Show THE LAS PALOMAS PLACERS I 1 I 1 special correspondence spokane wash nov 26 extensive in area and uniformly high in gold values are the las palomas placers in the altar district in the state of sonora mexico owned by the neil development company headed by R K neil of spokane according to roy dark clark a mining engineer who has just returned to spokane from an inspection of the property made in the interest of local shareholders the companas comp anys claims cover several hundred acres of gravel deposits of which I 1 was able to sample only acres said mr dark clark this particular deposit is known as the Harl quila wash it is full 1600 feet in width at the lower end tapering to a width of feet at the upper end a mile distant I 1 sampled the openings in t this his deposit nearly all of them being sunk to a depth of about 50 feet at the upper end of the deposit the shafts reach the granite bedrock but lower down they are sunk a false bedrock composed of cemented gravel 1 I took sixty five samples from these workings and they showed that the overburden not including the rich channels on bedrock averaged more than 75 cents in gold per cubic yard many of these shafts I 1 sampled in two sections and found the top half to be a trifle richer than the lower half indicating that the gold was well distributed throughout the entire mass of gravel probably in horizontal stratas or floors parallel to the bedrock the fifty feet of gravel nearest the surface is slightly cemented and can be mined cheaply with the proper equipment I 1 believe the entire overburden can be handled at a cost not exceeding 25 cents a cubic yard with the operations in charge of intelligent tell igent men of technical knowledge I 1 am confident they will prove very profitable the placers in the district I 1 visited have been worked intermittently since 1799 various historians record production from the camp at much earlier dates the mexican governments records credit the district with a gold production of up to and including the year 1907 under the management of R K neill a great deal of new ground has been prospected since the property was acquired by the neill development company with the result that the same average values previously known to exist in the older workings have been found persistent through the overburden over a very much larger area he has planned to equip the property with specially designed mills to handle low grade material which does not require or justify fine crushing these mills first screen out the coarser gravel which amounts to 50 or 75 per cent of the material handled and incidentally save the fines they also break up the cemented material and thus free the black sand and gold the capacity of each mill is from to tons in ten hours and only requires an engine of 25 horsepower to operate it after the material has been handled by the mill the gold is recovered by dry washing machines equipped with intermittent air blasts they are highly efficient and recover more than 90 per cent of the values |