Show the prospector e clor and his burro im I 1 1 I see that you started out in bad form this morning said mhd prospector to his burro and that you are complaining already but you should have taken a good nights rest instead of staying up from midnight to three in the morning in order to see the comet such things as comets shooting stars and sheet lightning are not for burros any more than mill building is in the line of the ordinary prospector or miner and some of the milling plants so prolific in this region and now idle must have been built by men who were out hunting comets for their thoughts and ideas must have been up in the clouds judging from the rattle traps and misfits mis fits they have erected and classed as mills you want to know if it is wrong to look out for comets and shooting stars none whatever but one cannot make a success of astronomical work and research and at the same time conduct his regular daily grind in an able and intelligent manner and so for this reason I 1 am inclined to believe that these milling plants I 1 have caled caled your attention to were put up by men whose minds were not on the business in hand and not by experienced mill builders for these plants are all wrong end to and no more suited for the treatment of ore than a coff coffee ee mill they look all right to be sure to a casual observer and cost a mint of money but hardly one of them is suited for the ore to be treated here on one hand is a cyanide mill when the ore is a sulphide and could be treated by concentration tra tion here too is a mill for the handling of free gold ore and the ore is only treated by a jaw crusher before going onto the plates when it should be prepared by stamps or chilian mills to at least 60 mesh over yonder is a plant where the ore bins could be located at the top of the mill above the crusher but the ore is delivered to the lower floor and has to be elevated to th crude ore bin before dressing can begin this is a waste of time and a useless expenditure pend iture e of money that would make even a burro laugh and yet these mills have been built by earnest men who labored under u n th the e impression that they were putting up crackerjack cracker j jack ack plants and that as mill builders they not only took the cake but also also the whole bakeshop then too when it cabe came to the operation of these plants no one thought of securing the services of a practical and experienced millman mill man oh no anyone who could grind coffee could handle a gold mill a concentrator or a cyanide plant and so hundreds of tons of good ore was run through the different plants and out into the tailings pit without a recovery of even ten per cent of the values being made and this thing continued until the management of the companies called for a close down and hundreds of stockholders pasted their stock certificates on their bedroom bed room walls writing beneath them mining is a failure Fail bit again 1 I want to tell you old long ears concluded the prospector 1 I am somewhat fond of comets myself I 1 like to see the stars loosen up their artillery and fight mimic battles in the sky and a meteor now and then has some charm for me but I 1 cannot keep late hours in order to observe the heavens and do my work wor k well the next day and so I 1 take it that the mill builders I 1 have referred to must have been addicted to astronomy instead of spending their time in the study of mechanics ore dressing and practical mill operation and there you are and then some |