BLACKWOOD’SEDINBURGH MAGAZINE.No. CCCCXXXIX.MAY, 1852.Vol. LXXI.
BLACKWOOD’SEDINBURGH MAGAZINE.No. CCCCXXXIX.MAY, 1852.Vol. LXXI.
BLACKWOOD’SEDINBURGH MAGAZINE.No. CCCCXXXIX.MAY, 1852.Vol. LXXI.
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCXXXIX.MAY, 1852.Vol. LXXI.
GOLD: ITS NATURAL AND CIVIL HISTORY.[1][2]
The progress of knowledge naturally leads to the discovery not only of new arts, and of new uses for artificial productions, but of new stores of natural wealth in the bowels of the earth itself, and of new methods of extracting and rendering them useful. This last point is amply illustrated by the history of the progressive discovery and development of our own most valuable mineral treasures—the coal and ironstone deposits—which add so much both to our natural resources and to our national strength.
But, independent of the advance of knowledge, the exploration and colonisation of new countries by a civilised race leads of necessity to the discovery of regions rich in mineral wealth, which were unknown before, and brings new metallic supplies into the markets of the world.
When Spain conquered Mexico first, and afterwards Peru and Chili, Europe became flooded with the precious metals to a degree unknown before in the history of modern nations. When Russia began to explore her provinces on the slopes of the Ural, gold-washings were discovered, which have, by their enormous yield, made up for the deficient supply which commotion and misrule in Central and Southern America had caused in European countries. The possession of California by an observant and curious people, of Anglo-Saxon breed, was almost immediately followed by those wonderful discoveries which have made the world ring, and have attracted adventurers from every region. And, lastly, the turning of keen eyes upon river beds in Australia—still less known and examined than almost any district of America without the Arctic circle—has brought to light those vast stores of gold which appear destined to lay the basis of a new empire in the Australian archipelago.
Nor have such discoveries been confined to the so-called precious metals. The advance of North American civilisation towards the head waters of the Missouri has made known abundant mines of lead, which the cost of transport chiefly prevents as yet from seriously competing with European produce along the Atlantic border. The joint march of Canada and the United States along the shores of Lake Superior, has laid open veins of copper of inexhaustible magnitude—on a scale, we may say, in size and richness commensurate with the other great natural features of the American continent;—while, of coal and ironstone, the Central States of the Union are so full, that imagination itself cannot conceive a time when they shall cease to be sufficient for the wants of the whole civilised world.
Men untrained themselves to observe, and ignorant that it is intellectual knowledge which opens and guides the eye, affect to wonder—often, indeed, do seriously wonder—that gold so plentifully scattered over the surface of a country as it is said to be in California and Australia, or sprinkling with its yellow sheen thick veins of snowy quartz, should, for a time so comparatively long, have escaped observation. “What surprises me,” says Captain Sutter, in whose mill-race the gold was first discovered, “is, that this country should have been visited by so many scientific men, and that not one of them should have ever stumbled upon these treasures; that scores of keen-eyed trappers should have crossed the valley in every direction, and tribes of Indians have dwelt in it for centuries, and yet this gold should never have been discovered. I myself have passed the very spot above a hundred times during the last ten years, but was just as blind as the rest of them, so I must not wonder at the discovery not having been made earlier.”[3]
Such seeming blindness, indeed, is not really a matter of surprise. The ability to observe is an intellectual gift no less than the ability to reason; and, like the latter talent, the former also must be trained. It must be taught where to look, and what to look for; what the signs are of the presence of the thing we wish to find, and where they are likely to be met with.
It is not, in truth, a just reproach to unsuspecting men, that they have not seen what they never imagined the presence of. It would scarcely have been so, had they failed to see in a given place what they were told was likely to be found. Many of our readers are familiar with the existence of black lines in the solar spectrum; many may have seen them, and justly wondered. Some may even recollect, when, years ago, Frauenhofer first announced their existence, how opticians everywhere mounted their most homogeneous prisms, and gazed at the spectrum eager to see them, and how many looked in vain. Of course, the failure was ascribed to the imperfection of their prisms, and not to their own defective skill. One philosopher we remember, then already distinguished, and whom now all delight to honour, of whom it was told that having obtained one of the beautifully perfect prisms of Frauenhofer’s own manufacture, he was still unable to see the lines; but that another who had seen them came to his aid, instructed him how to look, and in an instant he not only clearly saw them, but exclaimed with wonder at his own blindness. Such were our own sensations also when first we saw them. Was it, then, a reproach to Sir Isaac Newton and his successors that these lines escaped them? The same reproach might be made to the predecessors of almost every discoverer in every walk of modern science. Many before him probably had looked from the same spot, with similar advantages for seeing, and had not seen. But they had gazed without any special object or previous instruction, and they had failed to discern what another coming after them, prepared to look for it, and knowing what it was like, and where likely to be, would have at once descried.
