Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900 — John Shaqi
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The gold itself occurs in an exceedingly fine state of subdivision, too
fine in most cases to be caught without mercury or the best arrangement
of “blanketings.” Much of it is really in the condition of colors
dissected nearly to their finest particles, and it is hardly surprising
that it should have so long escaped detection. Occasionally pieces to
the value of three to six cents are obtained in the pans, and I was
witness to the finding of a scale with the value of perhaps nearly
twenty cents. The usual magnetitic particles are associated with the
gold, and their origin can clearly be traced to the magnetite which
is so abundantly found in some of the schists (micaceous, chloritic,
and talcose schists), which, judged by the fragments and bowlders
that everywhere lie in the path of the streams of the tundra, must be
closely similar to the series of schists of the Klondike region. The
particles of fragmented garnet, which by their astonishing abundance
give so distinctive a coloring to the layers which they compose or
constitute, are of about the ordinary fineness of seashore sand,
perhaps a trifle coarser, but occasionally much coarser particles or
masses of particles are found; and in the placer deposits of Anvil
Creek, as in the bunch of claims around “Discovery”--about five miles
due north of Nome--fragments of the size of lentils are not uncommon.
I have seen full garnets obtained from the wash here which were of the
size of small peas. Nodules of manganese (manganite, pyrolusite) are at
intervals found with them, and some stream-tin (cassiterite), as in the
Klondike region, also appears to be present. Apart from the evidence
that is brought down by the magnetite and garnet, it would naturally be
assumed that the gold had its primal source in the mountains back of
the coast. These, as has already been stated, have undergone exhaustive
degradation, and the materials resulting from their destruction,
in whatever way brought about, have been thrown into the sea, and
there adjusted and readjusted--or, so far as the gold particles are
concerned, one might say “concentrated.” Latterly, and perhaps this is
also true to-day, the land has undergone elevation, and exposed much
that until recently properly belonged to the sea. The tundra is a part
of this ocean floor, and it too doubtless contains much gold, perhaps
even very much.
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