Gold Mine Milling Practice Page 112



	106	GOLD MINING IX GEORGIA.

	has also this advantage, that when occasion demands it, smaller nozzles can be used and the pressure thus increased. The channel is cut 30 to 35 feet wide, down to bed-rock in depth, and has a total length of about half a mile. It runs almost parallel to the river, and from 50 to 200 yards from the north bank of the same. When completed, the waters of the river will be turned into it by means of a wing-dam. The gravel above the bed-rock in this channel is auriferous and lias paid the expenses of the preliminary excavations. It averages 1 foot in thickness, with 6 to 10 feet of over-lay. The latter was worked off during the night shift (using electric light illumination), and the gravel thus exposed, as well as about 2 inches of bed-rock, taken up during the succeeding day. CHESTATEE RIVER DREDGE-BOATS, LUMPKIN COUNTY, GA. Dredge-boats of various descriptions have been at work on the Chestatee river for a number of years. The work has been spasmodic, and failures are more often recorded than successes. The river, where operated on, is about 100 feet in width and of variable depth. Numerous shoals make dredging difficult. A steam vacuum dredge ' was operated for a time on this river; it did good work, especially in cleaning up the bed-rock. The main difficulty, and the reason for abandonment, was the banking up of the tailings around the boat, finally hemming it in. The Boy Stone method,² using the principle of the hydraulic elevator, was attempted as early as 1883, but proved unsuccessful. In the summer of 1895 there were two dredge-boats on the river, one above and the other below Xew Bridge. The former of these, operated by Mr. Frye, is on the principle of a continuous bucket elevator. So far it has not been operated successfully, the buckets and continuous linkchain proving entirely too light for the work. The other boat was operated at a small profit by Air. Jacquisli. It was erected seven years ago by the Bucyrus Steam Shovel Company at an initial cost of about $15,000. After being worked for two years it lay idle until the summer of 1895. The machinery is installed on a scow, 26 by 70 feet, drawing 3J feet of water. It consists of a Bucyrus shovel (scoop) of l^ tons capacity, derrick and hoisting-drums for operating the same, a small horizontal engine and a centrifugal-pump for supplying fresh water to wash the gravel, and a 60 horse-power locomotive boiler. A barge, 100 by 20 feet, lying alongside of the dredge-boat, carries the sluices. There are ¹ See Gold, by A. G. Locke, 1882, p. 890. ⁼ See K. W. Baymond, in Trans. Am. Inst. Mill. Eng., vol. viii, p. 251.