Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-11-07
Gold Bricks From South Africa.

one knows how deep. The gold is in
great sandwich of rock more than mile
wide and on the slant four-fifths of mile
long. Already tens o. thousands OF tons
of the collaborating conglomerate nave
been taken out. and sixty thousand tons
are now being raised every month The
sandwich starts in a great plain. 1t
leans. as ! have said. al broad angie,
and one can look down between the walls
cut of which it has been cut. and by
hanging onto ropes can slide down i'll
side them for hundreds of feet.
The manager of the underground work
ngs in the Simmer and Jack is an Amer
lean. He is a California engineer named
some years Upon my telling him that l
wanted to go into the mine he said there
were sixty miles of tunnels and under
ground passages, and L therefore asked
him to show me as much as he could in
one day. Before descending we put Of,
miners clothing We then entered
great skip or bucket which had just
brought up two tons of ore. Then sig
nal from the engineer dropped us down
into the darkness and another signal
stopped us at tunnel 900 feet from the
surface. Here we left the skip and
walked through tunnel after tunnel cut
out of the sandwich, now and then STOP
ping to look down the incline.
Imagine mighty cave Just high enough
for man to stand upright within 1t and
running down at an angle of forty degrees
for hundreds of feet. making fiat. slant
ing hall covering acres. There are rock
walls above and rock floors below and
away down the slant hundreds Of feet
distant are scores of yellow Chinese
pounding the drills to make holes for the
blasting. The Chinese are bare to the
waist and they sing as they work Each
has a candle. and the light from this gives
him a weird appearance as he slaves.
away down there in the darkness. The
Chinese are paid at the rate of 1 cent for
each inch of hole drilled, and an ordinary
man drills fifty inches or more in a day.
They are gouging out the holes for the
dynamite candles. At certain hours the
charges are put in and several scores of
blasts are set off at once. After this the
ore. which has been blown out. is SHOW
eled down into the cars in the tunnels be-
low. IT is then carried to the shaft. up
which 1t flies in great iron skipS and onto
the stamps which crush the gold out
A Look at the Ore.
AS | went through the mine Mr.. Sea-
graves showed me the gold bearing pud-
ding. 1t lies here and there in streaks or
streams in the rock. now widening and
now narrowing. 1t is blue conglomerate
filled with pebbles of white quartz en-
bedded in a cement which is impregnated
with iron and gold. The gold is in crys-
tails and flakes so small to be invisible
to the eye. l could see no yellow metal
whatever. and the rock looked more like
limestone than anything else. The min
ers disregard the pebbles, for they have
been crushed again and again and found
to contain no gold whatsoever.
The gold-bearing strata lies upon gran
lite. 1t is supposed TO have been deposit
ed by means of water in sand and clay.
which in time has turned to cement, and
which by volcanic forces has been forced
up into the slanting ridge which now
forms the southern watershed of this con-
tinent. Indeed. it may be that the gold
said to be in the waters of the ocean.
Some scientists assert that there is about
forty million dollars worth of gold in
every cubic mile of sea water and if this
is SO it would only take three cubic miles