Rogue River courier. (Grants Pass, Or.) 1886-1927, 1911-09-22

crosscut again. The hills are full
of fool crosscuts which have busted
more ignoramuses like you and have
robbed more trusting innocents
among men and women than all the
road agents since the days of the
buccaneers. You talk with about as
much intelligence as chambermaid
in livery stable.
Now let me tell you something
about that crosscut foolishness. A
man who will stake out a property
and then go down the hill and begin
to crosscut to the ledge is a man ig-
norant of correct metal mining. This
type of man, If he finds ore mixed in
the gauge of ledge, imagines that
the ore body will increase with depth
and be whopper in width, where he
will cut it with his crosscut tunnel.
And this improving with depth is an
other fallacy which will explode for
your benefit before get through
with you. A ledge may Or may not
improve with depth, and there are
good meteorological and geological
reasons why.
YES, your man goes down the hill
and begins to crosscut. He saw the
ledge had certain pitch as 1t went
down and he figures he can cut 1t
with tunnel 200 feet long. He
works and sweats himself and
puts two other miners at work, and
when he has got In about 100 feet
his pocketbook begins to get a scare.
But he keeps on until he is nearly
to the magic 200-foot mark where
he will cut into the big ledge and
then be rich, He dreams OF yachts
and tours and European spas and
whatnot, He continues to burn dyn-
amite and wear out steel, muscle and
good money. He measures again.
Just 10 feet from the ledgel Good.
Go after 1t boys says he. Five feet
more, then three feet and then no
feet, and still In granite or gneiss as
hard as the hull of a battleship. No
ledge What's the matter?' you say.
Why matter enough. The ledge
changed its dip before 1t got to that
depth and has dipped far away from
the point 1t would have attained had
1t kept its course as it started down
from the surface; and not only that
but 1t may have been faulted and
the lower part removed a quarter of
a mile further back into the hills,
buried where no man will ever find
1t. But suppose, for the sake of this
so-called miner, that 1t has not fault
ed, but has dipped away as | said in
the first place. Then he must con-
tinue that costly crosscut tunnel pos
sibly so or 100 feet further before
he cuts his precious ledge. He raises
more money from among a bunch
that knows about as much as he does
and continues his tunnel, which, by
this time is about as straight as
calf path through brier patch. This
kind of business keeps up until one
day he swabs some red or black mud
out of a drill hole and he begins to
prick up his ears and strain his eyes.
He fires round of shots and when
the smoke and gas drift out of the
tunnel In he rushes to find that he
has cut the long sought ledge. And
what has he got? A narrow stringer,
perhaps six inches wide that assays
a dollar or two ton. Now what?
Well, he sits down and cusses min
Ing all the way from Butte to Sonora
and from grass roots to hell. He
makes a mistake, however, when he
abuses mining, He should cuss his
fool self. Then he quits and gets
job in a grocery store
What this creature should have
done in the first place was to have
sunk a prospect shaft on the ore, II
the ledge was running along the hill
and he couldn't send in a tunnel on
the ore body He should have sunk
a shaft and followed the ore no mat
ter II II wound like a corkscrew fol-
low the ore. Then II the ore petered
out, he could pull out and not have
wasted one fourth the money and
time he did in driving that long cross
cut.
This is one danger in driving a
crosscut tunnel. There Is another
danger, and that is: crosscut tunnels
often are the cause OF man aban.
doning valuable property And that
is this way He may run HIS tunnel
like the individual have Just been
| describing cut the orc I'm n laan niarn