WHERE TREASURE HIDES
"You won't be achin', none, to hear all o' my roamin's after I quit
the Sutro Tunnel," Jim resumed, a couple of days later, when Owens and
Clem came to hear the rest of his story, "so I'll cut 'em short. But
you'll be wantin' to hear how it was I got into that queer part o' the
country where I made my strike.
"It was Father's doin's more'n it was mine. I reckon I'd ha' stuck
around the Comstock Lode an' got into reg'lar silver-quartz minin' if
I'd gone my own way. But Father didn't have no use for silver. He was
a 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 a
sure-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 come
around, 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 up
his stakes an' git! It wasn't jest the money Father was after. He
liked huntin' after gold, jest for the sake o' huntin'. I've seen him
quit 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 there
was o' findin' gold, he used to say; the fewer the folks, the bigger
the clean-up. Looked like he was right, too, placer fields peter out
mighty 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 up
millions in dust, an' another ain't worth pannin'."
"There's no rule that will tell you where to find placer gold," the
mine-owner corrected, "but don't run away with the idea that gold
deposits are all freaks. As a matter of fact, there is a regular
science to help a good prospector in hunting for reef or quartz gold.
Whether he will find it in sufficient quantity to make the deposit
worth working is quite another matter.
"You mustn't think, Jim, that gold happens to be in one place and
happens not to be in another as a result of mere chance. There's no
chance in Nature. We think there is, sometimes, merely because the
factors 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 not
because we don't know how the gold came to be where it is, but because
we can't know the whole history of the Earth before Man came, and we
can'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-making
gold-mines of to-day, you would find that chance has played but a
small 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 in
the region, but most likely, he got but little out of it. It was the
scientific search which followed that revealed the location of the
great rock deposits below in which the gold was thinly scattered, and
it was highly specialized mining engineering which made them possible
to work. There are mines where ores containing only two dollars'
worth of gold (48 grains, a tenth of an ounce) to the ton are
successfully handled, and the greater part of the big gold-mines run
along 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 run
on a narrow margin of profit, a dollar or two to the ton of ore
crushed. So, you see, the works must be on a huge scale in order to
return a dividend on the investment. What's more, you can't afford to
establish a big plant unless there's an enormous amount of ore
available.
"It's an old rule of wise investors not to put money into a mine that
looks too rich. Why?
"Because rich ore generally peters out fast. The rich mines always
catch the suckers easily, and they're the ones who lose. A few cents a
ton profit on an immense deposit of low-grade ore means a sure return,
because, as a rule, such ore comes from a very old geological
formation where the gold is evenly scattered, and labor-saving
machinery can be put in with a certainty that those few cents of
profit will continue indefinitely.
"Gold, as you know, Jim, is always the same price. This has been
agreed upon by all nations. It is the one standard of value. It is
worth a fraction over $20 an ounce. Year in, year out, all over the
world, gold is worth the same.
"As a result, a gold-mine manager who knows the exact proportion of
gold per ton in the ore of his mine, can calculate to a cent how much
he can afford to pay for mining the ore, crushing it, and separating
the gold by chemical processes. He must figure on the cost of
installing his machinery, on his interest for original outlay, on
depreciation, on the cost of power for his machinery, on the water
power needed for crushing and washing, on transportation for his
supplies and on wages. Usually he will have to build his own railroad
and his own aqueducts. A little saving in one place--even a few cents
per 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.
[Illustration: WHERE DESERTS YIELD MILLIONS.
Mill of the Pittsburg-Silver Peak Gold Mining Co., Blair, Nevada.]
[Illustration: THE EATER OF MOUNTAINS.
A hydraulic jet of high pressure, washing away a hill of gravel and
sending 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 be
uneven in its yield of gold per ton--may be worthless, and why a
low-grade mine with an unchanging percentage may be worth millions, so
long as there is plenty of it. It all depends on the cost of
extracting the metal. There are scores, yes, hundreds of gold-deposits
well known to-day, which cannot be worked as long as gold stays $20 an
ounce, because it costs almost as much as that to get it out, but
which would be big money-makers if the gold were worth $25.
Three-quarters of the gold-mines of to-day would shut tight like a
clam, if gold were to drop in price even a dollar or two. What a
capitalist 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 the
important thing when we get to talking, later, over your find."
"That's all right," the old prospector answered, "but how can a man
tell when he's tappin' a big lot o' rock or jest a little, if it ain't
the free gold what shows him?"
