exception that residence upon the ground is not required, nor are
improvements essential. In cases of dispute as to priority of location,
the land office will recognize those claimants who have expended the
greater amounts in improvements. One citizen may locate but one claim of
160 acres.
Since April 10, 1909, the Government has been disposing of its public
coal lands under a classification that takes note of many details. The
kind, grade, thickness, and purity of coal; the number of workable
seams; the depth; the features of local supply; transportation
facilities; and the average prices at which similar private tracts are
held, are among the items recognized in the classification. Probably no
two tracts will be sold at the same rate. In general, the new prices are
higher than the flat prices that formerly prevailed and some pieces of
land are now estimated as high as $175 per acre. In every case of
application to purchase coal land, hereafter, the area in question will
undergo inspection by Government experts and a price will then be
assessed. This law is being severely opposed as being unreasonably
severe, and its amendment may be looked for.
Placer lands were formerly permitted to be taken up in any shape, the
boundary stakes being placed upon the ground in such a manner as to
include only the desirable area, which is usually of an alluvial nature
along some valley or gulch. This practice has been forbidden, however,
and a locator is now obliged to take up his land in quadrilateral tracts
conforming to the subdivisions of the so-called Public Survey. By this
rule, it is permissible to file upon land which is laid off into lots of
not less than 1/16 of a quarter section--or ten acres--and a claim may
be composed of such lots as lie contiguously and which may thus be
considered as one complete workable area. The claims are often of zigzag
or L shapes, but the locator is enabled, at the extra expense of
subdivision surveying, to avoid filing upon, and paying for, much ground
that he feels is not desirable in a placer claim. The Government does
not survey public domain into smaller tracts than quarter sections of
160 acres each, so that in the taking up of placers it often involves a
great deal of expense to carry the subdivisions upon the ground into
sufficient detail to ascertain the location of boundary corners.
One person is entitled to as many placer claims as he desires. Each
claim of a single individual may contain not to exceed 20 acres and, as
said, it must be of one continuous area. Associations of citizens to the
number of eight may unite in the location of 160 acres, which will then
be held in equal and common interest by the several locators. The
restraint placed upon greed in the matter of locations, either placer or
lode, lies in certain expenses entailed in work or improvements upon the
land before patent may be issued and the legal requirement of the
performance of labor upon each claim amounting to $100 per annum. Also,
it is required that _bona fide_ values be disclosed upon the ground. For
each 20 acres located under the placer laws of the United States, not
less than $500 worth of improvements must be made before the issuance
of a patent.
The legal (not the technical) definition of lode land covers all grounds
containing deposits of ore in its natural and original place of deposit.
Under the laws, therefore, a citizen may file upon a tract of land to
include a vein, lode, mass, chimney or any other form of ore body. The
laws were framed at a time when miners were familiar only with the
steep, tabular forms, synonymously termed veins or lodes in their
nomenclature, and there were introduced features which time and progress
in geological investigations have proved to be entirely unsuited to the
needs of locators in many districts.
Our statutes provide that a lode claim may not exceed an area of 20,662
acres, this being the area of a parallelogram 1,500 feet long by 600
feet wide. The intention is to permit a discoverer to lay off a "lode
line" along the outcrop of his vein for a distance of 1,500 feet and, at
each end, to measure off, at right angles, a distance of 300 feet each
way, merely as assurance that he covers the entire thickness of his
lode. Since the surface contours of rugged country will crook the
outcrop of a dipping plane (such as we may imagine a vein to be) the
laws were constructed to permit a claim being laid off with angles or
bends in the boundaries so that the outcrop might be kept closely along
the middle of the claim.
