Mining gallery

“ The galleries for placing the chambers behind the counterscarp are branches from the gallery of descent into the ditch; those behind the scarp may branch out from a gallery driven under the ditch, when water or rock do not forbid, or from a gallery driven through the scarp wall after crossing the ditch by sap or by a bridge.
93. To start the gallery through the scarp wall, a miner is “attached” to the wall by protecting him from fire along the ditch, from sorties, and from loaded shells, etc., rolling down upon him from the parapet by suitable traverses and splinter-proof. ”

“ When time and the character of the ground admit, and larger capacity is desired, the shaft may be made wider and deeper, the gallery wider and longer, and the powder-chamber deeper, longer, and wider, if desired.
The excavation for the entrance and approaches, the placing of balks, and the levelling and ramming of the earth-cover, should be done by night; the mining work can be carried on both night and day. ”

“ All parts of the vein should be included, and the lode cross-cut by galleries in more than one spot. It is the very great necessity of these expensive preparatory explorations that has given rise to the saying, "Quartz mining is for rich men." ”

“ At one time a horse gin was employed in this hall for raising the ore, but at present this work is performed through a shaft descending to the lowest level of the mine. Convenient steps lead down from another gallery to the first working level, and thence the descent is by short ladders to deeper storeys. The galleries are of a sufficient height to allow a person to work upright. The upper ones are dry, but the lower are humid and damp, although the water is easily raised by hand-pumps from storey to storey into a large receiver, which is emptied by a steam-engine. ”

“ The placer mines have perished and passed into history. But there is a new industry discovered. It is quartz mining—the very thing that this old man has given his life to establish. And it is this that has kept the old man up, alive, for the past few years. ”

“ In temples and pavilions of ineffable gorgeousness were exhibits of gems and precious metals of dazzling beauty. Useful ores and their products, building stones, soils, salt, petroleum—indeed, everything that man furthers from the dark entrails of the earth, was offered to inspection.
Besides the mineral resources of the world in their original state, the displays embraced many devices of mining machinery; such as pumps and engines used in mining, moving, and delivering ores; apparatuses for breaking out ore and coal ”

“ These deposits are naturally the first to fail in productiveness, but the neighboring hills are formed of a gold-bearing quartz which is being crushed, night and day, by hundreds of powerful machines; and the works still pay ten thousand miners fair day-wages, besides giving the organized companies who employ them satisfactory dividends. Thus mining has been largely robbed of its adventurous character in this neighborhood, and perhaps also of most of its alluring charm, having become a sort of regular industry, like coal-mining, or even brick-making. ”

“ Not so with silver and gold mines. They are most unreliable in both quality and quantity. Costly buildings and machinery are often erected to economize the mining of the ore, only to find no mine to operate by the time the buildings are completed and the machinery is working. ”

“ A mine thus consists of a series of horizontal galleries generally one above the other, but sometimes running parallel, traversed at irregular intervals by vertical shafts, and all communicating together, either directly or indirectly.
A person unacquainted with the details of mining, on hearing of many hundreds of men employed in a single mine, might naturally imagine that a visit to its recesses would afford a picturesque and imposing spectacle of gregarious labour and bustle, tremendous noise, and much artificial brilliancy to cheer the gloom. ”

“ There are a good many ways of gold-mining. Sometimes the mines are in veins in the hard rock. Then the miners bore down to them and dig out the rock, and break it up fine to get out the gold, just as they do silver. Another way is to find it in the loose sand in the bottoms of rocks and in gravel. When the miners first went out, they used to take a little gravel in a dish with some water, and shake it hard, so a little would slop over each time. ”

“ Thus, in Minnesota, in that wonderful Lake Superior country, that is famous as the world's greatest known producer of iron ore, tremendous tonnages are handled every year by the modern steam shovel, which works in natural light by day and by electric lamps at night. In Utah and Nevada we find similar operations conducted in the excavation of copper ores. In Australia, the famous Mount Morgan mine is using open air methods in the mining of precious metal ore. ”

“ About two-thirds of our gold is obtained from the placers, and one-third from the quartz.
A mine is defined and generally understood to mean "a subterraneous work or excavation for obtaining metals, metallic ores or mineral substances;" but this definition does not apply to our placer mines, which are places where gold is taken from diluvial or alluvial deposits. Most of the work is not subterraneous; it is done in the full light of day. ”

“ Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of digging it. ”

“ Though varying slightly in details, the methods of working the mines are identical in principle. From the steeply inclined shaft horizontal galleries are run diagonally right across the mine, the vertical 147 interval between successive galleries being 40 feet. From each gallery side galleries are run at right angles to it and parallel to the working face. The blue ground is worked systematically backwards from the working face. ”

“ As the gold is found in quartz rock, and only to a small extent in gravel or other alluvial deposits, the mining requires capital, and will be carried on by companies. It will be carried on quickly, and so quickly with the aid of the enormously improved scientific appliances we now possess, as to exhaust at no distant period the mineral which the rocks contain. ”

“ A large proportion was picked out by hand at many of the diggings, so abundant were the coarse pieces. Attention was early directed to the gold veins, and in 1851 regular quartz mining was commenced at Spring Hill in Amador co. In 1857 numerous mills, most complete and thorough in their construction, were in operation over a great part of the country; and mines were opened at greater depths than gold is often worked in other countries. A shaft of the Mount Hope mining company in Grass Valley was carried to the depth of 241 ft., reaching the vein at 350 ft. ”

