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"That's SLATE all right, and that's granodiorite, I know" he bent down and examined the rock "and here's the quartz between 'em; there can't be no mistake about that. Gi' me that hammer," he cried, excitedly. "Come on, git to work. Jab into the quartz with your pick; git out some chunks of it." Cribbens went down on his hands and knees, attacking the quartz vein furiously.
It was that for which men dared death and peril and hardship, and it struck him that it would be a dramatic thing to ship steel rails and pulp and gold bullion on the same day. But for all of this he was not carried away. However great the thrill, his mind could not be diverted by the discovery of a quartz vein.
The body of this aboriginal work of art, crude in form, was of massive silver. And to it were attached overlapping plates of gold in the similitude of feathers. The unfolded wings were also of gold. The head, beak and talons were of gold, and the eyes were two polished bits of quartz. The idol, for such no doubt it was, stood forty inches in height and weighed about three hundred pounds.
While in Colorado my father was haunted by an intuitive feeling that the gold-bearing quartz region of Alaska held a rich find in store for him. In October, 1882, a very strong corporation was organized in San Francisco, 'The Alaska Mining Co., to open and operate their extensive mines in Alaska. The directors of the company chose my father manager.
Douglass, watching the little by-play with a curious interest, wondered at the quiver in that iron fist which could hold the weight of a heavy Colt's .45 with never a tremor. Among the mail handed him later by old Hank was an official-looking document dated Denver. He claims residence at Gunnison, and range in Gunnison County from Texas Creek to Quartz Creek. Date of record May 1st, 1898."
Some of the mines turned out phenomenally successful, and although there were the usual heart-burnings on account of failures, the average of success was very great. The State's gold mines have yielded fabulous sums, and more recently steps have been taken to extract from the quartz and rock a full measure of wealth that is to be found there.
In "placer diggings" the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggings it is concentrated in one little spot; in "quartz" the gold is in a solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of some other kind of stone and this is the most laborious and expensive of all the different kinds of mining.
It is all covered with dense forest, which in many cases is pollarded, from being cut for bark cloth or for hunting purposes. Masuko fruit abounds. From the cisalpinae and gum-copal trees bark cloth is made. We now come to large masses of haematite, which is often ferruginous: there is conglomerate too, many quartz pebbles being intermixed.
These spheres are disposed in layers parallel to the foliation of the gneiss: and are the result of a metamorphic action of great intensity, effecting a complete rearrangement and crystallization of the quartz and mica in parallel planes, whilst the felspar is aggregated in spheres; just as in the rearrangement of the mineral constituents of mica-schists, the alumina is crystallized in the garnets, and in the clay-slates the iron into pyrites.
Dunbar, one of the San Francisco directors of the Alaska Mining Co., my father, at the end of five years service for the company, had developed the mine on the island into one of the best paying and most extensive of that famously rich gold bearing quartz region. This was the foundation and support of his vast fortune, which thereafter required his entire attention. At the death of Mr.
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