The above dimensions and area are the maximum permissible under the
Federal laws. The Government does not say that claims may not be less in
extent, anywhere, nor does it prevent states, counties or even mining
districts from making further limitations. In most of the western mining
states and territories that have applied the mining law, the full
maximum is allowed; but in Colorado no claim is legal if it exceeds a
width of 300 feet, while in four counties of the same state claims have
been restricted in width to 150 feet. By legislative enactment, since
September 1, 1911, claims in all counties of Colorado are permitted to
be taken up 300 feet in width. The citizens or miners of any new
district, in any state or territory, may elect to limit claims to any
size less than the maximum granted by the statutes and such a decision
will be recognized by courts as binding upon all comers. This is an
example of the rights of custom in establishing common law. In all
shapes and widths of lode claims, there is now the rigid restriction
that the two end-lines must be laid off exactly parallel.
[Illustration: A GILPIN COUNTY, COLORADO, SCENE, Showing the Prize,
Gunnell, Concrete, Gold Collar, and Eureka Mines.]
The laws of our country contemplate the right of any locator of a vein
to follow such vein down upon its dip, even if it extends beyond
vertical planes passed through the side boundaries. The vertical planes
through the end-lines, however, may not lawfully be penetrated in the
extraction of ore bodies. The application of this doctrine of
"extra-lateral rights" has led to innumerable controversies that have
crippled many worthy mining enterprises. The inevitable habit of
different veins to intersect, branch, unite, and in many other ways to
cause complications, has served no purpose but to delay operations,
cause legal warfare and embitter neighbors. So unjust have been courts'
decisions in interpreting the lax laws that various mining districts
have taken unto themselves the prerogative of deciding for themselves
what is justice to all concerned; and we therefore find that many
"camps" have unwritten laws under which claimants are restrained in
their underground operations, to the ground contained between vertical
planes _through all boundaries_, whether end or side. This is obviously
the only fair plan, and it is hoped that, whenever the legislators at
Washington get time to give to the matter the attention it deserves, our
nation will be favored with a revision of this and a number of other
objectionable mining laws which have retarded the industry. Ours is the
only country having laws permitting extra-lateral rights and, upon this
score, we are criticized by all foreigners.
The Canadian government appears to leave the framing of mining laws to
the several provincial governments. Ontario and Quebec have very good
and simple laws relative to mining claims. In some respects the laws of
the two provinces are similar. For example, in each province a claim
must be laid out as a subdivision of the usual public survey and is
normally 40 acres in extent. Again, no prospecting or locating may be
done except by persons holding so-called miners' licenses or miners'
certificates, which cost $5 to $10 per year. No extra-lateral rights are
recognized.
In Ontario, a patent may be applied for any time within 3-1/2 years of
the date of certificate of record, and the land is purchased outright by
the payment of $3 per acre. The patent thus obtained conveys no rights
to timber or water on the property. In Quebec, patents are never issued
and mining claims are held by a sort of lease, as it were. A license to
hold a mining claim costs a flat fee of $10, plus an extra fee of one
dollar per acre. At times, arrangements are made for holding and working
mining property upon a 3 per cent royalty basis.
The Mexican laws permit the location of any number of claims by
individuals. A locator is required to employ an expert (_perito_) to
make a careful survey of his claims (_pertinencias_), which are taken up
in rectangular form. Measurements are according to the metric system,
and the unit of area is the _hectara_, which is the area of a square
with 100-meter (328-feet) sides, and is equivalent to 2.471 acres. The
government's sale price for mineral ground is 5 _pesos_ (about $2.50)
per hectare, or approximately one dollar, United States money, per acre.
The unit size of a claim is a hectare, and it thus comes about that the
words _pertinencia_ and _hectara_ are used somewhat synonymously.
Under United States laws, the owner of agricultural land, if he has not
committed perjury in perfecting his title, will hold all minerals which
may be disclosed subsequently to the granting of his deed. The proof of
false representations will rescind any such patent and the ground will
revert to the Government and be again open to location.
