The A B C of Mining: A Handbook for ProspectorsBramble, Charles A.
Science
The A B C of Mining: A Handbook for Prospectors
Bramble, Charles A.
Mining engineering; Prospecting
Certain minerals are likely to be found associated. Cassiterite goes
with boron and tourmaline, topaz, fluor spar and lithia-mica; all
containing fluorine. It is also found with wolfram, chlorite and
arsenical pyrites. Magnetite is often accompanied by rocks containing
garnet, epidote and hornblende. Zinc blend and galena may occupy the
same vein, which is likely to be of baryta or heavy spar. Much galena
carries silver. Gold is associated with many metallic sulphides such
as iron, magnetic, and copper pyrites, mispickel, galena, blend,
stibnite and tetrahedrite. Gypsum accompanies salt.
Surface indications may be described as: Form of ground, color,
outcrop, decomposed and detached mineral, mineral deposits from
springs, altered or peculiar vegetation and other similar guides. A
hard quartz outcrop often stands up like a wall and is traceable for
miles. The Rainbow silver bearing lode of Butte, Montana, stood 20
feet above the surface. Soft minerals, such as clay, are cut into and
sunk below the surrounding level. Deposits of Kaolin or China clay are
usually so found.
Any special bright coloration of the rocks of a district merits
investigation. Copper gives green, blue, and red stains; iron, red or
brown; manganese, black; lead, green, yellow or white; cobalt, pink;
cinnabar or quicksilver, vermilion. The nickel deposits of New
Caledonia were made known to the world by the explorer Garnier in
1863, his curiosity having been aroused by the delicate green coating
given the rocks by an ore containing water, quartz, nickel and
magnesium.
Hard beds of shale decompose on the surface into soft clay, and a
still more noticeable change is the conversion of ores containing
sulphur into oxides. This chemical change causes the gossan or "iron
hat," for which token of underlying wealth the prospector should be
eternally watchful. This alteration may extend downward four or five
hundred feet from the surface, but in such cases the true weathering
has ceased long before the limit of discoloration is reached, and the
change of substance is due to the filtering of surface waters through
the vein.
Gossan varies greatly in its nature. Galena becomes anglesite,
cerussite, pyromorphite and mimetite. Copper pyrite changes into
native copper, melaconite, cuprite, malachite, chessylite, or perhaps
into a phosphate, arsenate, or silicate of the metal. Carbonate of
manganese gives the black oxides and silver sulphide ores are, after
weathering, known as native silver, kerargyrite and embolite.
The ore in the gossan is very generally more valuable than it will be
below, and this is especially true of gold and silver ores. The gold
having been set free from the close embrace in which the iron pyrite
held it previous to the latter's oxidation, it is now readily caught
by quicksilver. Silver under similar conditions becomes chloride, and
likewise amalgamates without difficulty.
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