Boy With the U.S. Miners Read online

  CHAPTER IX

  WHERE TREASURE HIDES

  "You won't be achin', none, to hear all o' my roamin's after I quitthe Sutro Tunnel," Jim resumed, a couple of days later, when Owens andClem came to hear the rest of his story, "so I'll cut 'em short. Butyou'll be wantin' to hear how it was I got into that queer part o' thecountry where I made my strike.

  "It was Father's doin's more'n it was mine. I reckon I'd ha' stuckaround the Comstock Lode an' got into reg'lar silver-quartz minin' ifI'd gone my own way. But Father didn't have no use for silver. He wasa gold prospector, he was, an' he didn't want to do nothin' else.

  "After the Comstock got goin' good, with big stamp-mills poundin' an'roarin' night an' day, an' when Virginia City begun to settle into asure-enough town, Father begun to itch to be away. Folks worried him.Gold, he used to say, had savvy enough to hide itself when a mob comearound, an', accordin' to Father's ideas, a placer wasn't no good,anyhow, after two seasons' pickin's.

  "He jest wanted to come along an' skim off the cream o' some new find,clean up enough dust to keep him goin' for a while, an' then pick uphis stakes an' git! It wasn't jest the money Father was after. Heliked huntin' after gold, jest for the sake o' huntin'. I've seen himquit a claim that was makin' a fair profit an' start off prospectin',for the sake o' the change. The wilder the spot, the more chance therewas o' findin' gold, he used to say; the fewer the folks, the biggerthe clean-up. Looked like he was right, too, placer fields peter outmighty fast when a gang gets there."

  "They are bound to," Owens agreed.

  "But why? There ain't no rule about gold. One placer'll give upmillions in dust, an' another ain't worth pannin'."

  "There's no rule that will tell you where to find placer gold," themine-owner corrected, "but don't run away with the idea that golddeposits are all freaks. As a matter of fact, there is a regularscience to help a good prospector in hunting for reef or quartz gold.Whether he will find it in sufficient quantity to make the depositworth working is quite another matter.

  "You mustn't think, Jim, that gold happens to be in one place andhappens not to be in another as a result of mere chance. There's nochance in Nature. We think there is, sometimes, merely because thefactors are so terribly complicated that we can't follow them all.

  "What makes the finding of gold seem so much a matter of luck is notbecause we don't know how the gold came to be where it is, but becausewe can't know the whole history of the Earth before Man came, and wecan't read everything from the rocks which crop out on the surface.But we have some clues, and if you studied out the big money-makinggold-mines of to-day, you would find that chance has played but asmall part in their discovery and no part at all in their working.

  "A lucky prospector may have been the first to find signs of gold inthe region, but most likely, he got but little out of it. It was thescientific search which followed that revealed the location of thegreat rock deposits below in which the gold was thinly scattered, andit was highly specialized mining engineering which made them possibleto work. There are mines where ores containing only two dollars'worth of gold (48 grains, a tenth of an ounce) to the ton aresuccessfully handled, and the greater part of the big gold-mines runalong quite comfortably on five dollars' worth."

  "You mean on a quarter of an ounce o' gold to the ton!" exclaimed Jim,amazed. "I've often got ten times that much in one pan!"

  "Exactly. Yet you're not a millionaire, are you? Most gold-mines runon a narrow margin of profit, a dollar or two to the ton of orecrushed. So, you see, the works must be on a huge scale in order toreturn a dividend on the investment. What's more, you can't afford toestablish a big plant unless there's an enormous amount of oreavailable.

  "It's an old rule of wise investors not to put money into a mine thatlooks too rich. Why?

  "Because rich ore generally peters out fast. The rich mines alwayscatch the suckers easily, and they're the ones who lose. A few cents aton profit on an immense deposit of low-grade ore means a sure return,because, as a rule, such ore comes from a very old geologicalformation where the gold is evenly scattered, and labor-savingmachinery can be put in with a certainty that those few cents ofprofit will continue indefinitely.

