Kansas Academy of science. 



gravity of 19.3, usually found its way to the bed-rock, while the fragments of qtiartz, 

 mixed through the gravel, in the course of untold ages, oxidized or crumbled into 

 sand, leaving the gold free, scattered through the entire mass of gravel, sand, and 

 clay. 



The matrix from whence came these streams of gold seems to be the mineral 

 veins high up the mountains in the granite rock. These veins vary in width from 

 the thickness of a knife-blade to many feet, and extend down into the great un- 

 known. Though once exceedingly rich on the surface, they are now, owing to the rich 

 outcrop wearing away, often worthless. Gold veins usually decrease in richness 

 with depth, and are tilled with pyrites or sulphide ores of iron — some of them con- 

 taining lead, silver and copper — but iron pyrites seems to be the home of gold. 

 Where veins lie between walls of silurian rock they are usually filled with quartz, 

 which frequently contains the precious metals. 



I will not now discuss the question how or when these cracks in the cooling crust 

 of the earth became filled with vein matter, rich in metals, nor why in one locality 

 there should be a vein immensely rich in gold, in another locality rich in iron, or sil- 

 ver, or copper, or lead, or all combined, with a hundred between containing nothing 

 of value; nor why these veins have a uniform course north of east and south of west, 

 while the mountains zig-zag in every direction. 



Gold evidently crystallized upon the surface of some of these veins at the time 

 of their formation, in masses of which we have little conception. Tons of coarse 

 gold were taken from the gulches of Montana in early days. These rich outcrop- 

 ping veins were cut through and broken down by down-pouring torrents of water, 

 always seeking a lower level. Then after a time came the glacial epoch, which cov- 

 ered the mountains with vast masses of ice, crushing and grinding down the rugged 

 elevations, shoving boulders, gravel, sand and clay down the slopes and ravines, to 

 be again rearranged by the rivers formed from the melting ice. 



The variety in nature is infinite; no two gulches yield exactly the same character 

 of gold. It varies from twelve to twenty dollars per ounce in value. Silver is its 

 most common alloy; it is also occasionally coated with iron or copper oxide. Some 

 gold found on the Yellowstone river is black from a coating of copper. Alder 

 Gulch, a narrow trough between mountains thirty miles long, yielded sixty millions 

 of gold in a few years; also quantities of garnets worthy the lapidary's skill. 



Ten-Mile Placers contain quantities of stream tin, and also white crystals of 

 topaz. Carpenter's Bar abounds with sapphires and spinel rubies equal to those 

 found in the Orient. The bars of Ophir Gulch are full of chalcedony, with an occa- 

 sional diamond. The bed-rock and bars of this gulch are compact yellow clay, 

 faulted in places, and containing strata of gravel of much older geological age, and 

 different material from the gold-bearing gravels of the surface, while Hard- Scrabble 

 Diggings was on a gentle slope in a great valley, containing nuggets only in the 

 surface soil. These were gathered by a plow made from wagon-tires, turning over 

 the soil in the fall, and in the spring washing it away with water from the melting 

 snow, leaving the nuggets to be picked up by hand. The gold of Canon creek in 

 form and size resembles melon seeds. 



The very rich, easily-worked placer mines of Montana are mostly exhausted, but 

 there are many millions yet to be obtained by improved appliances and expensive 

 ditches to bring a supply of water, without which a placer mine is worthless. 



