Mining tailings

“ These mines, with their prolonged subterranean workings, their stamping and crushing mills, and the smelting works which have been established near them, fill the district with noise, hubbub, and smoke by night and day; but I had turned altogether aside from them into a still region, where each miner in solitude was grubbing for himself, and confiding to none his finds or disappointments. Agriculture restores and beautifies, mining destroys and devastates; turning the earth inside out, making it hideous, and blighting every green thing, as it usually blights man's heart and soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A similar sacrifice in the shape of pillars is often necessary to support the surface, either to avoid injury to valuable structures or to prevent a flooding of the mine. As already noted large pillars must always be left to protect shafts, adits and the more important mine-passages necessary for drainage, ventilation and the haulage of mineral. In the early history of mining there was but little attempt at systematic development and working, and the mines were often irregular and tortuous. ”

“ Mine à La Motte has also proved an extensive deposit, and is still unexhausted. New Diggings, Shibboleth, and Richwoods, are among the discoveries of later date, which have yielded very large quantities of ore. But the mode of mining in the diluvial soil must exhaust it of its mineral contents, and direct miners, in after years, to the true position of the ore, in the calcareous rock. So long as the search continues in the soil, the business will partake of the uncertainty which now attends it, and which renders it rather an object of temporary enterprise, than a fixed employment. ”

“ We do not, of course, desire to keep our ore and coal in their existing state, because they must be used, but this does not mean that coal deposits and ore deposits should be exploited in excess of need, nor that the processes of mining should be wasteful. With proper care, soil and timber can be so conserved that neither the farm nor the forest will be destroyed. ”

“ Mill of the Pittsburg-Silver Peak Gold Mining Co., Blair, Nevada.
Water may be too scarce for the needs of a mine or its community. There may not be sufficient to supply boilers or a mill, or for the domestic purposes of the [89] workers. On the other hand, water may be so abundant in the mine workings as to prove a deterrent factor in profitable operation. With shaft mines, having deep workings and low grades of ore, if water must be delivered mechanically, the costs for such drainage are frequently prohibitive of mining. ”

“ The very woods cut down on the site of the mines afford the necessary charcoal for smelting. The whole of the processes described are conducted by the Chinese. The miners are scattered over the island, according to the direction of the mines. Besides the immediate laborers in the mines, many others are connected with them, being engaged either in raising [162] food and necessaries, or in fabricating the tools and other materials required in the processes of mining, washing, and smelting. ”

“ To well and sufficiently timber said mine at all points where proper, in accordance with good mining, and to repair all old timbering wherever it may become necessary. To keep at all times the drifts, shafts, tunnels, and other workings thoroughly drained, and clear of loose rock and rubbish, unless prevented by extraordinary mining casualty. To deliver to said lessors as royalty ten per cent. ”

“ There is only a hole in the ground, where mining is carried on in much the same manner as in other kinds of mines. The shaft is sunk and lined with timbers to keep the dirt from falling in, just as in other mines. In working salt mines, however, water is almost as bad as earth, and therefore a layer of clay is put between the timbers and the earth. There are the usual galleries and pillars, with roof and floor of salt. The workmen try to get the salt out in lumps or blocks as far as possible, and so they bore in drill holes and then blast with dynamite or powder. ”

“ Hereabout are not only waterfalls, cañons, creeks, and huge bowlders dashed down from frost-riven peaks, for besides gold and silver, the region is said to abound with tin, that peculiarly elusive mineral which, though often found, seems to always dematerialize after the campaign is over; and though millions have been spent in developing the tin mines near Harney, the product has not yet paid the expense of mining. Three miles south of the peak are the Needles, bold-jutting pinnacles of sandstone that stand high above the bed of Squaw Creek and point their fingers toward the sky. ”

“ FIG. 100.—HYDRAULIC MINING ON THE KLAMATH RIVER, CALIFORNIA As the rocks upon the surface decay and the crumbling material is carried away by running water, the gold, being very heavy, washes down the hillsides and is at last gathered in the gulches. This fact explains why we find gold both in veins and in the gravel of the streams. Getting gold from the veins is called quartz-mining. Washing it from the gravel is called placer-mining; and if the gravel is deep and a powerful stream of water is required, the work is called hydraulic mining. ”

“ The mining interest respects no rights but its own. A farmer may have his whole estate changed to a barren waste, by a flood of sand and gravel from some hydraulic mining up the stream. If a fine orchard or garden stands in the way of the working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard and garden are doomed. They are torn down, dug out, washed to pieces, and then washed over side hills. Where the process of hydraulic mining has been, or is being carried on, the country presents an appearance of devastation and ruin that is scarcely imaginable; forming a frightful blot upon the face of nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In fact, some of the 50-year old stands have already been cut over a second time, and each time with decided profit to the owner and no damage to the forest. From one 10-acre block of second growth now 50 years old, situated 7 miles from the railroad, already 32,000 feet of mining timber and about 100 50-foot piles have been taken out, yet the stand is now in good condition, and in a few years more of the smaller trees can be removed without infringing on the yield of the final crop. ”