  "Gold, as you know, Jim, is always the same price. This has beenagreed upon by all nations. It is the one standard of value. It isworth a fraction over $20 an ounce. Year in, year out, all over theworld, gold is worth the same.

  "As a result, a gold-mine manager who knows the exact proportion ofgold per ton in the ore of his mine, can calculate to a cent how muchhe can afford to pay for mining the ore, crushing it, and separatingthe gold by chemical processes. He must figure on the cost ofinstalling his machinery, on his interest for original outlay, ondepreciation, on the cost of power for his machinery, on the waterpower needed for crushing and washing, on transportation for hissupplies and on wages. Usually he will have to build his own railroadand his own aqueducts. A little saving in one place--even a few centsper ton--will enable him to make a big profit; a little extra cost,such as an increase in the price of fuel, of chemicals, or of wages,will make him bankrupt.

  WHERE DESERTS YIELD MILLIONS.

  Mill of the Pittsburg-Silver Peak Gold Mining Co., Blair, Nevada.]

  THE EATER OF MOUNTAINS.

  A hydraulic jet of high pressure, washing away a hill of gravel andsending the pay dirt through a sluice.

  _From "The Romance of Modern Mining," by A. Williams._]

  "That is why, Jim, even the richest-ored mine in the world--if it beuneven in its yield of gold per ton--may be worthless, and why alow-grade mine with an unchanging percentage may be worth millions, solong as there is plenty of it. It all depends on the cost ofextracting the metal. There are scores, yes, hundreds of gold-depositswell known to-day, which cannot be worked as long as gold stays $20 anounce, because it costs almost as much as that to get it out, butwhich would be big money-makers if the gold were worth $25.Three-quarters of the gold-mines of to-day would shut tight like aclam, if gold were to drop in price even a dollar or two. What acapitalist wants to-day is ore, and he is not interested in free gold.What a prospector looks for, is free gold, and he ignores the rock.I'm telling you all this, now, Jim, because it's what will be theimportant thing when we get to talking, later, over your find."

  "That's all right," the old prospector answered, "but how can a mantell when he's tappin' a big lot o' rock or jest a little, if it ain'tthe free gold what shows him?"

  "He can't tell, as a rule," the mine-owner rejoined. "It takes ageologist to do that. As I was saying, there are some rules to go by.Here, I'll give you a notion of how gold came to be in the rocks, andthen you'll see what a geologist can tell and what he can't.

  "To start with, you've got to begin 'way at the beginning of things,before the crust of the earth was solid and when all the rocks of thecrust were in a melted and half-liquid state. So far as we can makeout, the metals seems to have classified themselves at that time, moreor less, according to density. The lighter elements came to thesurface, the heavier ones stayed at the bottom. It wasn't merely aquestion of weight, but of gravitation, centrifugal action and a lotof things I won't stop to explain to you now. Gold, as you know, isheavy, that is, it possesses extreme density. It stayed therefore,mainly at the bottom of this semi-molten sea.

  "But this sea, which covered the whole of the earth's surface, wasn'taltogether liquid, as the oceans are to-day. It was a seething mass ofdifferent densities, some of it liquid, some of it slimy, some of itthick like sticky mud, acted upon by fearful whirlwinds of electricforces such as astronomers see in the sun to-day, and by powerfulinternal currents which created vast churning whirlpools ofsuper-heated matter.

  "It's impossible for us to tell where these electric whirlwinds passedor where these currents were. So, since the original separation of themetals was highly irregular, no geologist can say with certainty wheregold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.

  "Then there's another complication. As you know, most of the me
talshave chums or affinities with other substances, just as gold has withmercury. These chums of the metals were also in that molten ocean, butnot always in the same proportions, nor yet distributed regularly. Sometallic compounds were formed at different times and in diverseplaces. These compounds had varying densities, with the result that inlater ages they behaved in a way quite different from the pure metal.You see, Jim, long before the crust of the earth was even formed, goldwas scattered far and wide, and already was in different forms.

