Nevada Nugget Hunters

rehab · Joined: 15 Aug 2006 Posts: 939 Location: NEVADA

KINROSS LINKS:

http://www.kinross.com/news/videos.html

LINK TO KETTLE MINE PROPERTY

the gold hill references in this thread represent the same mine as depicted in the latter part of this link:

http://www.kinross.com/news/index.aspx

The old Round Mountain town was moved, as the pit ate up most of the original townsite. The whole deposit geology has feeds into the Manhattan, Mt Jefferson, and area mining districts.

The company had just started pit development in 1983, after eradicating what was once round mountain. The site where the round mountain was, is now a sizeable hole.

In 1983, small nuggets were occasionally being picked up, and the operation was mostly a hit and miss gig, with several corporate sell offs and turnovers. Gold was there, but it took quite a bit of investment on milling and leaching equipment. and a steady eddie to keep working on the site, testing and exploring. apparently it all paid off.

while it's not too likely that you alls will find something in the wash of this magnitude, the whole area has a lot of gold history, and maybe you'll make out too, while on the off beaten track.

Service wise, Carver's is a decent place to hang out. I'm not sure if Darrough's hotsprings are still up and running (family scores and feuds), but it's great to soak there if it is. I worked up in Kingston Canyon once, and hit down to round mountain to the grocery store, probably twice a week. It snowed a lot while I was working, and you could only tell the highway as it was a wide flat spot in white.

I'd get to the grocery store, and stop to see Mrs. Darrough, sometimes with gifts. not anything like soaking in a hot pond during a blizzard, with only your nose sticking out of the water... the only other place like that is Pagosa Springs, CO

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rehab · Joined: 15 Aug 2006 Posts: 939 Location: NEVADA

E & MJ 9 15 1928

COMMENT AND CRITICISM

Even Scotland Has Had Its Gold Rushes

THE EDITOR:
Sir, In the south as in the north of Scotland, “gold fields” exist; the precious metal is there to be picked up occasionally. In the early twenties, several Lanarkshire miners, then on strike, found “trovering” for gold in Clydesdale, decidedly remunerative. In the north, gold was discovered more than fifty years ago in the Helmsdale Valley, Sutherlandshire, and thousands of adventurers flocked into the district. Hopes ran high with a return of gold to the value of £8,000. In 1911, gold washing was again resumed in the Helmsdale District, but after a short time, the enterprise came to an end.

In the south, however, in the wild tracts where rises the Clyde and the Nith, together with a small part of Peebleshire, there is gold also. The district is bleak and sterile, but its moors and its four streams—Short Cleuch, Mennock, Wanlock, and the first of the Clengoner Water—have been associated for centuries with gold and its seekers. Shepherds still find an occasional grain of the metal in the channels of the streams and burns, and at the foot of the glens.

Cornelius de Vois obtained permission in 1567 to “break the ground, mak (sic) sinks, and pots therein, and to put labourers thereto.” He had six score men at work in valleys and dales, together with lads and lasses. Yet neither history nor tradition hints as to the measure of de Vois’ success or failure. The next gold adventurer was distinctly fortunate if the “Archaeolokgia Scotica” is to be trusted for veracity. Sir Bevis Bulmer, a master of the Mint to Queen Elizabeth, obtained the right to work the Glengoner Water and environs for gold, and apparently he did wondrous well.

Upon Glengoner Water he built a fair country house; he furnished it fittingly; he kept therein great hospitality; he purchased lands and grounds; he kept much stock; and he brought home a water course, for the washing of gold. By help thereof, he got much straggling gold on the skirts of the hills and in the valleys, but none in solid places; which maintained himself then in great pomp, and thereby he kept open house for all comers and goers, as is reported. He feasted all sorts of people that came thither. Thus wrote the historian. Tradition corroborates the record as to Bulmer’s opulence from Glengoner gold.

