The gold-seeker's manual / By David T. Ansted.

  • David T. Ansted
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gold-seeker's manual / By David T. Ansted. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/190 (page 3)
    CHAPTER I. ON THE GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OP GOLD. Of all metals, gold is, with the exception of iron, the most widely distributed over the earth; but it differs from the latter metal in being present usually in a nearly pure state, but in exceedingly small quantities, whereas iron is abundant as well as generally diffused, and is never found unmixed with other substances. Owing to the very minute proportion in which gold is often assoeiated with rocks and mineral substances, it does not generally pay the cost of working; and the districts there- fore known as auriferous or “ gold-producing,” in the commercial sense of the term, are not so nu- merous as the foregoing remarks might seem to suggest. Nearly all the gold of commerce has for a long time been obtained from Asiatic Rus- sia, Brazil, Transylvania, Africa, the East Indian islands, and Carolina in the United States; thi- whole annual supply being estimated at about 80,000 pounds weight, and its value being about five millions sterling. This however must be re- garded as only an approximate value of the average of several years, as the supplies have for some time been increasing rapidly from the Russian m.incs. li 2