| OCR Text |
Show MINING FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES. 575 as the mines have developed, there seems to be no regularity or system whatever, but all is in a confused mass. Mines that are but a few hundred feet apart strike very different rock deposits. There is no uniformity in the thickness of the " wash," or of the deposits of lime-stone, porphyry, and carbonates. One mine will strike valuable car-bonates a few feet from the surface, while the mine next to it may go down hundreds of feet and find little or no paying ore. In some mines limestone is found in abundance; others encounter extensive deposits of porphyry. As a rule, the carbonates are found below the porphyry. These carbonate deposits are not at all uniform in extent. Sometimes they contain only a ton or two ; and, again, there will be a hundred tons or more in one deposit. The silver- bearing ores also vary greatly in kind. Some are soft or pulverized, called sand car-bonates; some are hard, and carry a large per cent, of iron; while others are almost wholly composed of galena, with a small per cent, of silver; still others are rich in chlorides and sulphurets. Nothing like a true fissure vein has been found in Freyer or Carbonate Hills; but in the gulches over the divide, many rich veins have been discovered. These veins vary from one foot to six feet in thickness, and are often rich in galena. Little of horn or wire silver has been discovered in the deposit mines, though some has been found in fissure veins. During the past season some very valuable gold- bearing veins have been discovered near Leadville. It is be-lieved that there are many rich gold- bearing lodes yet undiscovered in the immediate vicinity of Leadville. Several millions of dollars in gold dust have been washed from the gravel beds of California Gulch paying dirt having been found there twenty years ago, and it is very probable that the gold dust has been washed down from veins of gold- bearing rock in the sides of the neighboring mountains. Some suppose that there is a deposit of carbonates underlying all the country about here, which may be struck if the shaft is sunk deep enough. But the more probable opinion is that these deposits lie here and there with no regularity. It will be seen, therefore, that the search for carbonates in the foot- hills about Leadville is one of luck or haphazard entirely. The miner has no indications to guide him, but digs a hole hoping to strike it. Not more than one in one hundred of the holes thus dug has yielded well. So mining about Leadville, at the start at least, is simply prospecting on a large and very expensive scale. But when they do strike it, it is marvelous how the wealth rolls out. |
