Recent Changes in Goed Mining 
127 
1907] 
through them. On the other hand, the crushers, elevators, 
etc., have a capacity fully four times as great. The mill has 
been used by the present management in making cyanide 
tests upon the rich ore remaining in the chimneys. Even 
when crushed very fine this fresh unaltered ore can be leach- 
ed for a week without apparently giving up more than half 
its gold, thus this cyanide plant cannot be used for this ore. 
At present the most productive cyanide plant in this State 
is the one at the Iola Mine, near Candor, Montgomery 
County. The ore, coming from a pretty sharply defined 
vein, is either a hard, glassy, white quartz with traces of un- 
replaced slate, carrying coarse gold in octahedral crystals; 
or soft sugary, white quartz generally richer but not show- 
ing visible gold. This “sugar quartz” has lately been run- 
ning from $14.00 to $20.00 per ton. It is crushed in a dilapi- 
dated 20 stamp mill where the coarse gold and much of the 
fine gold is amalgamated as usual. The tailings are elevated 
and are run to the various settling tanks or “sand boats,” 
3 feet wide at one end, 5 feet at the other, 12 feet 
long and 3^ feet deep, having at the small end a wooden 
lattice on the inner side of which a canvass curtain 
may be rolled up from the bottom. When the thin tailings 
run into this the sand settles out and the fine part or 
slimes flow into the slime tanks. As the sand accumulates 
the curtain is unrolled so that the overflow is just above the 
level of the top of the sand. The other two sand boats, just 
above the tanks, are plain boxes 6 feet by 3^ by 15 feet. One 
end is bored full of holes to let out the slimes. These are 
plugged as the level of the sand reaches them. 
The wet sand from these boats is shovelled or wheeled into 
whichever of the sand tanks may be empty. This shovelling 
thoroughly breaks up any water tight layers of slime which 
may have formed when the mill was shut down for a short 
time, and the thin pulp remaining below the overflow has a 
chance to settle in a layer on top of the sand. It also sup- 
plies the needed oxygen to aid the cyanide in dissolving the 
gold. The sand tanks were made locally of yellow pine and 
