| Show kp I 1 I 1 VOE 00 GOLD LID MINES OF BOLIVIA 1898 by frank G carpen caipen wright right va tea K opy ter 20 1898 bo june bolivia a fla paz 2 I 1 richest and peru are among the regions of the world bolivia k more than produced of silver she now stands third hartli li producing countries the silver caong what american mining pros ana if here bere te tell 11 me Is true she bids era to soon come to the front as a rich t territory errit ory I 1 went out yesterday watch the weeks week Is cleanup clean up of a little which belongs to a number mine er bolivians ians ans of la paz the diggings river which yete on the the city not two miles from toy Hs 1 tta writing this river has I 1 am ofte feet deep sever several al hundred fc a gulley basin in axe be side of the plateau or and above gh cu la paz is situated wall of gravel extends eu cut t a high owita diat t is known as aa the alto far the city it Is in tb this is gravel aberl fe ie gold is found ascare of in the S X im the Ws wre were at work digging down sa carryl carrying ng off the gravel in wheel and dun dumping aping it into troughs boxes tb through rough which water Ot flace on the conducted F beam the river was of the tri troughs were iron lad frames so laid that they would or iders of gravel stavel and aaela aa eli the heavier parts faa athe ane water ca carried the dirt on fabe al e river there was waa no used ed and the min miners ers depended enon the weight of the gold to h the particles as they went rb shortly after I 1 a arrived the off and the was as turned partially A panned fo for r gold the panning flone done by three indians who eat bat their bare legs in the water on el ex of the sluices and dipped the up into wooden bowls just about those which we use for mak bad or chopping hash these atee the g gold washing pans of the w indians they axe are called bateas and are to be found in all the mining regions of peru and bolivia the miners dipped the bowls of gravel from time to time into the water and mixing the gravel with their hands caused the dirt to flow orf off now and then they picked up a handful of the gravel and after looking it over cast it back into the sluice box As they went on you could see little yellow bits of metal among the dark stones after a while the gravel was all washed out and in each bowl there was a little pile of gold pebbles or small nuggets there was no gold dust the deposits ranging from bits of pure gold the size of the head of a pin to nuggets as big as your little finger nail one of the nuggets which I 1 saw taken out weighed more than halt half an ounce and it was worth I 1 was told at least ten dollars the total amount cleaned up was not large but it was all of this coarse gold this is the character er of the gold found in bolivia it lies in the earth not in pockets but distributed with great regularity through the layers of gravel of some parts of the country now and then large nuggets are found these same gravel cravel beds have been burrowed into by the indians for more than two hundred years and ou out t of almost the spot upon which we stood there was f and 0 nd in the seventeenth century a sass niss ni ss of gold which sold for it was sent to the museum at madrid where it is said one of the keepers had a dummy nugget made to imitate it and then stole the ehe original and melted it up and sold it while we were at the mine the skeleton of an indian was dug up he had bad probably been mining here generations ago and the earth had caved in and buried him i 1 went out to this mine with mr H H strater of philadelphia and prof A A hard of denver prof hard is a well known mining engineer and he afe has been brought here by mr strater in connection with some philadelphia capitalists who have taken up a large placer claim on the river about thirty miles from lil la paz at the f oot foot of the great Il limani mountain they have tested the property thoroughly and it promises to be one of the great placer mines of the world the best hydraulic machinery for its C celop ment has already been ordered from san Francisco and within a few months they will begin active work the machinery is all made in sections no piece weighing more than pounds as it must go to the mines on the backs ot mules prof hard has traveled extensively ten over this part of the bolivian mining regions he tells me there is no doubt but that there is a great deal of gold here said he to me today 1 I believe that the whole moun mountain tair range running from mt borati or as it is here called to mt 1111 mant mani a distance of miles con contains cains quantities of gold and I 1 shall not be surprised if there is here within a few years a gold excitement equal to the klondike this range forms a mountain wall containing some of the highest peaks on the globe the formation is a curious one it has many alternate layers of gracei and clay and it seems to me that the whole country between here and lake ditl caca is a sedimentary deposit which was during the ales aares under the sea with only the peaks of the mountains showing abaye it wherever prospecting has been done in this deposit very coarse gold has been found the gold everywhere runs in little nuggets like that you saw and there is little of what we call gold dust these nuggets are very scattered much panning results in