  "Then, little by little, the crust began to form as the earth cooled.It was just a scum, at first, and was constantly broken up from below.As it got thicker, it resisted more and more, until the upheavals ofthe crust formed the mountains of the earliest or Primary Age. Thiscrust, which was now solid rock, contained gold, but, naturally,nowhere in the same proportions. Some had much metal inclusion; some,little; some, none at all. Besides, between the mountains or in them,were vast volcanic craters, pouring up molten matter which became whatare known as the eruptive rocks, and these, too, carried up gold frombelow. These rocks crystallized and the gold remained in them.

  "But even that wasn't complicated enough for Mother Nature. In thosesame eruptive rocks, both of the early and later periods, gold ismainly found in veins. These veins are of dozens of different sorts,depending on the rock in which they occur and on Nature's ways ofputting them there.

  "To make it simple to you, I'll only mention two. The most generalmethod was by fumaroles. These are subterranean blow-holes of vaporcontaining sulphur, tellurium, and chlorine compounds, as well assuper-heated steam. These vapors, projected from deep down in theearth with incredible pressure and energy, acted on the new-maderocks, formed compounds with the metals, or, when united with hydrogenin the steam, separated the metals from solutions of their salts, andforced the metals into cracks in the new-made and cooling eruptiverocks. According to the kind of rock and the nature of the chemicalagent, a geologist will know for what type of vein to search. Theother most general agent of vein-making was hot water--generallyheavily saturated with sulphur and other chemicals--which dissolvedthe gold. This hot water, with gold in solution, seeped into thecracks and crevices made by the rock as it cooled, thus forming othertypes of veins."

  "Hold on a minute, there!" protested Jim. "Water won't dissolve gold."

  "It will and does," was the retort, "especially when certain chemicalsare in the water. As a matter of fact, even to-day, the geysers atSteamboat Springs, California, and at several places in New Zealand,deposit gold and silicon in their basins. But let me go on.

  "After the gold was placed in veins in these primary rocks, there camea period of erosion, and the mountains were worn away. The gold beingharder than rock, it remained and made alluvial deposits of a veryearly age. Some, of these old 'placers' are several miles below thesurface, now, others have come again to the surface by all thesuperposed rock having been washed away, anew. Some of the gold wasdissolved, as before, and got into the crevices of the newly depositedrocks made by erosion, known as sedimentary rocks. So, you see, Jim,even millions of years ago, there was gold in the crystallizederuptive rock, gold in veins of igneous rock, gold in alluvialdeposits, and, again, gold in veins in the sedimentary rocks.

  "Then came another period of elevation, with a second raising up ofmountain ranges, and with a renewal of violent volcanic action. Thecrust was getting more and more unequal, the way in which the metalswere distributed became more and more scattered. Mountains of theSecondary Age were often made of Primary sedimentary rocks, or ofPrimary igneous rocks, so much changed that geologists call themmetamorphic rocks. And, Jim, every time that the rock was changed, thegold changed either its place or its compound character, or both. Thencame another period of erosion, lasting millions of years, the goldwas washed away to form new placers, or made its way into veins in theSecondary sedimentary rocks.

  "Then came the great upheaval of the Third or Tertiary Age, in whichnew mountains rose, new volcanic vents were opened, and, once more,much of the gold was acted upon by chemicals, mainly sulphur andtellurium. In many places silver showed a strong affinity with gold,forming deposits where the ores were commingled. Once more thehundreds of centuries of erosion came, to be followed by the upheavingof the newer mountains of the Fourth or Quaternary Age. So, you see,Jim, as I told you before, gold can be found in almost every rock andof every geological period."

  "I don't see that it helps much, then!" declared the old prospector."You can go lookin' where you durn please."

  "There's nothing to stop you," agreed Owens cheerfully, "but that's ahit-and-miss method. And I can show you just how even this little bitof geology comes in to help the miner.

  "Get this clearly in your head, Jim! Three-quarters of the presentgold production of the world comes from gold that is mixed withpyrites--which is a sulphide of iron, or from tellurides--in which atellurium-hydrogen compound has been the chemical agent. A prospector,therefore, who uncovers a new field where the gold is in the pyritousor the telluride form has ten times more chance of attracting capitalthan one who finds lumps of native gold lying around loose.

