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"Ore deposits, using the term in its widest sense, may take place from any kinds of waters, but especially from alkaline solutions, for these are the natural solvents of metallic sulphides, and metallic sulphides are usually the original form of such deposits."
All through the wood and leather gold was disseminated in fine particles, and when cut through the characteristic metallic lustre was brightly reflected. The first six of these sulphides were also operated upon simply in the solution without organic matter; but they remained unaltered."
The alchemists were very fond of using the names of animals as symbols of certain mineral substances, and of representing operations in the laboratory by what may be called animal allegories. The yellow lion was the alchemical symbol of yellow sulphides, the red lion was synonymous with cinnabar, and the green lion meant salts of iron and of copper.
Avenues opened in all directions, lined on both sides with these wonderful houses, which are made of a peculiar stone, veined intermittently with yellow, which has the property of absorbing and emitting light. "It is indeed a phosphori as, if I recall it aright, the sulphides of barium, strontium, and calcium were upon our earth.
Thus the aggregation of the nuggety forms of gold from solution becomes a still more simple matter, only one reagent being necessary, so that there is a greater probability of such depositions obtaining than were a double process necessary. Knowing the action of sulphides, the manner or the mode of formation of a portion at least of these nuggets seems apparent.
But if the process was similar to that in the Galena lead region, and the ores were originally sulphides, their formation should have continued and been detected in the Leadville mines. For all these reasons the theory of Mr. Emmons will be felt to need further confirmation before it is universally adopted.
This is very quickly accomplished, and we then see that we have an insoluble residue of graphite and a flocculent precipitate of lime, magnesia, iron hydrate, etc., while the organic matters have disappeared. The sulphides of iron, etc., have given up their sulphur to the potash, and everything except the graphite has suffered some change.
He also included salts of platina and silver in this general law, and demonstrated that solutions of any of these metals traversing a vein rock containing certain sulphides would be decomposed, and the pure metal deposited.
Neither of these materials is so enduring as iron, and the fact that they are not now found on the plain does not prove their original absence. Moreover, the plain is strewn in the vicinity of the crater with bits of limonite, a mineral frequently produced by the action of air and water on iron sulphides, and this material is much more abundant than the iron.
Another question which suggests itself in reference to the Leadville deposits is this: If the Leadville ore was once a mass of sulphides derived from the overlying porphyry by the percolation of surface waters, why has the deposit ceased? The deposition of galena, blende, and pyrite in the Galena lead mines still continues.
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