"He can't tell, as a rule," the mine-owner rejoined. "It takes a
geologist 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, and
then 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 the
crust were in a melted and half-liquid state. So far as we can make
out, the metals seems to have classified themselves at that time, more
or less, according to density. The lighter elements came to the
surface, the heavier ones stayed at the bottom. It wasn't merely a
question of weight, but of gravitation, centrifugal action and a lot
of things I won't stop to explain to you now. Gold, as you know, is
heavy, 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't
altogether liquid, as the oceans are to-day. It was a seething mass of
different densities, some of it liquid, some of it slimy, some of it
thick like sticky mud, acted upon by fearful whirlwinds of electric
forces such as astronomers see in the sun to-day, and by powerful
internal currents which created vast churning whirlpools of
super-heated matter.
"It's impossible for us to tell where these electric whirlwinds passed
or where these currents were. So, since the original separation of the
metals was highly irregular, no geologist can say with certainty where
gold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.
"Then there's another complication. As you know, most of the metals
have chums or affinities with other substances, just as gold has with
mercury. These chums of the metals were also in that molten ocean, but
not always in the same proportions, nor yet distributed regularly. So
metallic compounds were formed at different times and in diverse
places. These compounds had varying densities, with the result that in
later 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, gold
was 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 of
the crust formed the mountains of the earliest or Primary Age. This
crust, 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 what
are known as the eruptive rocks, and these, too, carried up gold from
below. These rocks crystallized and the gold remained in them.
"But even that wasn't complicated enough for Mother Nature. In those
same eruptive rocks, both of the early and later periods, gold is
mainly found in veins. These veins are of dozens of different sorts,
depending on the rock in which they occur and on Nature's ways of
putting them there.
"To make it simple to you, I'll only mention two. The most general
method was by fumaroles. These are subterranean blow-holes of vapor
containing sulphur, tellurium, and chlorine compounds, as well as
super-heated steam. These vapors, projected from deep down in the
earth with incredible pressure and energy, acted on the new-made
rocks, formed compounds with the metals, or, when united with hydrogen
in the steam, separated the metals from solutions of their salts, and
forced the metals into cracks in the new-made and cooling eruptive
rocks. According to the kind of rock and the nature of the chemical
agent, a geologist will know for what type of vein to search. The
other most general agent of vein-making was hot water--generally
heavily saturated with sulphur and other chemicals--which dissolved
the gold. This hot water, with gold in solution, seeped into the
cracks and crevices made by the rock as it cooled, thus forming other
types of veins."
"Hold on a minute, there!" protested Jim. "Water won't dissolve gold."
"It will and does," was the retort, "especially when certain chemicals
are in the water. As a matter of fact, even to-day, the geysers at
Steamboat 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 came
a period of erosion, and the mountains were worn away. The gold being
harder than rock, it remained and made alluvial deposits of a very
early age. Some, of these old 'placers' are several miles below the
surface, now, others have come again to the surface by all the
superposed rock having been washed away, anew. Some of the gold was
dissolved, as before, and got into the crevices of the newly deposited
rocks made by erosion, known as sedimentary rocks. So, you see, Jim,
even millions of years ago, there was gold in the crystallized
eruptive rock, gold in veins of igneous rock, gold in alluvial
deposits, and, again, gold in veins in the sedimentary rocks.
"Then came another period of elevation, with a second raising up of
mountain ranges, and with a renewal of violent volcanic action. The
crust was getting more and more unequal, the way in which the metals
were distributed became more and more scattered. Mountains of the
Secondary Age were often made of Primary sedimentary rocks, or of
Primary igneous rocks, so much changed that geologists call them
metamorphic rocks. And, Jim, every time that the rock was changed, the
gold changed either its place or its compound character, or both. Then
came another period of erosion, lasting millions of years, the gold
was washed away to form new placers, or made its way into veins in the
Secondary sedimentary rocks.
"Then came the great upheaval of the Third or Tertiary Age, in which
new mountains rose, new volcanic vents were opened, and, once more,
much of the gold was acted upon by chemicals, mainly sulphur and
tellurium. In many places silver showed a strong affinity with gold,
forming deposits where the ores were commingled. Once more the
hundreds of centuries of erosion came, to be followed by the upheaving
of 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 and
of 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 a
hit-and-miss method. And I can show you just how even this little bit
of geology comes in to help the miner.
"Get this clearly in your head, Jim! Three-quarters of the present
gold production of the world comes from gold that is mixed with
pyrites--which is a sulphide of iron, or from tellurides--in which a
tellurium-hydrogen compound has been the chemical agent. A prospector,
therefore, who uncovers a new field where the gold is in the pyritous
or the telluride form has ten times more chance of attracting capital
than one who finds lumps of native gold lying around loose.
