The Alaska citizen., 1912-05-13

themselves and their readers by aC- counts of the unlimited production f gold by some alchemist. or by the discoyerer of some phenomenal mine. The economic results are easily pre-. 1 dicted. Some authorities think cur present worldwide high prices are i simply due to increased production of gold that is, to a lesscned value of should increase abnormally. doubtless that value would drop further until pair of boots would cost as much in gold today as they did once in | Confederate notes or. still earlier. iu Continental paper. Is there any dan ger that this may happen? In re- cent review in the London Daily | Telegraph of a lecture on the pur- chasing power of money. writer said that ii is conceivable that the day might come when the discovery of unlimited quarrics of pure gold would compel the Use f some other article for the measure of values" | On which T. A. Rickard. writing ill the Mining and Scientific Press, of San Francisco, comments as follows: Those of us who are familiar with gold-mining, and more especial ly the big bonanzas f the world, need not strain our imagination lo conceive of an ore-body or even d mass of gold big enough to upset | international monetary standards Many a prospector frying his bacon at the camp fire and stimulated by d reconcentrated cup of coffee, must have seen visions of a golden noun l tain or a streak Of pure gold that ran across creation as if il would never stop. Every now and then We hear of fabulous mineral discoy- cries. like that of Bitter creek in June. 1910. and when the iwesponsi- ble scribe of the Daily Scream has | cAHauSltd lIS NO'dbtldl lie u"NdilF ends by talking about a mountain of gold"
 When the stampede to the Aus tralian diggings was at its height in 1852, the ignorant emigrauls. having heard that the gold was found in quartz, net knowing that peryasive mineral, supposed it Was quarts, and hence expected to gather the gold in pints and pails This fact was related to me by F. J Dunn, i the Australian geologist. who as d boy went to the diggngs al that time
 Well, And why not? We may | laugh at the simpleton from the | farm and We may sheer (and We dol at the perfervid scribbler of the untechnical newspaper, but it is doubtful whether even that peripa- tetic philosopher known as the man in-the-street could give adequate req sons for the improbability Of such a golden discovery. For instance. what is the biggest mass of native copper that was ever found? Of course, it was in the Lake Superior region. IL was in 1857 at the Min eota nCt Minnesota) mine in the | Ontonagon district. Al shallow depth there was discovered a mass of copper 46 feet long, with a maxi mum thickness of Sl2 feet The mean width was l2l2 feet, and the mean thickness feet. The total weight actually recovered was 420 tons. Twenty men labored for l. months to remove it from its encas- ing rock; they tried to do so by exploding kegs of powder, and final ly extricated the copper by cutting it into fragments with chisels. The chips alone weighed 2 tons, A group of similar bodies Cf native copper having an aggregate weight of GOO tons was extracted from the Bay State mine forty-five years ago. The 420-ton lump was 50 per cent pure copper and at $400 per ton was worth at that time $16S,000. But a mass of pure gold weighing 420 tons is worth $252, ,OO0 The dis covery of such a mass would add largely to the number of those so- journing in lunatc asylums and would paralyze the stock exchanges of the world for more than a few palpitating minutes"
 | No such mass of gold as this. of course, has ever come to light Yet gold in great quantities has been won in brief periods California river-beds yielded $S1294,70O in 1851 alone, and the shallow diggings of Victoria gave $63,O00,000 in 1853 In the klondike, more recently, one miner cleaned up $46,000 in eight hours, and took out three-quarters of a million from a claim about 80 by 50 feet. Much of this gold was in coarse pellets and nodules, and
 yet the largest nuggest was worth only $1,700. The largest lump ever found was picked up near Dunolly, Victoria, Australia, in 1869, and