F. von Briesen

“ Here, similar to California, gold is found wherever granite fills the fissures. Although the yield of the washings is gradually decreasing, it is really increased by daily discoveries of new fields, and amounts at present to about $28,000,000 annually. The greatest quantity of gold has of late years been mined in America, partly due to its natural wealth, partly to the energy brought to bear for obtaining it. Volcanic forces have brought gold as well as silver to the surface in the Rocky Mountains, but its exhaustion is approaching rapidly. ”

“ The traveler who visits the gold-regions of the United States will everywhere meet with decayed buildings and abandoned localities, which, in former years, were in a flourishing condition.
The gold production of Australia has followed about the same course: first, the washing of the auriferous sand; next, the working of the deep deposits, and, finally, the lodes; after that, again decrease of production. The chain of mountains passing in Australia from north to south consists of sedimentary rock, in places mixed with volcanic. Auriferous veins come up to the surface. ”

“ We therefore find in our planetary system that the densest bodies are nearest to the center, and this leads us to the presumption that the same law governs on each individual planet, and that, therefore, the heavy gold must be found nearest to the center. ”

“ It has been estimated that $1,200,000,000 of gold and silver have been mined in the West of the United States within the last thirty years; and that, in spite of the recklessness and extravagance which characterized the two decades from 1849 to 1869, a net profit of $30,000,000 per year was realized. Since 1850, the money invested and the labor expended in mining in the West for precious metals are estimated at $710,000,000. What may fairly be called the mining territory of the United States embraces an area of 1,190,000 square miles, with a population of barely 1,500,000. ”

“ This leads to the question, Whence the gold and platinum to be found upon the surface of the earth? These two heavy metals are only found in places where volcanic rocks have penetrated through earlier formations, and the granite has split up. Platinum, only found in excess in the Ural Mountains, is obtained from rocks that have come up from below; gold is found only in quartz-veins. ”

“ The total production of South America, except Brazil, from 1500 to 1875, was about thirteen hundred million dollars. We can nowhere follow the history of mining better than in Brazil. Toward the end of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of São Paulo were struck with the gold trinkets worn by the savages, and they began washing. In the year 1697 Bartholomeo Bueno found rich gold deposits in the province of Minas Geraes, in consequence of which many adventurers went there, and a war broke out between the Paulists and the Portuguese. ”

“ Brazil, which a hundred years ago excelled any other country in the production of gold, has in this respect become fully impoverished within the last fifty years. Its total production, from the end of the sixteenth century up to to-day, amounts to one hundred and sixty million dollars. ”

“ The gold is found here together with silver, as in the case of the Comstock lode, in Nevada, the gold deposits in Queensland and New Zealand, as well as the mines near Kremnitz, in the Carpathian range, in Hungary. The gold is sometimes found in them pure, sometimes mixed with silver, copper, or sulphur. In the older volcanic veins the gold is not mixed with silver, and bonanzas are never found in them. In many of these veins, also, granite veins are encountered, and, although remote from volcanic regions, it is presumed that the gold was carried up by the granite. ”

“ Towns were built—for instance, Villa Rica—and people flocked from all regions. The province of Matto Grosso, after the year 1720, ceased to produce gold, and in the eighteenth century Brazil occupied the place of California in the nineteenth. Minas Geraes alone, in the middle of the eighteenth century, produced seven, and Brazil ten, million dollars per year, but the deposits were soon exhausted, and toward 1820 the entire production of Brazil had dwindled to five hundred thousand dollars. ”

“ Entire Northern Africa, as far as the Sahara and the Falls of the Nile, consists of sedimentary ground, which never can have furnished metals; but in the interior we find old rock—granite, gneiss, and hornblende—and there the auriferous alluvial soil had been formed ”

“ Since America at present spends alone ten million dollars annually for gold and art productions, and, besides this, has reserved a large capital for speculating purposes, while its gold production is decreasing, it may be logically established that the gold for commercial purposes must constantly diminish, and financial crises will recur in ever-shortening intervals.—Fortschritt der Zeit. ”

“ Now, the planets are divided into two groups, according to their weight: the heavy, which lie within, and the light, which lie beyond, the circle of the asteroids. Mercury, the nearest to the sun, is seven times as heavy as water; Venus, the Earth, and Mars are five times as heavy ”