“ And yet, with all the above restriction in our nomenclature, we have not reached one very important consideration, one which we have been approaching for a number of years and which, of late, has been met and forcibly applied by the best men in the profession of mining engineering.
An excavation that will produce coal, metals or gems is not necessarily a mine. The simple fact that a man can get some gold-bearing dirt from a hole in the ground does not mean that he has a mine. ”

“ That ton would have to be ’packed,’ as they say here, eighty miles over the roughest of trails to Cody, and there loaded on cars and sent clear to Omaha, our nearest smelter. And I guess you know more than I do about the costly process of crushing ore and extracting gold from it in a smelter. It’s not like mining for ’pay dirt,’ as the men here call 137 placer mining, where you gather up sand and wash it out yourself and find the particles of gold in the bottom of your pan. This quartz digging is the most expensive kind of mining there is. ”

“ Passing through the entrance, the mine gradually widens underground to a depth of 1062 feet. The chief mass of ore is 600 feet broad on its upper surface, greatly narrowing as it descends to a depth of 1200 feet. Round it are other similar deposits. As the copper pyrites are deposited generally on the circumference of the outer shell of these masses, which are of a very irregular outline, the mining operations are carried on in a perfect labyrinth of winding passages and galleries, situated at various depths, and supported either by pillars or walls. ”

“ In a cablegram recently received from the Company’s administrator on his return from a tour of inspection of the various mining districts he states that new finds were occurring everywhere daily, and that crushings were everywhere successful; that the reefs were improving with depth, and that wonderful development was proceeding in every district. As regards alluvial gold, that large deposits do exist, and that their discovery is only a question of time, is the opinion of all experienced miners. ”

“ Wooden booths flung signs to the streets bigger than the booths themselves: "Mineral Companies Promoted," "Mining and Smelting," "Mines, Options, Leases,"—there was no end to the variations of the eternal theme of mining. Town lots, switches of flats, and hill ridges were being swapped and sold and leased from the curb-stone; leases were being made from buggies and options were being granted from a horse's back. ”

“ Many gold mines have been abandoned as unprofitable that could have been mined at a profit had their owners been wealthy and enterprising enough to do a great deal of expensive prospecting by diamond drill, cross cuts, drifts and rises. In one instance that came to the writer's knowledge a clever mining engineer cleared nearly $200,000 profit by leasing for a term of years a gold mine that was supposed to be exhausted. A drill hole sunk less than 50 feet below the old workings revealed a pocket of ore in the vein, and paying quartz was found for many hundred feet below. ”

“ In the mining display is a model of one of their copper mines, and you see they have the largest furnace in the world, and they not only mine on land but under the sea, it beats all how them Japanese do go ahead. ”

“ We ask the miner what there is to see lower down. He replies, nothing but men breaking ore with pickaxes; the galleries of the mine are alike, [Pg 169] however deep they may go; when you have seen one you have seen all.
The answer decides us—we determine to get back to the surface.
We returned along the gallery, just as we had advanced, with the same large allowance of scrambling, creeping, and stumbling on our way. I was charitably carried along and down the platform over the pit, by my trousers, as before; our order of procession only changing when we gained the ladders again. ”

“ Lying between the mountain ranges and running in the same direction are valleys containing arable land, while on the benches and lower hills are excellent grazing lands, on which grow nutritious bunch-grass and other valuable native grasses. In all parts of the State mining is being profitably pursued, and almost weekly new and valuable discoveries of the precious metals are somewhere being made. ”

“ Indeed, this system of mining partakes of the nature of quarrying rather than that of mining in the ordinary sense, the ore being scooped from the surface of the ground. One naturally thinks of a mine as being subterranean; but in the great open-pit mines in the Lake Superior region, which are the largest mines in the world, all the mining is done at the surface of the earth. ”

“ There are also iron mines, and quarries of marble, granite, onyx, serpentine, limestone and sandstone—beds of fire clay, kaolin, fire and potter's clays, talc and asbestos and many prospects of petroleum.
Mining is suffering for the lack of transportation for the low grade ores, but prospects are excellent for relief in this regard in the near future. The era of wildcat exploitation has been relegated to the past and legitimate mining is now getting a firmer hold in the state, and we look for results within the next five years which will astonish many who think themselves well informed. ”

“ Such companies, with superior mechanical facilities to do much labor, in a short space, will be enabled to go over the whole mineral field, although already dug over by individuals, and reap yet a rich reward of their efforts. And when there will be no more gold washing to be done, then a new era in the mining of the country will commence—we mean a regular system of mining by sinking shafts into the very bowels of the rocks will be entered upon. ”

“ This gives time for breathing, although it adds to the length of the journey; for as almost all galleries are horizontal, every foot of positive ascent must be by ladders, which are almost always perpendicular. In very deep mines, this makes the labour of ascent a very serious matter, when taken daily for years. Unfortunately for the miner, most of the richest and populous mines are the deepest, and most worked in their lowest regions. When I visited Dolcoath copper mine in 1819, the lowest gallery was 1386 feet deep ”

“ Every man may hope that when he locates a new mine he is taking possession of a property that will have as extensive ore bodies as those that have been proven to exist in the lead-silver mines of Laurium, Greece, the quicksilver mines of Spain, or the copper and tin mines of Cornwall. ”