Hence the discovery of most of the rich mines in past times was the result of some unlooked-for accident happening generally to naturally-observant but ignorant men. Thus Jacob says of the mines in the Hartz—
“There are various conflicting opinions among the learned in antiquities respecting the discovery of the mineral wealth of the Hartz. The most probable accounts fix it in the tenth century; and the tradition is, that a hunter of the name of Ramm, when engaged in the chase, had fastened his horse to a tree, who, by pawing with his feet, had scraped away the soil, and thereby discovered some minerals; that specimens of them were sent to the Emperor Otho, to whom all minerals, as regalities of the Empire, belonged, and who sent expert miners to examine the district, from Franconia.”—(Jacob, i. p. 254.)
And again of the mines of Saxony—
“The mines of Saxony were first discovered in the tenth century, when the whole district in which they are situated was covered with wood and without inhabitants. Some carriers from Halle, on their way to Bohemia, whither they carried salt, observing metallic substances in the tracks made by the wheels, some of these were taken up and sent to Goslar to be examined, when they were found to consist of lead with a considerable quantity of silver. This led to the establishments for mining, which have continued, with some variations in their products, from the year 1169 to the present day.”—(Jacob, i. p. 252.)
And of the mines of Potosi—
“In the latter end of the year 1545 the mines of the Cerro de Potosi were accidentally discovered. According to the account of Herrera, the discovery was owing to an Indian hunter, Diego Hualca, who, in pulling up a shrub, observed filaments of pure silver about the roots. On examination the mass was found to be enormous, and a very great part of the population was thereby drawn to the spot and employed in extracting the metal. A city soon sprang up, though in a district of unusual sterility. The mountain was perforated on all sides, and the produce, in a few of the first years, exceeded whatever has been recorded of the richest mines in the world.”—(Jacob, ii. p. 57.)
And so with the discovery of the rich washings of California. As early as the time of Queen Anne, Captain Sheldrake, in command of an English privateer on the coast, discovered that the black sands of the rivers—such as the washers now find at the bottom of theirrockers—yielded gold largely, and pronounced the whole country to be rich in gold. But it remained in the hands of the Indians and the Jesuit fathers till 1820, when California was made a territory of the Mexican commonwealth, and a small party of adventurers came in. Captain Sheldrake and his published opinions had then been long forgotten,[4]and an accident made known again the golden sands in 1848, after the territory had been ceded to, and was already attracting adventurers from, the United States.
“The discoverer was Mr Marshall, who, in September 1847, had contracted with Captain Sutter to build a saw-mill near some pine woods on the American Fork, now a well-known feeder of the Sacramento river. In the spring of 1848 the saw-mill was nearly ready, the dam and race being constructed; but, when the water was set on to the wheel, the tail-race was found too narrow to let the water through quick enough. Mr Marshall, to save work, let the water right into the race with a strong stream, so as to sweep the race wider and deeper. This it did, and a great bank of gravel and mud was driven to the foot of the race. One day, Mr Marshall, on walking down the race to this bank, saw some glittering bits on the upper edge, and, having gathered a few, examined them and conjectured their value. He went down to Sutter’s Fort and told the captain, and they agreed to keep it a secret until a certain grist mill of the captain’s was finished. The news got about, however; a cunning Yankee carpenter having followed them in their visit to the mill-race, and found out the gold scales.
Forthwith the news spread. The first workmen were lucky, and in a few weeks some gold was sent to San Francisco, and speedily the town was emptied of people. In three months there were four thousand men at the diggings—Indians having been hired, eighty soldiers deserted from the American posts, and runaways getting up from the ships in the harbour. Such ships as got away carried news to Europe and the United States; and, by the beginning of 1849, both sides of the Atlantic were in agitation.”—(Wyld, pp. 34, 35.)
But when no accident has intervened to force the discovery upon the unsuspecting or unobservant, it has sometimes happened that great riches, unseen by others, have been discovered by persons who knew what to look for, what were the signs of the presence of the thing sought, and who had gone to particular places for the purpose of exploration. Such was the case in Australia.
The preliminary history of the Australian discovery is peculiar. From what he had seen of the Ural, and had learned of the composition of the chief meridian mountain ridge of Australia, Sir Roderick Murchison publicly announced, in 1845, his belief that Australia was a country in which gold was likely to be found—recommended that it should be sought for, and even memorialised the home government on the subject.[5]But although this opinion and recommendation were inserted and commented upon in the colonial newspapers—although the Rev. W. B. Clarke published letters predicting, for reasons given, the discovery of gold deposits in California and Australia—although
“Sir Francis Forbes of Sydney subsequently published and circulated in New South Wales a paper, in which he affirmed in the strongest manner, on scientific data, the existence of gold formations in New Holland—although a colonial geologist had been sent out some years before and was settled at Sydney—and lastly, although one part of the prediction was soon so wonderfully fulfilled by the Californian discoveries—yet oven the discoveries in California did not arouse the New Hollanders to adequate researches, though reports were spread of wonderful discoveries in Victoria and South Australia, which were speedily discredited. It was reserved for a gentleman of New South Wales, Mr Edward Hammond Hargraves, to make the definite discoveries. He appears to have acted independently of all previous views on the subject; but having acquired experience in California, and being struck with the resemblance between the Californian formations and those of New Holland, he determined on a systematic search for gold, which he brought to a successful issue on the 12th of February of this year 1850, by the discovery of gold diggings in the Bathurst and Wellington districts, and which he prosecuted until he had ascertained the existence of gold sands in no less than twelve places.”—(Wyld, p. 30.)
