after drying, by the use of
magnet, but in some of the regions {
the far north, where the Igorrotes ar
even more primitive than those of tn
Benguet district, the black sand contain
ing gold is packed in small tubes of ban
boo and sold in this condition at th
seacoast to Ilocano and Chinese trader
for song.
What surprises the average America
: is the total absence of practical machil
cry for mining, and then, again, that
. there are actually valuable mineral pro-
: critics in the Philippines they have n,
been exploited and developed long sine
. by the Spaniards and foreign residen
= of the islands. There seems to be b,
;, one possible explanation for this cor
:, mercial inactivity, and that lies in IL
: defective Spanish laws relating to mi
:, ing and the development of miner
wealth, which made it possible for Il
: title to mineral lands to revert at an
. time to the Crown.
No one could possess known val
: able claim without being ruined by Spa
ish officials, who demanded hul
mo ey. No one could import mimi
machinery without attracting the Go
ernment's attention to the fact that ;
enterprise was about to be establish'
in which the Government might ha
= the lions share; hence there has been
! paralysis of mining industries.
% The writer referred to slys he has n
r seen a flume in any portion of the mi
d ing region he trayersed, though the
" are miles of deep black sands in Il
, narrow river bottoms which might p
If sluiced out and amalgamated Tn,
y have not even got as far as miners CT
u Mining and Scientific Press.