The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1920-05-13

AANCA IN AACAAeAA MINING convention At
Seattle, April y.
The finding of ore has ever been
fortuitous. from that dim dawn long
ago when Javan the son of Japhet,
stubbed his toe against a copper out
crop in Cyprus to the evening of
much later day when Juan Bautista
a Mexican herdsman, in Sinaloa, lost
his rosary only to find the riches of Ell
Tajo. The story is typical; Juan was
chasing stray sheep when his ros-
airy, becoming entangled in a bush,
was torn from his neck. Not stop
ping to recover it, he threw his hat to
mark the spot; later, returning from
the chase, in the twilight, he found
his hat. 1t was too late to find the
precious beads, so he camped for the
night. After making a fire, he went
TO sleep. Awakening before dawn, he
seized an ember to light a cigarette of
cornhusk As he did so, the light fell
on something that sparkled he picked
it up and took it to his patron, who
recognized it as silver The fire had
roasted the ore and released the met
al. Nothing is said about the fate of
the rosary, but the mining district
that thus came into being is known
as Bl Rosario. 1t has produced mil
lions.
Lucretius assemblies the first discov-
cry of metals to the burning of forests
and attributes the formation of
masses of metal underground to the
running together of molten streams
into the fractures of the earth Do
dorus Siculus records the finding of
silver on the Iberian peninsula, now
known as Spain; he relates how the
shepherds set fire to a forest in the !
Pyrenees and how the heat sufficed to |
melt the silver out of the rock. This
Greek historian asserts that the met
al flowed in streams of pure silver" |
The natives did not know what it was |
and sold it to the Phoenicians, who |
knew most things that were known at |
that time. The action of these shep-
herds in employing incendiarism to
clear the forest and make room for
the grass to grow for their flocks re-
minds one Of the practice of our west
ern prOspector, who until the forest
service stood on guard to check him.
would start a forest fire in order to
clear the under'brush and so expose
the rocky surface to inspection
The stories of discovery in the ol1en
time all have a major element of the
accidental. The silver of the Ram
melsberg in the Harz was found by
a noble hunter who had fastened his
horse to a tree. The horse, as is the
manner of that impatient animal.
stamped and scraped the ground with
his hoofs so as to lay bare the silver
lead mineral underneath the turf. The
horse was named Rammelus: hence
Rammelsberg. The hunter selected
specimens of the silver ore and sent
them to the emperor Ohio. Whether
the emperor admitted the hunter to a
share in the subsequent mine, we are
not told.
In ITO a Bohemian passed through
the forest that then covered the Fret :
berg district and sat down to rest. At
his feet he noticed a stone that re-
minded him of the ore he had seen in
the Harz He put a piece in his poe
yet and had it tested 1t proved to be Z
"a lena, rich in silver. Then he in
orr, red his comrades and they return
- ,,i TIL him to exploit the lode from
which she stone had been she'd {
,etter We rsion is given by Agricola' {
Who saws hat the drivers Of the carts
hat carried salt to Bohemia from the
Dr;nes in Ga xony noticed the galena
exposed in thei.r wheel tracks after
ain storm This ore was like that OF
he Goslar district where they lived
N tbev took some oNf it to be assayed.
: ,rovad richer in silver than the
5oslar ore, whereupon they oetooK
themselves to that part OF SaXony
there F,refberg now is and started f
mines of their own.
Here we have the beginning Oh IN
luctive reasoning, which is the Iouh-
,ation of science. Huxley said that
,cience was only organized common
tense. and that is what those Bone
MAN teamsters displayed by their III
ference and by their action
Next we turn to South America
where we shall see how the ignorant
native by chance found some OF the
great ore deposits of the world. IN
I545 an Indian was hunting deer on
the slopes Of the Cerro de Potosi' IN
Bolivia. when he took hold of a SHRUB
10 null himself up a steep place. His
weight uprooted the shrub and expos
ed a mass of native silver in the rock
About the year 1880 another indian d
shepherd on the Cerro de Pasco, nj
fire on the mountain side and founo
later that he had melted silver out OF
the rock underneath the ashes. That
was the outcrop of a vein famous IN
Peruvian history, but now associated
with an important copper mining en-
terprise. The Cerro de Pasco fur-
nished the Spaniards with million
ounces of silver per annum Tor three
centuries; the yield of Potosi IS est
~oA-Ne billion 1 ,