When this was made known by Mr Hargraves in a formal report to the authorities at Sydney, in April 1850, they then (!) despatched the provincial geologist to examine the localities, and confirm the discoveries of Mr Hargraves! But the public did not wait for such confirmation. On the 1st of May the discoveries became known in Sydney. In thousands the people forsook the city, the villages, cattle stations, and farms, in the interior, for the neighbourhood of Bathurst, where the gold had been found. Summerhill Creek alone soon numbered its four thousand diggers, who thence speedily spread themselves along the other head waters of the Darling and Murrumbidgee—rivers flowing westward from the inland slope of the mountain ridge, (Blue Mountains and Liverpool range,) which runs nearly parallel to the south-eastern coast of Australia, and at the distance from it of about one hundred miles. Near Bathurst the summit of the ridge attains, in Mount Canobolus, a height of 4461 feet. In numerous places among the feeders of these streams, which themselves unite lower down to form the main channel of the Murray, gold was speedily found. It was successfully extracted also from the upper course of the Hunter River, and from the channel of Cox’s River—both descending from the eastern slope of the same ridge, within the province of New South Wales. In the province of Victoria, the feeders of the Glenelg and other rivers, which descend from the southern prolongation of the same chain—the Australian Pyrenees—have yielded large quantities of gold; and recently, Geelong and Melbourne have become the scene of an excitement scarcely inferior to that which has longer prevailed in the country round Bathurst. South Australia also, where the main river, Murray, passes through it to the sea at Adelaide, has been reported to contain the precious metal. So suddenly does the first spark of real fire spread into a great flame of discovery—so clearly can all eyes see, when taught how to look, what to look for, and in what circumstances.
But in New South Wales, and in the province of Victoria, the excitement, and the zeal and success in digging, have up to the latest advices been the greatest. In the beginning of June 1850, the Governor-General had already bestowed a grant of £500 upon Mr Hargraves, and an appointment of £350 a-year, as acknowledgments of his services—acknowledgments he well deserved, but which might have been saved honourably to the colony, and creditably to science, had the recommendation made five years before by geologists at home, and by scientific colonists, been attended to. In the same month the Sir Thomas Arbuthnot sailed from Sydney for England with £4000 worth of gold already among her cargo. The success of the explorers continues unchecked up to the latest arrivals from Australia. “When I left, on the 10th of August 1851,” says the captain of one of her Majesty’s ships of war, in a letter now before us, “there was then weekly coming into Sydney £13,000 of gold. One lump has been found one hundred and six pounds in weight.” He adds, and we believe many are of this opinion, “that it appears to be one immense gold field, and that California is already thrown into the shade.” The news of five months’ later date only give additional strength to all previous announcements, anticipations, and predictions.
Now, in reflecting on these remarkable and generally unexpected discoveries, an enlightened curiosity suggests such questions as these:—What are the conditions geographical, physical, or geological, on which the occurrence of gold deposits depends? Why has the ability to predict, as in the Australian case, remained so long unexercised, or been so lately acquired? What are the absolute extent, and probable productive durability, of the gold regions newly brought to light? What their extent and richness compared with those known at former periods, or with those which influence the market for precious metals now? What the influence they are likely to exercise on the social and financial relations of European countries? What the effect they will have on the growth and commerce of the States which border the Pacific, or which are washed by the Indian and Australian seas? In the present article we propose to answer a few of these questions.
And, first, as to the Geography of the question. There are no limits either in latitude or longitude, as used to be supposed, within which gold deposits are confined—none within which they are necessarily most abundant. In old times, the opinion was entertained that the precious metals favoured most the hot and equatorial regions of the earth. But the mines of Siberia, as far north as 69° of latitude, and the deposits of California, supposed to extend into Oregon, and even into Russian America, alone show the absurdity of this opinion.