“ The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without "screening the tailings." Of all recreations in the world, screening tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most undesirable. ”

“ In some of the claims the pay-dirt lies within two feet of the surface; in others it lies much deeper, but all the superincumbent matter is swept away.
Water is the great agent of the placer miner; it is the element of his power; its amount is the measure of his work, and its cost is the measure of his profit. With an abundance of water he can wash every thing; without water he can do little or nothing. Placer mining is almost entirely mechanical, and of such a kind that no accuracy of workmanship or scientific or literary education is necessary to mastery in it. ”

“ Another important problem that constantly confronts the mining engineer is that of drainage. Mines are, of course, great reservoirs for the accumulation of water, which must be drained or pumped out continually; and as the shafts are sunk deeper and deeper it becomes increasingly difficult to raise the water to the surface. ”

“ A great many are made of duck or white canvas; while others are built of stunted saplings, which grow sparsely throughout the mining region. Those constructed of the latter material are about the size and shape of a common hog-pen, with a stick and{155} mud chimney, which very frequently has a headless whiskey barrel stuck in the top for a funnel. These are the best and most comfortable domicils about the mines; and it is only when miners, or a combination of miners, have large claims, which afford them steady employment for a considerable length of time, that they are enabled to build them. ”

“ No one can appreciate the magnitude of those various movements by a simple perusal of statistics of the mineral wealth which they disclosed. He must pass through the mining belts and note how almost every rod of ground, over vast tracts of country, is filled with prospect holes that attest the miner’s former presence. If the trapper carried the tools of his trade to haunts remote and inaccessible, the miner, with his pick and shovel, certainly outdid him. ”

“ Several of the mines in the mineral soil have been traced down into the rock, and have been pursued through apertures, closing and expanding in the manner of true veins. In the numerous cases where the rock has put a stop to further mining, and it has exhibited no signs of ore, it may be supposed that the ore has been moved, by diluvial force, from the original position of the mine, and been finally deposited, with the soil, upon unmetalliferous portions of the rock. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the plain around that region is spread over, a foot deep, with blue rock, placed there by the Company, and looks like a plowed field. Exposure for a length of time make the rock easier to work than it is when it comes out of the mine. If mining should cease now, the supply of rock spread over those fields would furnish the usual 8,000 car-loads per day to the separating works during three years. ”

“ This prevents many from engaging in mining on the public lands, and especially those who would be best able to prosecute the business; and of the number who take leases, a great proportion continue to pursue the desultory method of mining in alluvial [20] ground, introduced at an early period by the French, but which is attended with very great uncertainty.
Improvements remain also to be introduced in regard to the processes of mining, the furnaces employed, and the method of raising the ore. ”

“ In the systematic mining of larger deposits, the simplest plan consists in mining large areas by means of numerous working-places under the protection of pillars of mineral left for the purpose, and later mining these pillars systematically, allowing the overlying rock beds to fall and fill the abandoned workings. In shallow mines the pillars are small and the saving of the mineral of minor importance. ”

“ When we have to use drainage tunnels for our mines we carry the water off from the mouth of the tunnel in a flume, placing quicksilver in the riffles, and if it is a copper mine we place scrap iron in the water and we also use the water for power to assist us in mining, so that at the present time we extract and reduce ore at a lower rate than in other parts of the world, for there is no wastefill management and no overproduction, for in all our mining operations we work those that cost the least, and we operate our coal mines in the same way. ”

“ In complete mining equipment, with candles stuck by lumps of clay to their felt hats, the travellers have painfully descended by perpendicular ladders and along dripping-wet rock passages, fathoms down into pitchy darkness; the miner who guides them calls a halt. ”

“ The want of capitalists in the mine country, and of practical skill in the boring, blasting, sinking shafts and galleries, oppose obstacles to the [Pg 160] successful progress of mining. There is but one regular hearth-furnace for smelting in the whole district; and that is on the modern plan of English furnaces. There are not over four or five regular shafts in about forty mines; there is not an engine, either by horse, steam, or water power, for removing water from the mines, several of which have been abandoned on this account, with rich prospects of ore in view. ”

“ The wood-cutters from the mines vied with those from the city—joiners, carpenters, wheelwrights, and coopers—in thinning the dense masses of beautiful forest trees as rapidly as possible. Burghers and others, aided by the gaunt-looking mining people, with earth-stained clothes and red night-caps on their heads, were loading the long heavy trunks upon drays that stood in readiness, and driving them off with all speed towards the town. ”