Mohave County miner., 1910-03-05
The Secret Process And Other Illusions.


 down. Perennially does it bob up serenely," says one of our contem- poraries.
 We echo and emphasize this state ment. At one time it is affirmed that the gold is in so finely comminuted a condition in the rock that the heat of the fire assay volatilizes it, and the legitimate assayer can find no values. By some marvellous acid or other noStrum, whose ingredients are known only to the discoverer of secret process, this fine gold can be saved and rock hitherto thrown away as worthless can be made to yield con- siderable value, and people actually believe it so far as to put up consider able good money for testing plant: but the bar of merchantable gold somehow is never forthcoming from this plant. Copper is similarly hand led, and rock carrying trace is made to run up into high percentage in an experimental plant that uses consider able copper in its make up, but the ingot of copper is somehow again not forthcoming.
 A zone said to be miles in length, at the contact, perhaps, of granite and sandstone, is claimed to be highly auriferous on the strength of one or two tests by the aforesaid secret pro- cess. Such zone may not unlikely locally carry certain amount of free gold, perhaps in highly 'hour' con- dition, seeing such zone was a nat ural primitive sea beach and shore line, where some gold, like that in the sea beaches of California, was collected and winnowed by primeval waves. Such gold has been found very hard to save even on the unconsolidat- ed Pacific sea beaches, but when such is contained, if present at all, in a new very hard consolidated rock, and is nowhere locally concentrated into vein or an ore body, such formation as it could not be treated by ordinary hydraulicking, would have to be mined in the usual way, and every pound of rock would have to be crushed in powerful mill, and if the gold is flour and scantily disseminated, it would require very large mill indeed to handle it or to yield any preceptible value.
 Gold is one of the most widely dis seminated minerals in the world, and one of the rarest to be found in con- centrated and available form. Many areas and many rocks and formations contain perceptible amount of gold, but so minute and so scantily diffused as to be unavailable.
 Again, people are apt to be deceived by appear ances, and their deception may be fortified by secret-process men. We have in view a mountain range in California, not far from a populous city, where parties. who could i'll afford it, blew in oyer 4O,OOOS in mill, a reservoir, houses, plant and exca- vations on an area of schistose rocks locally stained with iron oxide. Some how the fire assays, by reputable as- savers, could not yield trace of gold in this stuff, but not so the secret process men, who found in it every- where an average of from 5S to los, and as there was large area of this stained material, it was assumed that a second HomesJake or Treadwell was in sight. The hill was later examined by an engineer, the rusty stain was found to be due to the oxidation of iron-bearing minerals, such as mica and hornblende, without trace of a gold-bearing mineral of any kind.
 Any one is entitled to have or in- vent a secret process and to exercise his ingenuity and to deceive himself if he will, provided credulous people, who know nothing of the true condi- tions, are not induced to put good money into the business, and provided the American people were not so fond
 
 of being humbugged and would trust little more the professional class and those who have spent lifetime in the business and with the advantage of an ancestry at their back of hard workers and scientific men have at last learn ed to know something reliable, in preference to others who have not had these advantages.
 Besides the delusion that gold can be obtained from a rock other than those returned by the legitimate fire assay is another not uncommon de- fusion, namely that free gold can be found and detected by the aid of mercury which shows no colors in the