nothing but almost every yard seems to contain some gold I 1 know of ond instance where yards of gravel run through a sluice box produced ounces of gold worth between seven and eight thousand dollars most of the gravel will only pay when worked with machinery and on a large scale where does this gold come from mr I lard ilard I 1 asked A there quartz ledges in the mountains yes I 1 am sure of it replied the mining expert in all the gravel which I 1 te tested S ted from near la paz to far up mt Il limani I 1 found some gold I 1 saw numerous quartz ledges on the Q 0 mountains when I 1 crossed them the other day and I 1 doubt not but that there will be extensive quartz quarts mines in bolivia in the future so far the expense of bringing in machinery and the difficulties of development have been so great that the people here have not prospected for bartz ledges es in f fact act there has been little systematic prospecting in bolivia the country has not been scratched and the examinations ami nations made have been of the hit and miss order the gold that could be gotten out without the aid of machinery has been pretty we wei worked by the indians and spaniards Span larda the fact that no fine gold is found I 1 consider an evidence that there must be somewhere very rich quartz ledges there are a number of americans here who are about to start to the tipuani tip oo wah ne gold fields A mr yost and his wife from denver recently arrived and two young ohio men scott and rathbun of lima who represent the desheers Desh lers and other capitalists of columbus are now there prospecting the most important undertaking in this country is that of a denver syndicate in the charge of E S and C T wilson of denver from whom I 1 get the following information the syndicate has a concession of seven miles along the bed of the tip river and it has had a powerful dredge constructed with which it can dredge the river bed to a depth of forty feet and to bed rock the dredge e was made at denver and was tested there it was constructed so that it could be sent here in pieces and it la Is now being taken into the gold region on the backs of mules and indians indiana the whole dredge weighs eight tons but no section of it weights more than pounds while the average piece to la not heavier than seventy five pounds the cost of getting the dredge from denver to the mine will be more than 10 it took more than six months to get it here and its journey on to nine ine is attended with all sorts of dangers it has to go over high m mountain i 0 un passes to be carried along tho edges of preci r i aces es in some places llamas will tran transport i JE port it and at others men will have to do the work wor k this machine has a capacity of yards of gravel a day it will be put p ut in the river and will excavate pits to bed rock the gravel coming up being washed upon the dredge the bed rock will be swept and scraped by men in diving suits and the prospects are that a vast amount of gold will be secured the tipuani river is one of the most famous of the bolivian gold streams it was worked in the days of the incas and the spaniards have had large amounts from it the ani Is a rushing stream feet wide lying on the eastern side of cordillera bout about two weeks travel from la paz th river flows into the daperl and thence into the benl beni in which its waters find their way to the amazon tn in the rainy season it Is a rushing torrent and the indians cannot work in it it is so deep that with their etude crude methods ot of panning with wooden bowls they have not been able to get lo 10 TO th the bed rock of the center of the river ali though they still wash along the edges ot of the stream every year with profit 11 they hey stand in the water up to their waists and scrape the gravel together with their feet until they have made a little pile they then dive down and gather a often getting 25 or 50 cents out of a of gravel just the other lother day a nugget of the shape of a pear weighing two and one half ounces was taken out there was a S spaniard who worked the bed of the river to a slight extent years ago he hada bucket brigade of indians who equipped with rude buckets and standing on notched poles that served as ladders passed the gravel and water from one to the other until they thay reached the top it took two years of such work to get to bed rock and it is said that the man took ou out t during four years in gold another story which is questioned la Is that he took out pounds of gold in a single year and another is that he panned out pounds in five hours TK tb pit where this spaniard worked was about seven miles above the claims owned by the denver men it was it to is said only twenty feet square gold Is also found upon the yani river is not far from the and in southern Bb bolivia balivia livia the peruvian gold field that is now attracting the most attention to is the Ca district this is nota not great diA distance tance from cuzco ana can be reached by five days travel on mules and on foot from the branch of the arequipa puno fluno railroad which is extended toward that city you have the railroad tor the garabaya Ca on a mule and go two days down hill then two doe days up ftp hill and during the last dalp da you go down again for a distance of about 1200 feet this last journey journe y