To make an amalgamating assay that will prove the amount of gold which can be got from a ton of your lode, take a number of samples from different parts, both length and breadth. The drillings from the blasting bore-holes collected make the best test. When finely triturated weigh off one or two pounds, place in a black iron pan (it must not be tinned), with 4 ozs. of mercury, 4 ozs. salt, 4 ozs. soda, and about half a gallon of boiling water; then, with a stick, stir the pulp constantly, occasionally swirling the dish as in panning off, till you feel certain that every particle of the gangue has come in contact with the mercury; then carefully pan off into another dish so as to lose no mercury. Having got your amalgam clean squeeze it through a piece of chamois leather, though a good quality of new calico previously wetted will do as well. The resulting pill of hard amalgam can then be wrapped in a piece of brown paper, placed on an old shovel, and the mercury driven off over a hot fire; or a clay tobacco pipe, the mouth being stopped with clay, makes a good retort (see “Rules of Thumb,” pipe and potato retorting). The residue will be retorted gold, which, on being weighed and the result multiplied by 2240 for a 1 lb. assay, or by 1120 for 2 lb., will give the amount of gold per ton which an ordinary battery might be expected to save. Thus 1 grain to the pound, 2240 lbs. to the ton, would show that the stuff contained 4 oz. 13 dwt. 8 gr. per ton. If there should be much base metal in your sample such as say stibnite (sulphide of antimony), a most troublesome combination to the amalgamator--instead of the formula mentioned above add to your mercury about one dwt. of zinc shavings or clippings, and to your water sufficient sulphuric acid to bring it to about the strength of vinegar (weaker, if anything, not stronger), place your material preferably in an earthenware or enamelled basin if procurable, but iron will do, and intimately mix by stirring and shaking till the mercury has taken up all it can. Retort as before described. This device is my own invention. Never use the same pan for mercury and for prospecting, as the mercury hides the gold by coating it.