  "It is when a prospector strikes a section where all the gold-bearingrock has been eroded that he is apt to find the 'pockets' so dear tohis heart. The amazing riches of the Klondyke lay in the fact thatprospectors found, first, the alluvial deposits from the present agein the sands of the running creeks, and, on ledges high above thecreeks and running into the rocks on either side, the alluvialdeposits, even thicker and richer, of a bygone time."

  "You've got it right," declared Jim, emphatically. "I know 'cos I wasthere!"

  "Was it on the Yukon, then, that you made your famous strike?"

  The prospector winced. Evidently, he intended to reach that point inhis own way.

  "I'll tell you about that, after a bit," he answered evasively. "Butyou ain't said why placer claims peter out."

  "Can't you see? A placer claim doesn't show where the big store ofgold is, but where it isn't! It shows that the gold has gone. A placeris just a spot where a little heavy gold, that hasn't been acted onby chemicals, happens to have been deposited during the erosion of amountain which was composed of gold-bearing rock. The rock has beenwashed into sand and gravel and a great deal of it taken out to sea.There's plenty of gold in the sea, as I told you before.

  "But the amount of sand or gravel to be panned along a creek or riveris limited. When that's washed over, there's no more to find. Aprospector gets down to bed-rock and he's through. Then he's eithergot to pack up and hunt some new spot where the same erosion hashappened, or, if he's clever enough, he's got to find the rock or reeffrom which the gold was washed out. If he doesn't know his geology,he's apt to waste his time.

  "Then the scientific expert and the capitalist come in. It's the manwith money who profits most by a poor man's strike. He can afford tosit back and wait. Presently the expert will come back and reportwhere the gold-bearing rock lies. The capitalist arrives with hugemachinery for mining and crushing the rock, for turning on enormouswater-power, in short, for performing a sort of artificial erosion ina few days which Nature took hundreds of thousands of years to do. Hepockets millions, where the prospectors who did the first work onlyget thousands, or even hundreds, or, sometimes, nothing at all.

  "Your father was perfectly right, Jim, in saying that the prizes ofprospecting are for the man who gets there first. Placers are bound topeter out quickly. They are Nature's purses, and a purse hasn't anymore money in it than you put in. Even the Klondyke, that astoundingpocket of riches, lasted only three years and then dwindled down.

  "Some of these days, all the available places of the earth will havebeen worked over by the casual prospector, and then his day will bedone. The ever-hoping rover of the pick, shovel, and pan is becomingextinct. Even now, the only spots which hold out any chance of pocketsof gold are in the almost inaccessible section of the globe.

  "The daring seeker for gold must go to the bleak ranges of the frigidNorth, where, even in
the middle of the summer, the ground is frozenas hard as a rock a few inches below the surface; or else to thejungle-clad slopes of the tropics, where fever and stewing heat menacehim with ever-present death; or yet to regions so far removed fromcivilization that the white man has not yet penetrated there. Theshores of the Arctic Ocean, the steaming equatorial forests of theEastern Andes, or the untrodden valleys of the inner Himalayas offerthe most hopes to the prospector. But he may spend all the gold-dusthe finds, and more, to go there and return.

  "The tundras of Alaska and eastward to Hudson Bay still contain placergold, to a surety, gold not difficult to find if a man is willing toface an Arctic winter and a mosquito-haunted summer to work there.It's a wonder to me, Jim, that your father didn't join the great rushto the Fraser River, in British Columbia, in 1856. That was a mad andsorrowful stampede, if ever there was one!"

  "He was crazy about the Fraser," Jim answered. "All that kep' him fromgoin' was the smash-up o' the Kern River rush, which lef' himdead-broke an' nigh starvin', like I told you. But he never forgot theFraser. That's what took us up north, to wind up with.

  "It was in '79, when I was twenty years old, that Father comes intothe cabin, an' says, point blank,

  "'We're a-goin' to the Kootenay.'

  "'Where's that?' I asks.

