354 MINING INDUSTEY. 



sparsely disseminated in small pockets that the whole mass is too poor to pay 

 at anything like the present costs of extraction and reduction. On the other 

 hand, courses of ore have occurred in all three of the mines above named, 

 working on this vein, which, for a distance varying from 50 to more than 100 

 feet in horizontal extent, and as much, if not more, in depth, have been con- 

 tinuous and rich from one limit to the other. In the Timoke mine the pay 

 ground, measuring about 80 feet in length, is said to have been rich from the 

 surface down to the 350-foot level, where the vein was cut off by a " slide." 

 The continuation of the vein, beyond the fault, was found also to contain pay 

 ore, though, at the time of the writer's visit, of less value than it had been 

 above. 



Observations concerning the method of distribution of these ore-bodies, 

 their position or dip in the vein, and other features, are too meager to show 

 any great degree of uniformity existing among them as to their general char- 

 acteristics. In mining them the chief object has been to get out the greatest 

 quantity at the least expense, and comparatively little attention has been de- 

 voted to tracing out their limits, defining their form and position, and aiFord- 

 ing means of comparison of one body with others, or determining their rela- 

 tions to each other. A general coincidence of dip to the northwest, lying in 

 the plane of the vein, is thought to exist among the larger bodies in this and 

 other neighboring veins, though there are some exceptions. Many or most 

 of the larger or richer bodies of ore occur in those portions of the vein that 

 are intersected by the younger north and south veins, and are cut off abruptly 

 by the ''slides," or faults, resulting from such intersections, suggesting the 

 possibility that the faulting may have had an influence upon the enriching of 

 the vein at these points, a common observation in other mining regions where 

 one mineral vein is enriched at its point of intersection with another; but the 

 data are not sufficient to do more than suggest the probability. It is also note- 

 worthy that the "rich zone" referred to on a preceding page has a north and 

 south course, corresponding with these cross-fissures. The faults that have 

 affected the North Star and other ore-bearing veins in its neighborhood most 

 considerably are a series of veins or fissures of more recent Origin having a 

 general north and south course, and dipping more or less to the west- 



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