Show NATURE flaking GOLD professor arthur lakes of denver that learned student of mineralogy whose researches have been bee n of vast benefit to prospectors ani and mining men in the state says an exchange i maintains that the forming of met veins is now going on and sa say s that at steamboat springs t nevada and sult chur bank california fissure veins are being i formed before our eyes in a recent article I 1 on origin of gold deposits he lle says j at steamboat springs s clouds of steam I 1 issue from many vents over a bare rocky space apace a half mile long in a narrow darrow valley t with volcanic ridges cideres on either side the t vents are separate but occur in parallel lines showing they are connected by fissures r these fissures are filled with quartz dissolved and deposited by hot alkaline i waters these fissures traverse a continuous I 1 crust crust of depositing quartz which is half a t mile long by yards wide and thirty feet deep some fissures are open some partly filled with quartz with water issuing froina narrow crevice in the middle some are wholly filled with the quartz and have become true quartz fissure veins some of the larger fissures are a half mile long Z a foot wide open and parallel about twenty five feet apart and descending downward to the bottom of the quartz crust twenty feet and can be followed no further because they have deposited quartz in such abundance as to cover up the original vents in the underlying t country rocks water does not issue fro from in a all 11 the fissures but can be heard eight or ten feet below in violent agitation from steam and carbonic acid gas the quartz filling fillin 9 these fissures in the hottest parts is gelatinous in others spongy and in others hard or in layers of agate chalcedony chalca dony or sugar quartz everywhere there is the same distinct banded or ribbon structure we often observe in fissure veins resulting from successive layers of quartz being laid on the sides of the fissure by water solutions the quartz in these fissures contains sulphide of iron copper mercury and even free gold the contents as in old fissure veins are in much less proportion than the quartz veinstone vein sto stone ne the country rock below this fissured crust is a volcanic rhyolite lava like that of creede and cripple creek pierced at one point by it a dyke oi of volcanic basalt the hot springs and steam vents are probably the weakened manifestations of volcanic activity that occurred most violently when the basalt was erupted |