  "'Somewheres up near the Fraser River. There's gold there, so they'resayin', like there was on the Sacramento in '49. An' thar ain't noone, hardly, thar! Fust one in gits it all.'

  "I tried to reason with him. So did Mother, but it weren't no mannero' use. A week later, we was gone."

  "I shouldn't have thought he'd have found much on the Kootenay," saidOwens reflectively, "it's all vein mining there. That needs heavycrushing machinery."

  "Not all," Jim corrected. "There's some glacial gravel there an' wewashed out enough to pay our way. But Father wanted something bigger.

  "We struck out from West Kootenay an' hit the trail for Six MileCreek, near Kicking Horse Pass, in Upper East Kootenay. We stayedthere a while, but some one, who had a grudge agin the Mormons, pulledhis gun on Father. A 'forty-niner' ain't apt to be lazy on the shoot,an' Father's gun spit first. We didn't wait for the funeral, but movedon, an' lively, at that, strikin' for the Fraser."

  "Good thing for you the N. W. M. P. (North West Mounted Police),didn't strike your trail!" commented Owens.

  "It was a straight-enough deal," protested Jim, "an' the N. W.'s ha'got plenty o' sense. But that wasn't no reason for hangin' around,lookin' for trouble. We thought the Fraser'd be healthier. As itturned out, it wasn't.

  "The Fraser boom was dead. The shacks in the ol' minin' camps wasrottin' to ruin. The machinery--what little there was of it--was lyin'there, rustin'. The sluices had all fallen to bits, except on HopRabbit Creek. A couple o' hundred men was there still, workin' overthe tailin's, but they was all Chinamen. Up the creek a ways some o'them was pannin'.

  "Second day we was there, a big Chink comes up to me, an' says, veryquiet like,

  "'You plenty sabbee? Run away quick!'

  "It didn't look that way to me, for I don't take to orderin'. I wasgood an' ready to drop that Chink in his tracks, but I did a littlethinkin' first. Two hundred agin two is big odds. I nodded, an' thebig Chink turns away.

  "I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was thatstubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the wholecamp. He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' gothimself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jesttold him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike onthe Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was offin an hour."

  "But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimedClem.

  "If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' dowhat he's told. But in a boom camp that white folks have given up an'quit, if Johnny Chink comes in, he won't let nary a white come back. Iknow! One o' my pardners was in the massacre o' Happy Man Gulch in'87. That's a yarn worth hearin'! I'll tell it you, some time.

  "Out we trailed to the Cassiar, an', funny enough, though I'd onlybeen bluffin' to Father about the strike there, we landed on the paygravel the very day after French Pete had struck a pocket. He was agood prospector, was French Pete, an' knew more'n most, but he wastimid like, an' glad to have us there. He could handle Indians--he wasa half-breed himself--but he was that superstitious, he was afraid o'the dark, alone. He was religious, too, an' Father an' him got alongtogether famous. We staked out a claim, right next to his, an', for afew weeks, cleaned up a good fifty dollars a day.

  "Then, one fine mornin', a bunch o' redskins come down, friends o'French Pete. They palavered some, an', after a while, French Pete hecomes over to us an' says:

  "'We got three days to get out!'

  "Father he put up an awful howl an' was for plugging the redskins fullo' holes, pronto. But French Pete puts it to him that these Injuns washis friends, an' shootin' wouldn't go. There'd been some kind o' dealbetween this tribe an' the Chilkoots, an' every miner on the Divideknew more'n plenty about the Chilkoots. They'd tortured to deathGeorgie Holt, the first prospector that ever went over the ChilkootPass, an' more'n one miner that got into their country wasn't neverheard of no more.

  "So Father puts it up to French Pete where he's goin' next. FrenchPete is a good pardner, an' tells a queer tale, but he tells itstraight. He allows there's gold on the islands off the coast an'shows the lay.

