Quartz Lodes 71 
of Santo Domingo led to a most exaggerated opinion of their 
value when they were first mined by English companies. 
On the hills, near the outcrops of the lodes, the ore was in 
some places exceedingly rich. One thousand ounces of gold 
were obtained from a mall patch of ore near the surface of 
the Consuelo lode, and at Santo Domingo, San Benito, San 
Antonio, and Javali lodes, very rich ore was also discovered 
within a few fathoms of the surface. When, however, these 
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MACHINERY OF CHONTALES GOLD-MINING COMPANY 
deposits were followed downwards, they invariably got 
poorer, and at one hundred feet from the surface, no very 
rich ore had been met with. Below that, when the works 
are prosecuted still deeper, there does not appear to be any 
further progressive deterioration in the value of the ore, and 
it varies in yield from two to seven pennyweights of gold per 
ton, upon which yield further depth does not seem to have 
any effect. The cause of these rich deposits near the surface 
does not appear to me to be that the lodes originally, before 
they were exposed by denudation, contained more gold in 