In the surveying and laying off of mineral claims for patent purposes,
the United States laws require the claimant to put the work into the
hands of a mineral surveyor. Such a surveyor may usually be engaged in
any mining district and he will hold a commission from the Department
of the Interior authorizing him to do this sort of work. He will have
passed certain examinations as to his capabilities and he will have
filed bonds in the sum of $5,000 for the faithful performance of his
duties to both the Government and his client. He receives no
compensation from the Government, and each claimant may make such terms
with him as are equitable. He must hold no interest, directly or
otherwise, in the property he surveys, nor is he permitted to file upon
any mineral land. If he undertakes a case for a client his duties
require him to survey the boundaries of every other mineral claim which
may be contiguous to, or conflicting with, the one in question, and his
maps must accurately show all such claims. His notes will contain
sufficient data to accurately convey the exact location, the chief
topographical features, the conflicts with all other locations, the
position, and description of all mining improvements, and many other
details which will be required in the final purchase of the land from
the Government. The surveyor's fee will vary from $50 to possibly $200
for a single claim, much depending upon the nature of the survey,
whether simple or difficult, and upon local financial conditions and
competition.
After the filing of the mineral surveyor's notes and plats with the
Surveyor-General, critical examination of the documents is made, and if
they are found to conform with all requirements, the case is "approved"
and it may then pass to the local land office of the district. Next
begins a publication period of sixty days, during which opportunity is
offered the public to enter objections to the issuance of a patent,
either for reasons of conflict or because of fraud. If no such adverse
proceedings are instituted, the patent will follow, in due time.
The ultimate expense of securing a patent to a claim of, say, the
maximum area will not be less than $225, and it may run as high as $300
if in a region difficult to survey or if there are a good many
conflicting surveys.
A mineral surveyor is prohibited from acting as attorney for the
claimant in presenting his claims before the Land Office, so an
attorney's fee must be added to the above rough estimates. As a matter
of fact, although the surveyor does not nominally appear as the
attorney, in many a case it is he who makes out all of the documents to
be then signed by an attorney in fact. The laws are faulty in this
respect. The lawyer recognizes this fact and he asks the surveyor to
make out the many legal forms; for who is so fully cognizant of the
property and the desires of the claimant as the surveyor who has become
intimately acquainted with the premises, its workings, its desirable
features and everything concerned with the adjustment of conflicts? It
is to be expected that he could best protect the claimant's interests,
and it is wrong to retire him at this very critical time prescribed by a
foolish law. The fee of an additional man in the case is an unjust
burden upon the client. Land Office officials have recognized this fact.
They know that the best documents reaching their offices are those
prepared by mineral surveyors.
VII
PLACERING.
Different writers hold the following slightly different definitions of a
placer: One says, "a placer is a surface _accumulation_ of minerals in
the wash of streams and seas," while another writes that a placer is "a
_place_ where surface depositions _are washed_ for valuable minerals,
such as gold, tin, tungsten, gems, etc." One definition conveys no
notion of the operations of mining, but is merely geological, while the
other involves the thought of the recovery of values.
No matter how or where found, placers were all originally of surface
deposition. They are now found in gulches, canyons, valleys, ocean and
lake beaches, glacial drifts, and sometimes beneath eruptive flows. Such
placers as occupy the courses of streams are spoken of as gulch, valley,
bar, and bench placers. The meanings of the first three names are
obvious. By a bench placer is understood a deposit that was originally
the bed of a stream, but which, in the course of time, has been cut
down, or through, in such a manner as to leave a shelf or bench of the
"wash" hanging up some distance above the present base of the gulch or
valley.
When such deposits that have been covered by lava flows are disclosed
and worked, they go by the name of "buried placers." They are, by no
means, uncommon, and typical "drift mines" of this sort are operated in
California and New Zealand. They present the novelty of working alluvial
deposits under cover of solid rocks, and they thus conform to one of the
early definitions of a mine, as previously given. Since the workings of
such subterranean placers are generally confined to an approximately
horizontal zone, the mine passages, to a certain degree, resemble those
of a coal mine.
