GOLD. 115 



Masses of gold of considerable size have been found in North Caro- 

 lina. The largest was discovered in Cabarrus County ; it weighed 

 28 pounds avoirdupois (" steel-yard weight," equals 3< pounds troy), 

 and was 8 or 9 inches long, by 4 or 5 broad, and about an inch thick. 

 In Paraguay, pieces from 1 to 50 pounds weight were taken from a 

 mass of rock which fell from one of the highest mountains. 



The largest masses of gold yet discovered have been found in aurife- 

 rous gravel. The " Blanch Earkley Nugget," found in South Austra- 

 lia, weighed 146 pounds, and only six ounces of it were gangue ; and 

 one still larger, the "Welcome Nugget," from Victoria, weighed 

 2,195 ounces, or nearly 183 pounds, and yielded £8,376 10s. M. sterling 

 of gold. Two others from Victoria weighed 1,621, and 1,105 ounces. 

 In Russia, a mass was found in 1842, near Miask, weighing 96 pounds 

 troy ; another of 27 pounds, and several of 16 pounds have been found 

 in the Urals. The largest mass yet reported from California weighed 

 20 pounds. A remarkably beautiful mass, consisting of a congeries of 

 crystals, weighing 201 ounces i value $4,000 *, was found in 1865, seven 

 miles from Georgetown, in El Dorado County. 



The origin of gold veins, or rather of the gold in the veins, is little 

 understood. The rocks, as has been stated, are metamorphic slates 

 that have been crystallized by heat ; and they are the hydromica, 

 chloritic, and argillaceous, that have been but imperfectly crystal- 

 lized, rather than the mica schist and gneiss, which are well crystal- 

 lized ; and the veins of quartz which contain the gold, occupy fissures 

 through the slates, and openings among the layers, which must have 

 been made when the metamorphic changes or crystallization took 

 place. It was a period, for each gold region, of long-continued heat 

 (occupying, probably, a prolonged age), and also of vast upliftings and 

 disturbances of the beds ; for the beds are tilted at various angles, 

 and the veins show where were the fractures of the layers, or the sep- 

 arations and gapings of the tortured strata. The heat appears not to 

 have been of the intensity required for the better crystallization of the 

 more perfectly crystalline schists. The quartz veins could not have 

 been filled from below, by injection ; they must have been filled 

 either laterally, or from above. In all such conditions of upturning 

 and metamorphism, the moisture present would have become intensely 

 heated, and hence have had great dissolving and decomposing power ; 

 it would have taken up silica with alkalies from the rocks (as happens 

 in all Geyser regions), along with whatever other mineral substances 

 were capable of solution or removal ; and the vapor, thus laden, 

 would have filled all open spaces, there to make depositions of the 

 silica and ether ingredients it contained. These mineral ingredients 

 would have been derived either from the rock adjoining the veins or 

 opened spaces, or from depths below through ascending vapors. By 

 one or both of these means, the quartz must have received its gold, 

 pyrite, and ores of lead, copper and other materials— all having been 

 carded into the open cavities at the same time with the silica or 

 quartz. The pyrite of the vein is usually auriferous, showing that it 

 was crystallized under the same circumstances that attended the de- 

 positing of the gold in strings, crystals, and grains ; and the same is 

 often true of the galena. 



Calaverite is a bronze-yellow gold telluride. AuTe 4 = Tellurium 