Nor does the physical character of a country determine in any degree whether or not it shall be productive of gold. It may, like California, border the sea, or be far inland, like the Ural slopes, or the Steppes of the Kirghis; it may be flat, and of little elevation, or it may abound in streams, in lakes, and in mountains;—none of these conditions are necessarily connected with washings or veins of gold. It is true that mountain chains are usually seen at no great distance from localities rich in golden sands, and that metalliferous veins often cut through the mountains themselves. But these circumstances are independent of the mountains as mere physical features. It is not because there are mountains in a country that it is rich in gold, else gold mines would be far more frequent; and mountainous regions, like our own northern counties, would abound in mineral wealth. It is the nature of the rocks of which a country consists—its geological and chemical characters, in other words, which determine the presence or absence of the most coveted of metals. Humboldt, indeed, supposed, from his observations, that, to be productive of gold, the chain of mountains which skirt the country must have a meridional direction. But further research has shown that this is by no means a necessary condition, although hitherto, perhaps, more gold has been met with in the neighbourhood of chains which have a prevailing north or south direction than of any other. We may safely say, therefore, that there are no known physical laws or conditions, by the application or presence of which the existence of gold can with any degree of probability be predicted.
Let us study for a little, then, the geology of a region of gold.
First, Every general reader now-a-days is aware that the crust of our globe consists of a series of beds of rock, laid one over the other, like the leaves of a book; and that of these the lowest layers, like the courses of stone in the wall of a building, are the oldest, or were the first laid down. These rocky beds are divided into three groups, of which the lowest, or oldest, is called the primary; the next in order, the secondary; and the uppermost, or newest, the tertiary.
Second, That in certain parts of the world this outer crust of rocks is broken through by living volcanoes, which, with intermissions more or less frequent, belch forth flames and smoke, with occasional torrents of burning lava. That where, or when, the cause of such eruptions is not sufficiently powerful to produce living volcanoes, earthquakes are occasioned; cracks or fissures, more or less wide, are produced in the solid rocks; smoking fumeroles appear; and vapour-exhaling surfaces show that fires, though languid and dormant for the time, still exist beneath. That besides the rocks of lava they have poured out, these volcanic agencies change the surface of a country more widely still by the alterations they gradually effect upon the previously existing slaty, calcareous, or sandstone rocks; converting limestone into marble, and baking sandstone into more or less homogeneous quartz, and common slates or hardened clays into mica slates, gneiss, and granite-like rocks. That such volcanic agencies, producing similar phenomena, have existed in every geological epoch; and though the evidences of these are most extensive and distinct, perhaps, among the rocks of the oldest or primary period, that they are numerous and manifest also among those of the secondary and tertiary periods.
Third, That rocks of every age and kind, when exposed to the action of the air, the vicissitudes of the seasons, the beating of the rains, the force of flowing water, the dash of the inconstant sea, and other natural agencies, crumble down, wear away, or are torn asunder into fragments of every size. These either remain where they are formed, or are carried by winds and moving waters to distances, sometimes very great, but which are dependent on the force of the wind or water which impel them, and on the size or density of the fragments themselves. Thus are our shores daily worn away by the action of the sea, and the fragments distributed along its bottom by the tides and currents; and thus, from the far northern mountains of America, does the Missouri bring down detached fragments thousands of miles into the Gulf of Mexico, whence the Gulf Stream carries them even to the icy Spitzbergen.
Fourth, That over all the solid rocks, almost everywhere is spread a covering of this loose, and, for the most part, drifted matter, consisting of sands, gravels, and clays. These overspread not only valleys and plains, but hill-sides and slopes, and sometimes even mountain-tops, to a greater or less depth. There are comparatively few spots where these loose materials do not cover and conceal the native rocks; but in some localities, and especially in wide plains and deep river valleys, they are sometimes met with in accumulations of enormous depth. In our own island, a depth of two hundred feet of such superficial sands, gravels, and clays, is by no means unusual. They are often sorted into beds alternately coarse and fine, evidently by the action of moving water; and while the great bulk of the fragments of which our English gravels consist can generally be traced to native rocks at no great distance from the spots on which they rest, yet among them are to be found fragments also, which must have been brought from Norway, and other places, many hundred miles distant.
On the surface of these drifted masses we generally live, and from the soils they form we extract by tillage the means of life.
Fifth, That these, occasionally thick, beds of drifted matter—driftwe shall for brevity call it—are in some places cut through by existing rivers, the beds of which run between high banks of clay, sand, or gravel, which the action of the stream has gradually worn and washed away. This is seen in many of our own river valleys; and it is especially visible along the great rivers of North America. The effect of this wearing action is to remove, mix up, andredistribute, towards the river’s mouth, the materials which have been scooped out by the cutting water, and thus to produce, on a small scale, along the river’s bed, what had long before been done in the large, when the entire bed of drift through which the river flows was itself spread over the plain or valley by more mighty waters.
These things being understood, a very wide geological examination of gold-bearing localities has shown—
First, That gold rarely occurs in available quantity in any of the stratified rocks, except in those which belong to the primary or oldest group, and in these only when or where they have been, more or less, disturbed or altered by ancient volcanic or volcanic-likeaction; by the intrusion, for example into cracks and hollows, of veins and masses of serpentine, granite, syenite, and other igneous rocks, in a melted or semi-fluid state.
Second, That among these primary stratified rocks a subdivision, to which the name of Silurian was given by Sir Roderick Murchison, has hitherto, as a whole, proved by far the richest in this kind of mineral wealth; though the slate-rocks below, and the sandstones and limestones above, in favourable circumstances, maybe equally gold-bearing.