Placer deposits, being of a secondary nature, the materials are not in
the place nor form of the original components. The gravels and sands,
together with the valuable contents, probably originally existed in
some solid forms such as rocks or massive minerals. The primary
structures, in the course of ages and by atmospheric agencies, have been
disintegrated and carried by gravity and flowing water to lower levels.
The finer the decomposed material, the further it has been transported.
If the original rocks carried gold, the flakes of the metal, being of
high specific gravity, would tend to settle to the bottom of the
channels and to be carried shorter distances than would the lighter,
non-metallic particles. The finer the gold, the more evenly will it be
distributed in the bed of gravel. Likewise, placers near the heads of
gulches, as a rule, carry coarser gold than those farther down stream.
The valuable materials found in placers must, of necessity, be those
that possess the property of resisting corrosion and disintegration. The
minerals and metals are, therefore, of a very permanent character.
Every find of "values" in a placer is unquestioned evidence that
somewhere, above the present deposit, there originally existed primary
depositions containing the valuable metals or minerals. The trail can
frequently be traced back to them. These so-called "mother lodes" are
not necessarily rich. In the case of gold, for instance, these original
deposits of ore may not carry the metal in coarse enough particles to be
visible and yet the placers may contain nuggets. There are numerous
theories proposed to account for this observed phenomenon, but we will
not discuss them here. The fact remains that nuggets have been actually
produced artificially in flowing water under conditions similar to
Nature's.
The methods of prospecting and working placer ground have undergone many
improvements, but there are still many men practicing the primitive ways
of a generation ago. The use of devices of simple construction and for
operation by muscular effort is still familiar in many regions; and
there are good miners who cling to such practice in the belief that it
is the cheapest and truest way in which to ascertain the values of wash
deposits. Also, there are many placers of limited areas and irregular
shapes that cannot be well handled in any other manner.
With a "pan," a man can wash, in ten hours, not over one cubic yard of
dirt; and to accomplish this amount of washing the ground must be very
loose and favorable. An ordinary ten-hour day's work is about 100 pans.
This is equivalent to about one-half of a cubic yard, which is the unit
of volume in all placering operations. One may thus readily arrive at
the cost of carrying on operations in this way. A cubic yard of ordinary
placer dirt is the equivalent of less than two tons. A _batea_ is the
Mexican equivalent for the American iron gold pan. It is a sort of
broad, conical, wooden bowl and its capacity is not equal to the pan.
A "rocker" or "cradle" is a trough on rockers somewhat like the
old-fashioned child's cradle. In using it, a stream of water is caused
to flow into the device which has been nearly filled with gravel and the
miner gives it a rocking motion that causes the contents to classify or
stratify according to the laws of specific gravity. The valuable
particles, being the heaviest, will settle to the bottom, whence they
may be subsequently removed. A "long tom" is an inclined, narrow box set
stationary with a constant stream of water entering at the upper end.
Gravel is also shoveled into the device at the same point. The process
is more continuous than the preceding ones, the values accumulating at
the bottom of the lower end, while the upper layers of gravel are
carefully removed by skimming with shovels. The work will keep two men
busy and the capacity is correspondingly greater. With a long tom, two
men will ordinarily handle about five or six cubic yards in ten hours.
Whenever deposits of a broad area, with considerable and uniform depth,
are thought to be valuable, it has become a practice to prove their
value by "prospect drilling." This is a mechanical method and one form
of apparatus employed is of the churn-drill type common throughout oil
and coal regions. With these portable machines, holes are put down to
bed-rock at intervals across the ground. As they are sunk, the holes are
cased with iron pipes, the drillings are carefully saved and washed, and
the values are estimated for each foot of descent. From the summation
and averages obtained from all the holes, a very fair knowledge of the
ground's worth can be obtained.