is mauri on foot and it takes about eight hours you then find yourself in a region that to is covered with trees and one where the vegetation is almost bat A river runs through it and in thle the indians have been washing gold lor centuries these indians are the descendants it is supposed of the goeas they are semi civilized and cau catt be got to work for you for 20 cents a day up until recently all of the gow gold from this part of peru was from placer ower washings the chief work today Is in the quartz mines of santo out of this mine of gold were taken in eighteen mandis and aaa it was later on sold to an american syndicate tor for anther Waw ther the mine to is only a pocket or not is not yet known the ore I 1 am told runs very though some of the quartz has run as high as to theton the ton the ore that is now being Ingwar worked ked turns out about to the too boiu this to is being put through a ten mill this mine was bought fo foi I 1 the th syndicate by a california man named hardison who came to south Ai to investigate the rubber bustness business and got into mining he managed the property for a while but not ally he bought a lot of expensive machinery without considering how he could get it to the mine it was in too heavy pieces to be carried there and aad some of it to is now lying along the road the syndicate has now a lewk management with mr V K X speare are a well known mining man of colorado as its Per peruvian avlan head 1 I un der stand that the prospects of the mine are good although as yet no large amounts of gold have been taken out jast above bakle near the bolivian boundary at poto peru thore there axe ace 0 mines which are doing well my mr latt on concerning this region mr charles W bellows an ab Aft Ican prospector who is now in the antey of the santo domingo mine mr bona bellows WS has bag recently prospected in this thin part said he poto fire at poto placer diggings feet up in the andes which c h are now turning out worth of gold every three months the gold is fine some of the purest gold of the world they are working the mine with one hydraulic but they could I 1 think use thirty with profit there are other valuable gold mines continued mr bellows just across the line in bolivia at duchez just east of poto and at the same altitude there are placers which at times pay a month and produce gold that Is fine supposed to be the finest gold of the world these mines were worked for years by the spaniards out they are now in the hands of pente penie and gibson two young englishmen who are developing it they have a river with foot fall which gives them force for their hydraulic in their sluice boxes are pavements 0 ot cobble stones in which the gold falls and taley collect the fine gold with quick quicksilver ilver they have got some nuggets weighing as much as three ounces above poto there is another good mine it is known as the Pot orosa it is situated on the side of a mountain f feet high it is now in litigation but the people who have possession have bean making a good thing out of it and they ship a great deal of gold to europe to be smelted smelter smelt ed I 1 fear that some same of the statements in this letter may lead americans without capital to come to south america to prospect I 1 should most earnestly advise such to stay at home this is not a poor mans country in any sense of the word there is no chance at an all for the man without capital and there is no chance f tor or the man out of money to make money by his muscle in competition with these indians who live like dogs and win will work for about twenty cents of our money per day many of them are good mechanics and as to bookkeepers and clerks the markets ate are overstocked over stocked it takes a large amount of money to travel here and without proper supplies the hardships are inconceivable I 1 met last week two americans who had been prospecting in the beni region of bolivia and in the Ca district of peru they were the hardest looking yankees I 1 have seen and their story was harder than their looks they had attempted to live off the country and had little more than cornmeal mush for three months some of the time they were almost starving notwithstanding the fact that they had plenty of money with them for weeks they had to walk through the rain and sleep at night without a fire in rude indian huts where at times they were only admitted because they forced their way in there is absolutely sol no chance tor for a man to make his expenses as he goes along and an d as for trying to wash enough gold out of the streams to support him this is an impossibility for the surface washings and in fact all gold bearing travels gravels that could be easily gotten at have been worked over and over by the indians first in the days of the incas i later on w when hen they were under the their ir spanish taskmasters task masters and since then from year to year for themselves the gold regions on the eastern sides of the andes are in many cases and those about here are so higl h that many cannot stand the ra rifled air and have roche so soro ebe no american can work here as he can at home and I 1 most of those who attempt to do so soon give it up As to the roughness ot of travel hete here and in the there is no comparison the passes of the andes are over the ridges of |