Third, That the drifted sands and gravels, in which gold-washing is profitable, occur only in the proximity, more or less near, of such ancient and altered (so called metamorphic) rocks. They are, in fact, the fragments of such rocks broken up, pounded, and borne to their present sites by natural causes, operating long ages ago, but similar in kind to those which now degrade and carry away to lower levels the crumbling particles still torn off from our hardest mountains by the ceaseless tooth of time.
Numerous as have been the deposits of gold found in various ages and countries, they all confirm the general geological conclusions above stated. The main and most abundant sources of gold which were known to the ancients, occurred among the sands of rivers, and amid the gravels and shingles which formed their banks. Such were the gold-washings in the beds of the Phasis, the Pactolus, the Po, the Douro, the Tagus, and the mountain streams which descended from the alpine heights of Greece, of Italy, of America, of Asia Minor, and of many other countries. These rivers all descend from, or, early on their way, pass through or among, ancient rocks, generally old and altered Silurian strata, such as those we have spoken of, in which the gold originally existed, and from which the existing rivers, since they assumed their present channels, have in some few cases, and to a small amount, separated and brought it down. And if in any region, as in Nubia, Hungary, Bohemia, and Macedonia,[6]the ancient or mediæval nations followed up their search to the sources of the rich rivers, and were successful in finding and extracting gold from the native rocks, later explorations, wherever made, have shown that these mines were situated among old and disturbed deposits of the primary and Silurian age.
The more modern discoveries in America, Siberia, and elsewhere, prove the same. So that, among geologists, it is at present received as an established fact, that the primary, the so called azoic and palæozoic rocks, are the only great repositories of native gold.
There are no known laws, either physical or chemical, by which the almost exclusive presence of gold in these ancient rocks can be accounted for or explained. A conjecture has been hazarded, however, to which we shall for a moment advert.
From the fissures and openings which abound in volcanic neighbourhoods, gases and vapours are now seen continually to arise. Whatever is capable of being volatilised—driven off in vapour, that is—by the existing heat, rises from beneath till it reaches the open air, or some comparatively cool spot below the surface, where it condenses and remains. Such was the case also in what we may call the primary days of geology.
Gold is one of the few metals which occur, for the most part, in the native or metallic and malleable state. But in this state it is not volatile, and could not have been driven up in vapour by ancient subterranean heat. But, as in the case of many other metals, the prevailing belief is, that it has been so volatilised—not in the metallic state, however, but in some form of chemical combination in which it is capable of being volatilised. No such combinations are yet known, though their existence is not inconsistent with—may in fact be inferred from—our actual knowledge.
It is further supposed that, at the period when the primary rocks were disturbed by intrusions of granites, porphyries, serpentines, greenstones, &c., which we have spoken of as volcanic-like phenomena, the elementary bodies, which, by their union with the gold, are capable of rendering it volatile, happened to exist more abundantly than at the period of any of those other disturbances by which the secondary and tertiary rocks were affected; and that this is the reason why signs of gold-bearing exhalations, and consequently gold-bearing veins, are rare in the rocks of the newer epochs.
According to this view of the introduction of gold into the fissures and veins of the earliest rocks, its presence is due to what we may call the fortuitous and concurrent presence in the under crust of other elementary substances along with the gold, which by uniting with it could make it volatile, rather than to the action or influence of any widely-operating chemical or physical law. The explanation itself, however, it will be remembered, is merely conjectural, and, we may add, neither satisfactory nor free from grave objections.
But from the geological facts we have above stated, several very interesting consequences follow, such as—
First, That wherever the rocks we have mentioned occur, and altered as we have described, the existence and discovery of gold are rendered probable. Physical conditions may not be equally propitious everywhere. Broad valleys and favourable river channels may not always coexist with primary rocks traversed by old volcanic disturbances; or the ancient sands and shingles with which the particles of abraded gold were originally mixed may, by equally ancient currents, have been scoured out of existing valleys, and swept far away. But these are matters of only secondary consideration, to be ascertained by that personal exploration which a previous knowledge of the geological structure will justify and encourage.
Whenever the geology of a new country becomes known, therefore, it becomes possible to predict the presence or absence of native gold, in available quantities, with such a degree of probability as to make public research a national, if not an individual duty. This led Sir Roderick Murchison to foretell the discovery of gold in Australia, as we have already explained; and similar knowledge places similar predictions within the power of other geologists.
We happen to have before us, at this present moment, a geological map of Nova Scotia. Two such maps have been published, one by Messrs Alger and Jackson, of Boston, and another by Dr Gesner, late colonial geologist for the province of New Brunswick. In these maps the north-western part of the province is skirted by a fringe of old primary rocks, partly metamorphic, and sometimes fossiliferous, and resting on a back ground of igneous rocks, which cover, according to Gesner, the largest portion of this end of the province. Were we inclined to try our hand at a geological prediction, we should counsel our friends in the vale of Annapolis to look out for yellow particles along the course of the Annapolis river, and especially at the mouths and up the beds of the cross streams that descend into the valley from the southern highlands.