Wanlock Head, however, had, before that decade, contributed to the riches of the kingdom. Stephen Atkinson, writing in 1619 on “The Discoveries and Historie of the Gold Mines in Scotland,” tells of one Abraham Grey who wrought out of gold, found on the Lanarkshire waste, “a verie fair deep bason” that held “within the brims thereof an English gallon of liquor.” This basin was filled with coined pieces of Lanarkshire gold called unicorns, and both were presented to the King of France, by the Regent Morton.
James I is said to have authorized the expenditure of about £3,000 sterling
—a big sum in those days—in working Carnwath Moor for gold. And the return was about three ounces! One or two miners did better in 1923. As also did a holidaying prospector in 1925; who picked up his income for two years.

But even the Helmsdale Rush cannot be compared for excitement with the rush that accompanied the finding of the precious metal in the east of Scotland, some three generations ago. A young man at the Australian gold diggings happened to mention in a letter home that the gold quartz there had a close likeness to rocks on Lomond Hill. This statement, his father accepted as fact. The gold fever took the old shoemaker, and, having paid a stealthy visit to the place, he satisfied himself that Davie was right. Evening after evening, the old man furtively made his way to the spot, filled his sack with the rock, and betook himself home by different and roundabout paths to evade
prying eyes.

His behavior, his ill-suppressed excitement, and his nightly jaunts caused comment, and then observation on the part of neighbors; and one evening a party of them challenged him as he was filling his sack. By the next forenoon, Kinness-wood and the countryside were gone gold-mad, and the folk flocked in hundreds to Lomond Hill. Some took horse and cart, and returned with sackfuls of the ore piled high, and they that had no wheelbarrow, staggered homeward with heavily burdened shoulders. Many slept alongside their “claims” and the scene next day defies description. What also defies description was the reaction that same afternoon after it was announced that the sparkling yellow particles were merely pyrites, and that the rock was not worth a shilling a ton for road metal. And for that generation, at any rate, the mere mention of
“DAVIE’S DIGGINGS” brought the glint of fury to many decent folks’ eyes.

N TOURNEUR
THUNDERSLY, ESSEX, ENGLAND
September 15,1928.—Engineering and Mining Journal
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rehab · Joined: 15 Aug 2006 Posts: 939 Location: NEVADA

Bromocyanide Treatment for Gold Ore

WESTERN AUSTRALIA is turning attention to refinements in the application
of the Sulman-Teed bromocyanide invention, whereby the roasting of a sulpho-telluride gold ore is unnecessary. Mr. C. B. Blackett, well known for his work when metallurgist of Golden Horseshoe Estates, has been conducting a research, according to an account in our London contemporary, The Mining Magazine.

The need for precise chemical control has been demonstrated, and experiments have shown that a high extraction of the gold is obtainable by a treatment comprising separate agitation with cyanide, and then bromocyanide solutions, in the order stated. A two-hour agitation with cyanide and a one-hour agitation with bromocyanide has been found to give maximum results on one ore, three hours with cyanide and two hours with bromocyanide being the best combination on another.

This change in the character of the solvent, incidentally, is in line with the conclusion that residue gold may be, in some instances at least, adsorbed gold, especially if excessively fine grinding has been practiced. A change in the physical character of the solution may alter surface-tension influences to an extent permitting the release of gold held thus. Picric acid adsorbed on platinum black, from an aqueous solution, is insoluble in water, but is immediately released if alcohol be added to the water. Similarly, it is not always effective to continue the treatment of an ore with the same solution, or the same wash, even in intermittent steps if the ore has been ground so finely that adsorption effects have played an important part in the retention of the gold on the surfaces of the gangue particles.

This is straying from the subject, however. The essential value in Mr. Blackett’s work lies in the conclusion that ample opportunity exists for further research, even in connection with an invention that may have been developed a great many years ago, and forgotten by most metallurgists. The field for extended use of a halogen as an activator in a solvent for gold has not been adequately explored.

With the significant changes made in recent years in the more efficient and more economical production of bromine—particularly in regard to its extraction from the salt-plant bitterns in the San Francisco Bay region—it might be advisable again to study the scope for the use of a double salt such as bromocyanide in the treatment of a moderately as well as a highly refractory gold ore.

403
September 15, 1928— Engineering and Mining Journal
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