GOLD 229 



lumps of rock and gold, which, tossed about from place to 

 place, had been further reduced, and finally washed down by 

 the streams to the beds of the rivers. 



All this gold thus ' washed down ' is called Alluvial Gold, 

 and the gold-bearing sands are called Placers, from a Spanish 

 word placer having that signification, and used by the Spaniards 

 in their mines in Brazil and Mexico. Sometimes the grains are 

 so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, at others so large 

 as to constitute a fortune for the lucky finder. These large 

 pieces are called Nuggets. At Ballarat (in Victoria) one inch 

 below the surface of the ground a nugget weighing 2,520 ounces 

 was found. It was called ' The Welcome Stranger '. 



Placers often occur in the beds of rivers which have long 

 since ceased to flow, and are therefore now found many miles 

 away from present-day streams, sometimes even on the tops 

 of mountains, so much has the surface of the earth changed 

 in the course of the ages. 



In the early days of modern gold-mining the miners simply 

 dug up the soil (' pay-dirt ', as they called it) by the river 

 side, and washed it in a pan. They held the top of the pan 

 just under the surface of the water, and stirred the contents, 

 so that the lighter materials were carried off by the current, 

 and the heavier gold sank to the bottom of the pan. Nowadays 

 improved methods are used, but the principle on which they 

 depend is the same, namely, the sinking of the heavy gold 

 and the floating away of the lighter materials. 



Mercury is often added to the water in which the gold is 

 washed. It unites with the gold so that even the finest 

 particles are not lost ; afterwards this mercury is volatilized 

 and the gold recovered. 



In order to obtain gold from the veins or lodes in rocks 

 the 'whole auriferous mass has to be crushed, and the gold is 

 obtained from the powdered material by methods similar to 

 those in use in alluvial mining. In the goldfields of the 

 Transvaal, and other places where the rocks have to be 

 crushed, the noise is described as deafening. Enormous iron 



