76 The American Geologist. August. 1899 
alion. Indeed, from my studies of this Remanse belt, I should 
say that the gold-bearing quartz veins are chiefly associated 
with the white and gray tuf¥s only because they are the pre- 
dominating formations of the district. The same series of 
formations extend without change for many miles in all direc- 
tions, and apparently the same system of quartz vein is well 
developed and finely exposed in places; yet outside of this one 
narrow belt there is known to be little or no gold; at least, noth- 
ing comparable with the Remanse district. Why is it? If the 
gold was derived by segregation, or any other process, from 
the enclosing country-rock, why should it be confined to this 
particular strip of country, which apparently has no dependent 
relation tO' the present topography or to any system of faults or 
folds in the surface portion of the rocky strata? 
In the course of a period of practical prospecting work, I 
have had it forcibly brought to my notice that gold occurs, in 
different districts, or even in one district, under remarkably 
diverse conditions, and that while one study may yield clear 
evidences that a given deposit of gold-bearing quartz has de- 
rived its mineral contents from the enclosing formation, an- 
other study, made at some distance, may yield equally as clear 
evidences that there the country-rock had nothing to do with 
the gold. It is for this reason that the study of individual dis- 
tricts is of such interest and importance. 
It is a matter of common observation among miners that 
gold-belts are more likely to occur on the lower slopes or 
flanks of high mountain ranges than in the central and higher 
portions of the disturbed areas. This is finely illustrated in 
the two cases from the isthmus of Panama, now under consid- 
eration. Here I attribute it to the following: As the gold, 
both in the Veraguas and the Remanse belt, came not appar- 
ently from the adjacent country-rock, it must have been derived 
from some deep-lying portions of the same or other stratified 
series. This implies deep-extending fissuring and faulting on 
the line of the belts. Such a crushing of the rocks would be 
less likely to occur near the axis of the broad arched "up- 
thrust" of the Cordillera de Veraguas, and under the lowlands 
on either hand, than on the flanks of theuprising area. Hence, 
v/e mav suppose that the long, narrow Veraguas and Remanse 
gold-belts represent the line of maximum strain and greatest 
crushing of the strata, each on its side of the range. Up 
