| Show MANHATTAN IS prospering SPECIAL correspondence manhattan nevada nov 24 while the market centers and particularly san francisco have maintained a more lively interest in manhattan than in any other camp of moderate production nothing that could be rated as a boom has been noted by those on the ground its growth however in productiveness and in public favor has been remarkable and if it is wise wise to launch any prophecies whatever about mining at the close of the good year 1911 it seems safe to predict that the district is on the eve of a regular old fashioned boom just at this time in excess of any experience peri ence in the past people investors are wise and cautious and well advised they sample and compute tonnage with the care born of bitter disappointments they weigh chances and then discount them several hundred per cent but with all that they are really buying manhattan stocks in respect to formation manhattan is like an aggregation of several gold districts entirely different in carracter nearly all the general divisions of gold bearing rocks are represented excepting granite several of the mines present features quite out of the ordinary and different from each other the rich ore of the present biggest producer the big four is schist that is hardly distinguishable from the common run of the country rock it owes its enrichment to a very stent fissure which at depth is tending toward but the general appearance of the ore is still that of common country rock and yet it is a very rich mine probably no mill run of a thousand tons of ore has ever dropped below 30 average and the value is often fifty or sixty even at these high averages the width of pay ore is sometimes as great as sixteen feet for a dry country the big four is a wet mine about gallons of water is now pumped daily from the level another unique occurrence is at the white caps two miles distant from the big four where the ore also has the appearance pe arance of country rock but Is different in character being more or less decomposed lime the discovery of the lode is a tribute to the value of persistent assaying as from the beginning rarely a color has shown in the pan panning gives no concentrates whatever and the entire sample washes away as free from suspicion as brick dust the ore is a dull grey granular limestone and the gold is in an although the percentage of arsenic is not great enough to interfere with almost perfect saving by cyaniding cyan iding four mill runs have been made from this mine aggregating 1200 tone with gross returns of over to continue the subject of diversity of occurrence about a mile east of the white caps is a field of rhyolite that is included in the acreage of the mineral hill consolidated co here the gold is found in regular quartz veins which are a system of fissures a half dozen in number parallel to each other and having an oblique strike with relation to the country each vein is about a half mile long this particular territory is in its infancy in point of development as active work only began late the past summer the work had its beginning with the discovery of a very rich shoot of ore in the burr thomas JThomas lease on mineral hill ground some of the quartz is so heavy with gold as to resemble cast iron in appearance as well as weight this discovery aroused immediate interest and led to the merger of the three companies whose boundaries included that particular formation most of the leases then at work were bought in by the new company and active development by tunnel was started the mineral hill consolidated is the only mining company in tile the whole district that is doing straightforward development the level is now in about feet of the necessary to reach the burr thomas shoot and the machinery of a compressor plant is on the ground and being installed wilen when the tunnel is 1000 feet in length it will have a vertical depth of about it has come about that manhattan is almost exclusively a leasers leaders lea sers camp since the fortune producing ore bodies of tono pah and goldfield they passed into the owning companies hands this is regarded as the logical successor of those districts as a field for leasers leaders and within an area of some four miles by two fifty quartz leases are at work most of them are producing in quantity the production varies from a few sacks of ore a day in the case of some of the newer leases to twenty thirty or forty tons which the output often reaches on such blocks as the steen peak cicala or that of bath bros or on swansons Sw ansons or the white caps everything Evey thing saved s a ved is of necessity high grade 1 and the lowest limit for this definition locally might be fixed at 30 in tile the beginning the bunchy character of the depo sites near the surface afforded many experts tile the opportunity to discredit the prospects of the district in time the experts were in turn discredited by the leasers leaders lea sers the surface bun bunches clies pointed the way to veins of greater or less regularity skepticism much foothold to stand on these days in manhattan there will be failures of course but there will inevitably evit ably be some great successes the present crying need of the district is milling capacity while this is a fact the statement should not take the form of an alarm the need is in a way to be supplied heretofore the war eagle mill has had the the field quite to itself with a capacity of only forty to fifty tons a day its charges are so high as to be prohibitive in the case of the great bulk of the ore of the district two other mills each about equal in size with the war eagle will be in commission by early spring next season will probably see five or six times the present milling capacity the process at the war eagle mill in brief is stamps tube mill and cyaniding cyan iding tanks it is very effective the saving being so close that it is claimed by some that a new record has been made in that direction the new mills will be brought about to the same standard |