  "Some years afore, so he says, Joe Juneau, an old-time Hudson Baytrapper, an' Dick Harris, one o' the forty-niners, had found color onGold Creek, near the coast, an' had made a pile. Juneau went onprospectin', though he was rich, an', havin' a generous streak,grub-staked any man what asked him. That way he got a big share in theplacers found on Silver Bow and doubled his pile. Some otherprospectors what he'd grub-staked reported havin' found gold on theislands, but nothin' extraordinary. Harris, havin' a business head,stuck around Gold Creek (the present town of Juneau was formerlycalled Harrisburg) an' got rich a-plenty. Juneau an' Harris had more'nenough to look after, an' never got over to the islands.

  "French Pete, he's an old friend of Juneau an' he knows about thisisland game. He reckons it'd be worth pannin'. There's sure-enoughgold up thar to pay for the workin', an' there might be a chance for abig haul, seein' no one is prospectin' thar. He offers to show Fatherwhere the placers are supposed to be, if he's willin' to come along.Father likes to stick by his pardner an' agrees.

  "From Cassiar we hoofed it back to Juneau--a long an' a hardtrail--an', after buyin' a small sailboat an' grub enough for threemonths, we struck out for Douglas Island. French Pete handled thatboat like a cowboy does a buckin' bronc. We was green wi' scare inthat wild sea, full o' chunks o' ice clashin' all around, but the oldtrapper never turns a hair. Presently we landed on a beach whichlooked like it was a seal rookery, once, an' works our way to where agood-sized creek comes plungin' down to the sea.

  "Juneau had it right. The sands along the creek were full o' color,but the dust was small an' it was slow pannin'. It was all we could doto make fourteen dollars a day in dust, workin' fourteen hours a day,maybe; poor pickin's for a spot costin' so much cash an' trouble toget to.

  "French Pete, though, had plenty o' savvy. From the lie o' the rock,he reckoned this thin placer gold must ha' been washed out o' thelittle mountain what sticks up in one corner o' the island. He let hisplacer claim go for a while and prospected for ore. At last he foundwhat he thought looked like the best spot. The ore was poor in color,but so soft an' rotten that it could be smashed into dust with ahammer, an' the gold--what little there was of it--separated out easy.

  "We all staked out half-a-dozen claims, doin' enough work on each tohold title. Since French Pete had brought us to the island, an' shownthe rock besides, Father an' I promised to give him a quarter o'whatever we got for our claims, if we ever sold 'em.

  "Off went French Pete in the sail-boat, leavin' us marooned on DouglasIsland, an' in a pickle of a mess supposin' he shouldn
't return! Buthe come back, sure enough, after about six weeks, havin' found JohnTreadwell, a minin' man, who undertakes to buy our claims if Juneau,after havin' looked 'em over, says they're all right.

  "Juneau an' Treadwell come, a couple o' days after, wi' one o' theseup-to-date engineer Johnnies. The ore's low-grade, but there's headenough in the creek to run stamp mills by water-power, which makescheap crushin'. Treadwell pays French Pete $15,000 for his claims an'Father an' me $10,000 apiece. Then he buys up the rest o' the islandfor next to nothin'. The Treadwell mine's a big un, now, workin' 540stamp mills, an', as Mr. Owens says, it's makin' millions out o' lowgrade ore.

  "Father had promised Mother, as soon as he got $10,000 clear, he'd goback home. She holds him to it. After payin' French Pete what wepromised, there's $10,000 for Father an' $5,000 for me, besides whatwas left from the Cassiar an' Douglas Island placer clean-ups. Fatheran' Mother went back to Utah, leavin' me wi' French Pete an'Treadwell.

  "But Father couldn't stand it long. While he was prospectin', allhours, all weathers, he was tough an' strong. Back in town, he begunto pine. In less'n a year he was dead. Mother didn't live long afterhim. That lef' me on my own hook. Douglas Island was too slow, thoughTreadwell offered me a good job as long's I cared to stick it out. ButI wanted to be off an' away, feelin' sure, some day, I'd make my bigstrike.

  "I was foot-loose, now, wi' five thousand in dust an' the whole worldto roam in. Where was I goin' to find the place where the sands wasnothin' but gold? Somewheres, I was sure! Some day I'd strike it richan' never have to work no more. Out in the wild beyond, where no oneelse was, millions was waitin' for me!"