"It is when a prospector strikes a section where all the gold-bearing
rock has been eroded that he is apt to find the 'pockets' so dear to
his heart. The amazing riches of the Klondyke lay in the fact that
prospectors found, first, the alluvial deposits from the present age
in the sands of the running creeks, and, on ledges high above the
creeks and running into the rocks on either side, the alluvial
deposits, even thicker and richer, of a bygone time."
"You've got it right," declared Jim, emphatically. "I know 'cos I was
there!"
"Was it on the Yukon, then, that you made your famous strike?"
The prospector winced. Evidently, he intended to reach that point in
his own way.
"I'll tell you about that, after a bit," he answered evasively. "But
you ain't said why placer claims peter out."
"Can't you see? A placer claim doesn't show where the big store of
gold is, but where it isn't! It shows that the gold has gone. A placer
is just a spot where a little heavy gold, that hasn't been acted on
by chemicals, happens to have been deposited during the erosion of a
mountain which was composed of gold-bearing rock. The rock has been
washed 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 river
is limited. When that's washed over, there's no more to find. A
prospector gets down to bed-rock and he's through. Then he's either
got to pack up and hunt some new spot where the same erosion has
happened, or, if he's clever enough, he's got to find the rock or reef
from 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 man
with money who profits most by a poor man's strike. He can afford to
sit back and wait. Presently the expert will come back and report
where the gold-bearing rock lies. The capitalist arrives with huge
machinery for mining and crushing the rock, for turning on enormous
water-power, in short, for performing a sort of artificial erosion in
a few days which Nature took hundreds of thousands of years to do. He
pockets millions, where the prospectors who did the first work only
get thousands, or even hundreds, or, sometimes, nothing at all.
"Your father was perfectly right, Jim, in saying that the prizes of
prospecting are for the man who gets there first. Placers are bound to
peter out quickly. They are Nature's purses, and a purse hasn't any
more money in it than you put in. Even the Klondyke, that astounding
pocket of riches, lasted only three years and then dwindled down.
"Some of these days, all the available places of the earth will have
been worked over by the casual prospector, and then his day will be
done. The ever-hoping rover of the pick, shovel, and pan is becoming
extinct. Even now, the only spots which hold out any chance of pockets
of gold are in the almost inaccessible section of the globe.
"The daring seeker for gold must go to the bleak ranges of the frigid
North, where, even in the middle of the summer, the ground is frozen
as hard as a rock a few inches below the surface; or else to the
jungle-clad slopes of the tropics, where fever and stewing heat menace
him with ever-present death; or yet to regions so far removed from
civilization that the white man has not yet penetrated there. The
shores of the Arctic Ocean, the steaming equatorial forests of the
Eastern Andes, or the untrodden valleys of the inner Himalayas offer
the most hopes to the prospector. But he may spend all the gold-dust
he finds, and more, to go there and return.
"The tundras of Alaska and eastward to Hudson Bay still contain placer
gold, to a surety, gold not difficult to find if a man is willing to
face 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 rush
to the Fraser River, in British Columbia, in 1856. That was a mad and
sorrowful stampede, if ever there was one!"
"He was crazy about the Fraser," Jim answered. "All that kep' him from
goin' was the smash-up o' the Kern River rush, which lef' him
dead-broke an' nigh starvin', like I told you. But he never forgot the
Fraser. That's what took us up north, to wind up with.
"It was in '79, when I was twenty years old, that Father comes into
the 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're
sayin', like there was on the Sacramento in '49. An' thar ain't no
one, hardly, thar! Fust one in gits it all.'
"I tried to reason with him. So did Mother, but it weren't no manner
o' use. A week later, we was gone."
"I shouldn't have thought he'd have found much on the Kootenay," said
Owens reflectively, "it's all vein mining there. That needs heavy
crushing machinery."
"Not all," Jim corrected. "There's some glacial gravel there an' we
washed out enough to pay our way. But Father wanted something bigger.
"We struck out from West Kootenay an' hit the trail for Six Mile
Creek, near Kicking Horse Pass, in Upper East Kootenay. We stayed
there a while, but some one, who had a grudge agin the Mormons, pulled
his 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 moved
on, 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 it
turned out, it wasn't.
"The Fraser boom was dead. The shacks in the ol' minin' camps was
rottin' to ruin. The machinery--what little there was of it--was lyin'
there, rustin'. The sluices had all fallen to bits, except on Hop
Rabbit Creek. A couple o' hundred men was there still, workin' over
the 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, very
quiet like,
"'You plenty sabbee? Run away quick!'
"It didn't look that way to me, for I don't take to orderin'. I was
good an' ready to drop that Chink in his tracks, but I did a little
thinkin' first. Two hundred agin two is big odds. I nodded, an' the
big Chink turns away.
