270 A R GENTIFER US MUD. 



ARGENTIFEROUS MUD. 



The report made recently that in the Lake District of the San Juan 

 mining region there had been discovered a yellow mud lying in a crevice 

 in the pay streak, about an inch a,nd a half wide, which assayed from one 

 hundred to four hundred dollars in gold, and from two hundred to two 

 thousand dollars in silver per ton, recalls and gives plausibility to the state- 

 ment published in the San Francisco Examiner^ within a few months past, 

 that in Wasco county, Oregon, there is a flat thickly studded with springs 

 of a peculiar character, that throw out mud which has overflowed a con- 

 siderable area. Some months ago it was reported that this mud had been 

 discovered to be argentiferous and very rich, some specimens assaying over 

 $2,000 to the ton. Pi'of. Hanks intimates that the flow of the Oregon mud 

 springs is in reality heavily impregnated with silver, and this result he an- 

 nounced in a paper read before the California State Geological Society last 

 Tuesday evening. The existence of springs yielding soft mud, charged 

 with free silver, says Prof. Hanks, is new to science, and scientific men, both 

 here and at the East, who examined specimens, pronounced them fictitious 

 without hesitation. The specimens latterly examined by Prof. Hanks, he 

 says, were very rich, and silver was discovered in a free state. By simple 

 washing the silver could be wholly separated, and when then examined the 

 microscope failed to reveal the source of the precious metal. Had it been 

 filings, a single glance would have sufiSced to detect the fact. Had the silver 

 been precipitated from solution by copper it would have been crystalized. 

 An amalgam of silver and mercury would have yielded a sublimate if 

 strongly heated in a glass tube closed at one end. Such an amalgam intro- 

 duced into the wet mud, and the whole heated sufficiently to have volatil- 

 ized the mercury, would have left the substance in a hard, baked state, 

 which could not again have been reduced to the state in which it 

 reached this city. From these conclusions, if the silver had been intro- 

 duced for fraudulent purposes, the substance was very remarkable, from 

 the fact that some process had been employed not easily understood. Prof. 

 Hanks finally obtained the address of a gentleman represented to him as be- 

 ing of unquestioned character, Eichard Hurley, residing in the vicinity of 

 the wonderful springs in Wasco county, and applied to him for information. 

 In reply to Prof. Hanks, Mr. Hurley writes : " There is no mistake as to 

 this mud containing silver. I have assayed over 100 samples which con- 

 tain silver, some as high as $2,300 to the ton. The samples I obtained from 

 the springs myself. I think the weather has considerable to do with the 

 mud containing silver. I obtain the best results when the weather is warm. 

 Sometimes in one of the larger springs, when the weather is cold, the mud 

 will be of a yellow color, showing no silver, but when the day is warm the 

 mud is blackish blue, at least in places, and rich in silver. They seem to 

 work more actively in a warm afternoon. Some of them contain a great 



