THE PROBLEM OF THE METALLIFEROUS VEINB--^ 



By James Fukman Kemp.?' 



The rush of the gokl seekers to California in 1849 and the quickly 

 folloAving one to Australia in 1851 Avere notable migrations in search 

 of the yellow metal, but they were not the first in the history of our 

 race. There is, indeed no reason to suppose that in the past, mining 

 excitements were limited even to the historical period ; on the contrary, 

 the legends of the golden fleece and of the golden apples of the 

 Hesperides probably describe in poetic garb two of the early expedi- 

 tions, and long before either we can well imagine primitive man 

 hurrying to new diggings in order to enlarge his scanty stock of 

 metals. Among the influences which have led to the exploration and 

 settlement of new lands the desire to find and acquire gold and silver 

 has been one of the most important, and as a means of introducing 

 thousands of vigorous settlers, of their own volition, into uninhabited 

 or uncivilized regions there is no agent which compares with it. In 

 this connection it ma}^ be also remarked that there is no more inter- 

 esting chapter in the history of civilization than that Avhich concerns 

 itself with the use of the metals and with the development of methods 

 for their extraction from their ores. Primitive man was naturally 

 limited to those which he found in the native state. They are but 

 few, viz, gold in wide but sparse distribution in gravels; copper in 

 occasional masses along the outcrops of veins, in which far the greater 

 part of the metal is combined with oxygen or sulphur; copper, again, 

 in porous rocks, as in the altogether exceptional case of the Lake 

 Superior mines; iron in an occasional meteorite, which, if its fall 

 had been observed, was considered to be the image of a god descended 

 from the skies; ^ silver in occasional nuggets with the more common 

 ones of gold ; and possibly a rare bit of platinum. Besides these no 

 other metal can have been known, because all the rest and all of 

 those mentioned when locked up in their ores give in the physical 



"Reprinted, by permission, from Economic Geology. Vol. I, No. 3, December- 

 Januai'y, 1906. Economic Geology Publishing Company, Lancaster, Pa. 



6 Presidential address to the New York Ar-adeniy of Sciences, read at the 

 annual meeting in New York. December 18. 100.">. 



cAs in the case of Diana of the Ephesians and the deity of the Carthaginians. 



187 