"I didn't say nothin' about the warnin' to Father, for he was that
stubborn he'd ha' waded right in an' tried to clean up the whole
camp. He wouldn't ha' had the chance of a rat in a trap. He'd ha' got
himself carved up in little slices an' that was about all. So I jest
told him that one o' the Chinks had reported there was a new strike on
the Cassiar. Father took the bait like a hungry trout an' we was off
in an hour."
"But I always thought Chinamen were such a peaceful lot!" exclaimed
Clem.
"If a Chink comes into a white camp, he's willin' to sing small an' do
what 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. I
know! 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 only
been bluffin' to Father about the strike there, we landed on the pay
gravel the very day after French Pete had struck a pocket. He was a
good prospector, was French Pete, an' knew more'n most, but he was
timid like, an' glad to have us there. He could handle Indians--he was
a half-breed himself--but he was that superstitious, he was afraid o'
the dark, alone. He was religious, too, an' Father an' him got along
together famous. We staked out a claim, right next to his, an', for a
few 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 he
comes 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 full
o' holes, pronto. But French Pete puts it to him that these Injuns was
his friends, an' shootin' wouldn't go. There'd been some kind o' deal
between this tribe an' the Chilkoots, an' every miner on the Divide
knew more'n plenty about the Chilkoots. They'd tortured to death
Georgie Holt, the first prospector that ever went over the Chilkoot
Pass, an' more'n one miner that got into their country wasn't never
heard of no more.
"So Father puts it up to French Pete where he's goin' next. French
Pete is a good pardner, an' tells a queer tale, but he tells it
straight. 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 Bay
trapper, an' Dick Harris, one o' the forty-niners, had found color on
Gold Creek, near the coast, an' had made a pile. Juneau went on
prospectin', though he was rich, an', havin' a generous streak,
grub-staked any man what asked him. That way he got a big share in the
placers found on Silver Bow and doubled his pile. Some other
prospectors what he'd grub-staked reported havin' found gold on the
islands, but nothin' extraordinary. Harris, havin' a business head,
stuck around Gold Creek (the present town of Juneau was formerly
called Harrisburg) an' got rich a-plenty. Juneau an' Harris had more'n
enough to look after, an' never got over to the islands.
"French Pete, he's an old friend of Juneau an' he knows about this
island game. He reckons it'd be worth pannin'. There's sure-enough
gold up thar to pay for the workin', an' there might be a chance for a
big haul, seein' no one is prospectin' thar. He offers to show Father
where 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 hard
trail--an', after buyin' a small sailboat an' grub enough for three
months, we struck out for Douglas Island. French Pete handled that
boat like a cowboy does a buckin' bronc. We was green wi' scare in
that wild sea, full o' chunks o' ice clashin' all around, but the old
trapper never turns a hair. Presently we landed on a beach which
looked like it was a seal rookery, once, an' works our way to where a
good-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 do
to 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 to
get 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' the
little mountain what sticks up in one corner o' the island. He let his
placer claim go for a while and prospected for ore. At last he found
what 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 a
hammer, 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 to
hold title. Since French Pete had brought us to the island, an' shown
the 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 Douglas
Island, an' in a pickle of a mess supposin' he shouldn't return! But
he come back, sure enough, after about six weeks, havin' found John
Treadwell, 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' these
up-to-date engineer Johnnies. The ore's low-grade, but there's head
enough in the creek to run stamp mills by water-power, which makes
cheap 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 island
for next to nothin'. The Treadwell mine's a big un, now, workin' 540
stamp mills, an', as Mr. Owens says, it's makin' millions out o' low
grade ore.
"Father had promised Mother, as soon as he got $10,000 clear, he'd go
back home. She holds him to it. After payin' French Pete what we
promised, there's $10,000 for Father an' $5,000 for me, besides what
was left from the Cassiar an' Douglas Island placer clean-ups. Father
an' Mother went back to Utah, leavin' me wi' French Pete an'
Treadwell.
"But Father couldn't stand it long. While he was prospectin', all
hours, all weathers, he was tough an' strong. Back in town, he begun
to pine. In less'n a year he was dead. Mother didn't live long after
him. That lef' me on my own hook. Douglas Island was too slow, though
Treadwell offered me a good job as long's I cared to stick it out. But
I wanted to be off an' away, feelin' sure, some day, I'd make my big
strike.
"I was foot-loose, now, wi' five thousand in dust an' the whole world
to roam in. Where was I goin' to find the place where the sands was
nothin' but gold? Somewheres, I was sure! Some day I'd strike it rich
an' never have to work no more. Out in the wild beyond, where no one
else was, millions was waitin' for me!"