THE

A B C OF MINING

A Handbook for Prospectors

PREFACE.

Owing to recent rich discoveries in more than one mining field, hundreds of shrewd, intelligent men without experience in prospecting are turning their attention to that arduous pursuit—to such this book is offered as a safe guide.

A complex subject has been treated as simply as its nature permitted, and when a scientific term could not be avoided, the explanation in the glossary has been offered.

CHARLES A. BRAMBLE, D.L.S.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

A steady demand for this work has shown that it fills a want, and serves the purpose for which it was written. In issuing this second edition, a few compositors' errors that had crept in, owing to the author being in a very remote region while the book was going through the press, have been corrected, but no material changes in the text were found desirable.

CONTENTS.

THE A B C OF MINING.

A B C OF MINING.

  CHAPTER I.

PROSPECTING.

Many men seem to think that should their destinies lead them into parts of the world where there is mineral wealth they will have little chance of discovering the deposits without the technical education of a mining engineer. This is wrong. The fact is that the sphere of the prospector does not cover that of the engineer. The work of the one ends where that of the other begins, and many of the most successful discoverers of metallic wealth have been entirely ignorant of the methods by which a great mine should be opened, developed, and worked.

A few simple tools and a not very deep knowledge of assaying, with an observant eye and a brain quick to deduce inferences from what that eye has seen, are the most valuable assets of a prospector. In time he will gain experience, and experience will teach him much that he could not learn in any college nor from any book. Each mining district differs from every other, and it has been found that certain rules which hold good in one region, and guide the seeker after wealth to the hidden treasure that has been stored up for eons of time, do not apply in another region.

To show what may be done with imperfect, improvised apparatus, an Australian assayer, who has since become famous, started up country in his youth with the following meager outfit: A cheap pair of scales, a piece of cheese cloth, a tin ring 1½ inches by ½ inch, a small brass door-knob, some powdered borax, some carbonate of soda and argol, a few pounds of lead lining taken from a tea chest, an empty jam pot, a short steel drill, a red flower pot. With this modest collection of implements he made forty assays of gold ores that turned out to be correct when repeated in a laboratory.

About the best advice that can be given to a man who has determined to go to some out of the way region where there is a possibility of his discovering minerals is to recommend him to visit the nearest museum and gain an acquaintance with the common rocks. Should he be unable to do this he had better provide himself with small, inexpensive specimens from the shop of some dealer. It is almost impossible to teach a beginner to distinguish the various rocks by any amount of printed instruction; the only way to learn to recognize them is to handle them and note carefully their color, weight, and the minerals that go to make them up. The explorer should be able to recognize at a glance, or at any rate after a very short inspection, the sedimentary