3S4' BELT OP AURIFEROUS COUNTRY. 



amount of work has been done upon it, and some good, although 

 fluctuating, mill-returns have been obtained from its ore. 



In addition to these more prominent exposures, several other 

 bands of intermixed gold-bearing mispickel and quartz are well 

 known to occur within this area. It is evident, therefore, that an 

 auriferous belt of great richness runs through this part of Marniora 

 more especially ; and from the constant occurrence of auriferous 

 mispickel in other portions of the township, as well as in the adjacent 

 townships of Madoc, Elzevir, &c., it may be legitimately inferred 

 that the Hastings district is destined to take a leading rank at no 

 distant day, among the recognised auriferous regions of the American 

 continent. The chief obstacle, at present, to the working of the ore, 

 is the difficulty involved in the extraction of its gold. The free gold 

 can, of course, be separated more or less readily; but the gold 

 present in the mispickel itself, is, I am convinced, in the form of an 

 actual arsenide. Hence, whatever system be finally adopted for its 

 extraction, the removal of the sulphur and arsenic must necessarily 

 be resorted to as a preliminary operation ; and, in reference to this, 

 it cannot be too strongly enforced, that to subject the ore to an 

 imperfect method of roasting is worse than useless. Any free gold 

 that may be present is in that case almost inevitably arsenicised : 

 and thus becomes entirely protected from the action of merciiry or 

 chlorine, the principal agents at present used in the separation of 

 gold from associated rock matters. I have proved this abundantly 

 by special experiments in the assay- furnace ; and the same thing has 

 been proved on a more practical scale by the abortive attempts made 

 in Marmora and elsewhere to obtain gold from imperfectly roasted 

 ores, whilst the same ores in their natural condition were constantly 

 yielding, from their free gold, from five to eight pennyweights per ton. 



*^* In this communication, I claim to have made public the 

 following facts : First, that in the Hastings region the mineral 

 Mispickel is the true ore of gold ; secondly, the existence of this 

 gold-bearing mineral, in apparently inexhaustible quantities, through- 

 out certain parts of the region in question ; and, thirdly, the no less 

 essential fact that free gold, if present in the ore, becomes arsenicised, 

 aiid Consequently lost, by imperfect methods of roasting. 



Uniyersitt CorLEQE, Toronto. 

 May llih, 1872. 



