The Alaska sourdough., 1911-12-05
LOCATING THE LODE

method which the prospector uses ln his daily work says writer in one of the national week lies The most mod est mountainside looks large and dis couraging to the seeker for mineral wealth. How does the prospector go about finding minerals
 In the first place though he knows gold may be found almost anywhere unexpectedly, he districts his own ideas determining what he is going to look for, where he is going to look for it and how far that region ought to be from proved transportation. Usually he works in a neighborhood of districts already partially proved. Unless he a mere adventurer, hunting for gold placers, he will know that an ore-body found fifty miles from transportation IS worth many times the same ore body a thousand miles from transportation and he will govern his search accord ingly.
 Having established his field of opera tions, the prospector pushes out into the hills. In general he will stick to the waterways, present or past. He hangs to the bottoms of valleys and ravines, and examines with especial care all out crops shown in cut banks or rock faces which have been worn down by water. He knows the powerful effect of eros ion-that is to say, of weather upon rocks, carried on through many genera tions, knows the effect of snowslides and storms on exposed rock veins He knows that the force of gravitation carries detached pieces of rock down hill Hence, probably keeping pretty low down, his first search is for float that is to say, bits of rock which do not look like the country rock on which they are found, but which either show mineral value or the earlier pres ence of mineral value. Sometimes the elements will have leached out the min eral itself in "specimen of float, so that only stain remains The prospector examines this under the glass and passes on, trying to. find more float of the same kind. Perhaps he is passing up a depression between two hills. Once in while he finds piece of float, but after while ceases to find them. He turns now and goes down his depression until the float IS no longer found in that direction. His theory, though perhaps he has never thought of it, is that the vein from which those pieces of quartz came IS probably somewhere up the mountain side, it's locality making the apex of the triangle over which the scattered pieces of quartz have been carried by the elements during many years past.
 Acting consciously or unconsciously on this theory, perhaps our prospector now goes up bit higher on his noun tainside. Of course his float is not abundant and it lies in no such regu- lar form as theory may give 1t; but slowly and methodically he crosscuts what he supposes to have been the course of these falling bits of float He does this again and again, working higher up all the time Theoretically, and sometimes practically his deposit of float gets narrower as he goes high CT Also the specimens of fiat ought to show less and less leaching-tha is to say, they should be fresher from the vein.
 Hour after hour, perhaps day after day, the prospector runs out his trail, nosing out the mineral picking a bit. here and bit there, very likely doing some banning of the dirt as he works on up and across; perhaps sometimes grinding specimen in his mortar down at his camp and banning the resi- due for colors If he gets results he knows that this mineral must have