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Result: 3 dwt. to the ton in the retort, 30 dwt. in the tailings, and a payable claim declared a "duffer." When the lode is really rich, particularly if it be carrying coarse gold, and owing to rough country, or distance, a good battery is not available, excellent results in a small way may be obtained by the somewhat laborious, but simple, process of "dollying."
Then the companies, using the tailings material for the making of dams, created great tailings reservoirs in the hills near their plants, and filled up valley after valley with the rejected material. Incidentally, they spent in this work enormous sums, believed to have been sufficient to have bought all the farms of the Gila Valley, at the price put upon them ten years ago.
"Powdered rocks? Who powdered them? What for?" asked Edith. "Why, the miners did it years ago. They ground up the rocks in the mine into powder just as fine as they could, and then washed the powder to get the gold out." "Oh, I see," said Edith. "So these tailings are what's left after the gold's washed out." "Yes, they brought 'em and spread 'em 'round here to get rid of 'em I suppose."
The end of this work in the other direction was far down on the foreshore, stopping short of the water's edge by, perhaps, fifty yards. It terminated at what was obviously a great mound of "tailings." The man moved down to this spot. As he paused by the mound, and gazed up, the trestle work stood above him more than twice his own height.
When there was nothing else to do, one could always "screen tailings." That is to say, he could shovel up the dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs and dash it against an upright wire screen to free it from pebbles and prepare it for working over.
For a few years around 1910, there appeared a prospect that the Gila Valley farms would have to be abandoned unless something could be done to stop the flow of tailings from the concentrating mills of the Clifton-Morenci country, on the San Francisco River, a tributary of the Gila.
After this the forenoons did not drag; school went on as usual, and Kyzie was glad she had had the courage to go back and "live down" her foolish behavior. When they met in Aunt Vi's room that evening it was decided not to have "Jimmy's play" on the tailings, for that was a place free to all. People would not buy tickets for an entertainment out of doors.
But the settlement had become more prosperous and law-abiding; there were one or two Eastern families and some foreign capital already there, and its jealousy and indignation were restricted to severe investigation and legal criticism. Fortunately for See Yup, it was an old-established mining law that an abandoned claim and its tailings became the property of whoever chose to work it.
Nothing but coarse gold for you-all, that's your way, not getting half of it out of the ground and losing into the tailings half of what you-all do get. "But the men that land big will be them that stake the town sites, organize the tradin' companies, start the banks " Here the explosion of mirth drowned him out. Banks in Alaska! The idea of it was excruciating.
In it, ore from the mines was concentrated and the useless tailings carried away by a conveyor-belt to make a monstrous pile of broken stone. But there was no longer a building. Next to it there had been a structure containing an ore-crusher. The massive machinery could still be seen, but the structure was fragments. Next to that, again, had been the shaft-head shelters of the mine.
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