Nature, indeed, has given the Nova Scotians in this Annapolis valley a miniature of the more famed valley of the Sacramento. Their north and south mountains represent respectively the coast range and the Sierra Nevada of the Sacramento Basin. The tributaries in both valleys descend chiefly from the hills on the left of the main rivers. The Sacramento and the Annapolis rivers both terminate in a lake or basin, and each finally escapes through a narrow chasm in the coast ridge by which its terminating basin communicates with the open sea. The Gut of Digby is, in the small, what the opening into the harbour of San Francisco now called the “Golden Gate” and the “Narrows” is in the large; and if the Sacramento has its plains of drifted sand and gravel, barren and unpropitious to the husbandman, the Annapolis river, besides its other poor lands, on which only the sweet fern luxuriates, has its celebrated Aylesford sand plain, or devil’s goose pasture—a broad flat “given up to the geese, who are so wretched that the foxes won’t eat them, they hurt their teeth so bad.” Then the south mountains, as we have said, consist of old primary rocks, such as may carry gold—disturbed, traversed by dykes, and changed or metamorphosed, as gold-bearing rocks usually are. Whether quartz veins abound in them we cannot tell; but the idle boys of Clare, Digby, Clements, Annapolis, Aylesford, and Horton, may as well keep their eyes about them, and the woodmen, as they hew and float down the pine logs for the supply of the Boston market. A few days spent with a “long Californian Tom,” in rocking the Aylesford and other sands and gravel-drifts of their beautiful valley, may not prove labour in vain. What if the rich alluvials of Horton and Cornwallis should hide beneath more glittering riches, and more suddenly enriching, than the famed crops of which they so justly boast? Geological considerations also suggest that the streams which descend from the northern slopes of the Cobequid Mountains should not be overlooked. It may well be that the name given to Cap d’Or by the early French settlers two hundred years ago, may have had its origin in the real, and not in the imaginary presence of glittering gold.
But to return from this digression.Second, The same facts which thus enable us to predict or to suggest inquiry, serve also to test the truth or falsehood of ancient traditions regarding the former fruitfulness in gold of countries which now possess only the fading memory of such natural but bygone wealth. Our geological maps direct us to European countries, in which all the necessary geological conditions coexist, and in which, were the world still young, a geologist would stake a fair reputation on the hazard of discovering gold. But the art of extracting gold from auriferous sands is simple, and easily practised. It is followed as successfully by the black barbarians of Africa as by the whitest savages of California. The longer a country has been inhabited, therefore, by a people among whom gold is valued, the less abundant the region is likely to be in profitable washings of gold. The more will it approach to the condition of Bohemia, where gold prevailed to a great extent, and was very productive in the middle ages, though it has been long worked out, and the very localities of its mines forgotten.[7]
Were it to become, for example, a matter of doubtful tradition, which the historian was inclined to pass by, that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth three hundred men were employed near Elvan’s Foot—not far, we believe, from Wanlockhead in Scotland—at a place called the Gold Scour, in washing for the precious metal, who in a few summers collected as much as was valued at £100,000; or that in 1796, ten thousand pounds’ worth of gold was collected in the alluvial soil of a small district in Wicklow—the geologist would come to his aid and assure him that the natural history of the neighbourhood rendered the occurrence of gold probable, and the traditions, therefore, worthy of reliance.
Third, They explain, also, why it is that, where streams flowing from one slope of a chain or ridge of mountains are found to yield rich returns to the gold-seekers, those which descend from the opposite slope often prove wholly unproductive. In the Ural, rich mines occur almost solely on the eastern, or Siberian slope of the great chain. On the western, or European slope, a few inconsiderable mines only are worked. So, as yet, in the Sierra Nevada in California, the chief treasures occur in the feeders of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which descend from its western side. The eastern slope, which falls towards the broad arid valley of the Mormons, is as yet unfamed, and may probably never prove rich in gold. These circumstances are accounted for by the fact that, in the Ural, the older rocks, of which we have spoken as being especially gold-bearing, form the eastern slope of the ridge only, the western flank of the range being covered for the most part by rocks of a more modern epoch. The same may be the case also with the Sierra Nevada where it is still unexplored; and the Utah Lake, though remote, by its saltness lends probability to this conjecture.
