Gold Deposits o?t the Isthmus of Panama. — Hershey. jy 
through these profound fissures (which may not show at the 
present surface) came the heated, gold-and-quartz-bearing sol- 
utions to form the veins of those districts. 
Now, however, in the Remanse belt we find that most of the 
veins are north-south instead of east-west in trend ; that is, they 
are transverse to instead of parallel with the mountain axis. 
This I attribute to more or less of a twisting motion which 
served only the more effectually to crush the strata under the 
Remanse belt. That this twisting motion was a reality in one 
instance at least, is indicated by the fine example of a hori- 
zontal fault* at the main Remanse mine. 
The language that I have used in the preceding paragraphs 
must not be construed as indicating any intentional opposition 
on my part to the "lateral secretion" theory as applied to many 
mineral veins in the United States; all that I contend in this 
paper is that in this one particular portion of the earth, namely, 
the provinces of Veraguas, Code and Colon, on the isthmus of 
Panama, the evidence is predominantly in favor of the hypoth- 
esis that the mineral solutions came from a great depth, and 
that the gold was not to any great extent derived from the adja- 
cent country-rock ; this assertion I make regardless of whether 
the porphyries, tufTs, diabases and syenytes of that country 
contain disseminated gold of a primary origin. If it is true, 
the veins of the two districts may be expected to hold out with 
depth, (just as the Remanse does at 600 feet,) and the gold 
near the present surface may be but a slight indicative of the 
stores of mineral wealth buried in the greater and more per- 
sistent fissures below. 
After the Panama and Veraguas formations were com- 
pleted and elevated, subaerial erosion, acting rapidly on the 
land surface, produced what appears to have been a peneplain. 
Sometime in the Tertiary era, probably about the Miocene 
period, this was elevated and has since been dissected to form 
the present mountainous character of the country. The gold- 
bearing quartz veins were formed before the planation of the 
volcanic region, and hence must be early Tertiary in age. 
May 2jd, i8gg. 
*By a "horizontal fault" I do not mean one whose plane is horizontal 
but a vertical or nearly vertical fissure whose walls have moved hori- 
zontally instead of vertically as in ordinary faults. 