Intensive placering is now the order of things and the marvelous
increase in the use of dredges attests the success which these "gold
ships" have attained. It is very interesting to watch the operations of
these huge boats loaded with ponderous machines, especially when they
are installed in inland regions or up in high mountain gulches. Yet
numbers of them are thus in steady use. Wherever suitable beds with a
tolerably uniform size of boulders and gravel are found, dams are built
to retain the flows of streams until ponds are created of sufficient
size to contain and float the barges.
[Illustration: DREDGES OF YUBA CONSOLIDATED GOLDFIELDS, HAMMONTON,
CALIFORNIA.]
Continual improvements are being made in the construction of these
mammoth machines with a view to economy in operations that will
result from greater capacities. All costs of placering are reckoned per
cubic yard washed. Costs have been rapidly dropping during the past
decade until now some companies, with extensive operations, are handling
dirt at not to exceed three cents per cubic yard for excavating,
washing, wasting the refuse, maintenance, repairs, labor, taxes,
interest on investment, and the depreciation of equipment. Such figures
will hold good only under very favorable natural conditions of ground
and climate such as prevail in California; they have not been attained
in the frigid regions of Alaska nor in the torrid South American
interior. In view of the wonderful improvements brought forth by
mechanical engineers, it is improper to deny that the future will bring
still further reductions in placer costs. On the contrary, the signs are
good for material reductions.
Dredges are very costly in their installation. They are usually designed
to handle so many thousands of cubic yards per day. It has been stated,
as a fair but rough rule, that "bucket" dredges will average, in
initial cost, one dollar for every cubic yard the boats will handle per
month. Thus, if a dredge of this type is built to treat fifty or seventy
thousand cubic yards in a month, working steadily, the costs will be
respectively $50,000 or $70,000. Other types of dredges, known as the
"dipper" and the "suction," will cost less than the bucket type, but
have not gained general usage.
"Hydraulicking" is extensively practiced. This term signifies the
working of placer deposits by water which is conducted through flumes
and pipe-lines and, by means of nozzles called "giants" or "monitors,"
is directed, in huge jets, against the banks of gravel. These banks or
walls are thus torn down and, by the same water, the loosened,
disintegrated materials are caused to flow into and through long,
wooden, box-like troughs known as "sluices." The floors of these sluices
are paved with ribs, cleats or other obstructions termed "riffles" whose
function it is to retard and collect the heavy particles which may,
later, during the process of cleaning up, be removed as the valuable
product. The word "sluicing" is frequently used quite synonymously with
hydraulicking.
Costs of this latter sort of placering are considerably higher than
those of dredging; but there are many deposits not adapted to dredging
operations that may be nicely worked by sluicing, so that there will
always be a field for this scheme. Average costs are difficult to obtain
since it happens that most of the companies now operating hydraulically
are secretive in their accounts. More labor is entailed, more time is
required, greater delay is occasioned in cleaning up, and the amount of
water used is much greater. Where water is abundant, this last item need
not be considered. It is well to remember that even a very large dredge,
while requiring a continual and large flow of water through its devices,
can still operate with just the water in which it floats, this water
being pumped and used repeatedly; whereas, in the case of hydraulic
mining, the water may be used but once and, consequently, there must be
a large supply and at a good head or pressure.
But, in spite of these disparaging points, we find instances in which,
under peculiarly favorable conditions, hydraulicking has been carried on
at very low figures. E. B. Wilson says: "The yield of the gravel at
North Bloomfield was 7.75 cents per cubic yard; the cost of mining, 4.1
cents per cubic yard. The yield per cubic yard of gravel at La Grange
was 10.19 cents, the cost of mining, 6 cents. The costs of mining at
these two mines would analyze about as follows: Labor, 60 per cent;
supplies, 17 per cent; water, 13 per cent; office, 10 per cent. Ground
carrying but 3.99 cents per cubic yard has been worked at a profit at
the first mine. With such a small margin to work on, it is evident that
skill and executive ability must be provided from the pipemen up." It is
claimed that an Idaho mine was worked profitably with less than two
cents value in the dirt, but this is to be regarded with some doubt.