Fourth, and lastly, they make clear the distinction between the “dry and wet diggins” we read of in our Californian news—why in so many countries the beds of rivers have been deserted by the gold-finders, and why the river banks, and even distant dry and elevated spots, have proved more productive than the channel itself.[8]
Let us attempt to realise for a moment the condition of a country like California, at the period, not geologically remote, when the gold-bearing drift was spread over its magnificent valley. The whole region was covered by the sea to an unknown depth. The snowy ridge, (Nevada,) and probably the coast ridge, also formed lines of rocky islands or peaks, which withstood the fury of the waves, and, if they were covered with ice, the wearing and degrading action also of the moving glaciers. The spoils of the crumbling rocks sank into the waters, and were distributed by tides and currents along the bottom of the valley. The narrow opening through the coast chain, by which the bay of San Francisco now communicates with the Northern Pacific, would, at the period we speak of, prevent the debris of the Nevada rocks from being washed out into the main basin of the Pacific, and this would enable the metallic, as well as the other spoils of these rocks, to accumulate in the bottom, and along the slopes of what is now the valley of California.
By a great physical change the country was lifted out of the sea, either at once or by successive stages, and it presented then the appearance of a valley long and wide, covered almost everywhere by a deep clothing of sands, gravels, and shingles, with which were intermingled—not without some degree of method, but at various depths, and in various proportions—the lumps and grains of metallic gold which had formerly existed in the rocks, of which the sands and shingles had formed a part.
And now the tiny streams, which had formerly terminated their short courses in the sea itself, flowed down the mountain slopes, united their waters in the bottom, and formed large rivers. These gradually cut their way into the superficial sands, washed them as the modern gold-washer does in his cradle, and collected, in certain parts of their beds, the heavier particles of gold which they happened to meet with in their descent. Hence the golden sands of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, and of so many of the rivers celebrated in ancient story. But the beds of these rivers could never be the receptacle of all the gold of such a district.Theyderived nearly all their wealth from the sands and clays or gravels they had scooped out in forming their channels; and as these channels occupy only a small fraction of the surface of the bottoms and slopes of most river valleys, they could, or were likely to contain, only an equally small fraction of the mineral wealth of their several regions. The more ancient waters had distributed the gold throughout the whole drift of the country. The river, like a “long Tom,” had cradled a small part of it, and proved its richness. The rest of the drift, if rocked by art, would prove equally, it might be even more, productive.
It is in this old virgin drift, usually untouched by the river, that the so-called dry diggings are situated. The reader will readily understand that, while no estimate can be formed of the quantity of gold which an entire valley like that of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, or which wide sandy plains like those of Australia, may ultimately yield, yet it will require great sagacity to discover, it may even be that only accident and long lapse of time will reveal, in what spots and at what depths the gold is most abundantly accumulated, and where it will best pay the cost of extraction.
We do not now advert to any of the other points connected with the history of gold on which our geological facts throw light. These illustrations are sufficient to show how rich in practical inferences and suggestions geological and chemical science is, in this as in many other special branches of mineral inquiry.
Nor need we say much in answer to our question,—“Why the ability to predict, as in the Australian case,” or generally to draw such conclusions and offer such suggestions and explanations, has remained so long unanswered, or been so lately acquired? Geology and chemistry are both young sciences, almost unknown till within a few years, rapidly advancing, and every day applying themselves more widely and directly to those subjects which effect the material prosperity and individual comforts of mankind. Knowledge which was not possessed before our day, could obviously neither be applied at all by ancient nations, nor earlier by the moderns.
To the consideration of the absolute extent and probable productive durability of the gold regions newly brought to light—of their extent and richness compared with those known in former times—and of their probable effects on the social and financial relations of mankind, we shall now turn our attention.
In the preceding part we have explained the circumstances in which gold occurs—the geological conditions which appear to be necessary to its occurrence—and where, therefore, we may expect to find it. But no conditions chemical or geological at present known are able to indicate—a priori, and apart from personal examination and trial—in what quantity the precious metal is likely to occur, either in the living rocks of a gold-bearing district, or in the sands and gravels by which it may be covered. Yet, next to the fact of the existence of gold in a country, the quantity in which it is likely to occur, and the length of time during which a profitable yield may be obtained, are the questions which most interest, not only individuals on the spot, but all other countries to which the produce of its mines is usually sent, or from which adventurers are likely to proceed.
We have already remarked, that, in nearly all the gold regions which have been celebrated in past times, their mineral riches have been for the most part extracted from the drifted sands and gravels which overspread the surface. We have also drawn attention to the small amount of skill and intelligence which this extraction requires, and to the brief time in which such washings may be exhausted even by ignorant people. Most of our modern gold mines are situated in similar drifts. We may instance, from among the less generally known, those of Africa, from which are drawn the supplies that come to us yearly from the gold coast.
“Of all the African mines those of Bambouk are supposed to be the richest. They are about thirty miles south of the Senegal river; and the inhabitants are chiefly occupied in gold-washing during the eight months of dry weather. About two miles from Natakou is a small round-topped hill, about 300 feet high, the whole of which is an alluvial formation of sand and pulverised emery, with grains of iron ore and gold, in lumps, grains, and scales. This hill is worked throughout; and it is said the richest lumps are found deepest. There are 1200 pits or workings, some 40 feet deep—but mere holes unplanked. This basin includes at least 500 square miles. Forty miles north, at the foot of the Tabwara mountains, are the mines of Semayla, in a hill. This is of quartz slate; and the gold is got by pounding the rock in large mortars. In the river Semayla are alluvial deposits, containing emery impregnated with gold. The earth is washed by the women in calabashes. The mine of Nambia is in another part of the Tabwara mountains, in a hillock worked in pits. The whole gold district of Bambouk is supposed to extend over 10,000 square miles.
“Close to the Ashantee country is that of the Bunkatoos, who have rich gold workings, in pits at Bukanti and Kentosoe.”—(Wyld, p. 44.)
From this description we see that all the mines in the Senegal country are gold-washings, with the exception of those of Semayla, to which we shall hereafter allude. No skill is required to work them; and should European constitutions ever permit European nations to obtain an ascendancy in this part of Africa, such mines may be effectually exhausted before an opportunity is afforded for the application of European skill. And so in California and Australia, should the gold repositories be all of the same easily explored character, the metal may be suddenly worked out by the hordes of all classes who have been rushing in; and thus the influence of the mines may die away after a few brief years of extraordinary excitement.
When California first became famous, the popular inquiry everywhere was simply, what amount of immediate profit is likely to be realised by an industrious adventurer? What individual temptation, in other words, is there for me or my connections to join the crowd of eager emigrants?
Passing over the inflated and suspicious recitals which found their way into American and European journals, such statements as the following, from trustworthy sources, could not fail to have a most stimulating effect—
“To give you an instance, however, of the amount of metal in the soil—which I had from a miner on the spot, three Englishmen bought a claim, 30 feet by 100 feet, for fourteen hundred dollars. It had been twice before bought and sold for considerable sums, each party who sold it supposing it to be nearly exhausted. In three weeks the Englishmen paid their fourteen hundred dollars, and cleared thirteen dollars a-day besides for their trouble. This claim, which is not an unusually rich one, though it has perhaps been more successfully worked, has produced in eighteen months over twenty thousand dollars, or five thousand pounds’ worth of gold.”[9]
Mr Coke is here describing the riches of a spot on the immediate banks of the river, where circumstances had caused a larger proportion than usual of that gold to be collected, or thrown together—which the river, in cutting out its gravelly channel, had separated orrocked out, as we have described in the previous part of this article. This rich spot, therefore, is by no means a fair sample of the country, though, from Mr Coke’s matter-of-fact language, many might be led to think so. Few spots so small in size could reasonably be expected to yield so rich a store of gold, though its accumulation in this spot certainly does imply that the quantity of gold diffused through the drift of the country may in reality be very great. It may be so, however, and yet not pay for the labour required to extract it.
That many rich prizes have been obtained by fortunate and steady men in these diggings, there can be no doubt; and yet, if we ask what benefit the emigrant diggers, as a whole, have obtained, the information we possess shows it to be far from encouraging. On this subject we find, in one of the books before us, the following information:—[10]
“The inaccessibility of theplacers, the diseases, the hardships, and thevery moderate remuneration resulting to the great mass of the miners, were quite forgotten or omitted—in the communications and reports of a few only excepted.
“A few have made, and will hereafter make, fortunes there, and very many of those who remain long enough will accumulate something; but the great mass, all of whom expected to acquire large amounts of gold in a short time, must be comparatively disappointed. I visited California to dig gold, but chose to abandon that purpose rather than expose life and health in the mines; and as numbers were already seeking employment in San Francisco without success, and I had neither the means nor the inclination to speculate, I resolved to return to my family, and resume my business at home.”—(P. 207.)
Thousands, we believe, have followed Mr Johnson’s example; and thousands more would have lived longer and happier, had they been courageous enough, like him, to return home unsuccessful.
“The estimate in a former chapter of three or four dollars per day per man, as the average yield during my late visit to the gold regions, has been most extensively and generally confirmed since that period. Innumerable letters, and persons lately returned from the diggings, (including successful miners,) now fix theaverage at from three to four dollars per dayfor each digger during the season.”—(P. 243.)
“Thus far the number of successful men may have been one in every hundred. In this estimate those only should be considered successful who haverealized and safely invested their fortunes. The thousands who thus far have made their fortunes, but are still immersed in speculations, do not belong as yet to the foregoing number.”—(P. 245.)
This is applying the just principle, “Nemo ante obitum beatus,” which is too generally forgotten when the first sudden shower of riches falls upon ourselves or our neighbours.
“Individual efforts, as a general rule, must prove abortive. So far as my knowledge enables me to judge, they already have.I do not know of a single instance of great success at the mineson the part of a single member of the passengers or ship’s company with whom I came round Cape Horn: of the former there were a hundred, and of the latter twenty. Many have returned home, who can tell the truth.”—(P. 249.)
This last extract does not contain Mr Johnson’s own experience, but that of a physician settled at San Francisco, from whose communication he quotes; and the same writer adds many distressing particulars, which we pass by, of the fearful misery to which those free men, of their own free will, from the thirst of gold, have cheerfully exposed themselves.