This mine represents an example of gold mining in its highest development in the South, on large bodies of low-grade sulphuret ore.
It is situated in the Carolina belt. The country is a siliceous hydromuscovite- and argillaceous-schist striking N. 45° to 70° E. and dipping 55° to 85° N'.W. The rock is impregnated with auriferous pyrite, free gold, and in places small quartz-stringers. This is the mass that constitutes the ore-bodies, which are lenticular in shape. Their outline, however, does not necessarily conform with the strike and dip of the slates, but is determined rather by the degree of impregnation. The lenses are about 200 feet in length and 100 feet in maximum width. The pitch is 50° to 60° N.E., and the dip !X.W. from 45° to nearly vertical. The country is intersected by a number of diabase dikes, from a few feet to 150 feet in width, striking across the slates at various angles, and in one instance (Beguelin mine) parallel with them. Where these dikes cross the ore-bodies they appear to have exerted, in some cases, an enriching influence on the ore. A short distance to the southeast of the main workings is the outcrop* of a heavy quartz-vein (F., fig. 21) from 10 to 12 feet thick, which strikes parallel to the slates; it is apparently barren. As explained above, the ore consists of pyritic slates, silicified in varying degrees, from soft, sericitic slate to very hard hornstone. The more siliceous ores are usually the richest; graphitic laminas are also good indications. In the better grade of ore the pyrite exists in a finely divided condition. Ore containing coarse sulphurets is generally of poor grade. The crucial test, however, of the value of the ore is the amount of free gold it contains, which is in direct proportion to that contained in the sulphurets, and is determined by daily panning. The ore at present delivered to the mill averages $4 per ton (assay value), of which *about one-third is free gold.1 The percentage of sulphurets in the ores varies from 2 to 25 per cent.
The first wTork done at the Haile mine consisted of branch washing in 1829, wThich led afterwards to the discovery of gold on the hillsides. All work was open cutting until 1880, when underground mining was begun, and this is continued to the present time. Although visible coarse gold is now of rare occurrence, the mine has yielded some nuggets worth from $300 to $500 from the decomposed slates in the shallow open cuts.*
The first mill was a 5-stamp one, afterwards enlarged to 10, and in 1881 to 20. About 1884 a Blake dry-crushing mill was erected in connection with 20 Embrey tables.3 This was soon abandoned, and the mine was worked in a dilatory way with the 20-stamp mill until 1888.
1 Ores as low as $2.75 have been successfully milled.
2 First Annual Report on the Survey of South Carolina for 1856, by O. M. Lieber. Columbia, S. C, 1858, p. 63.
3 "The Blake System of Fine Crushing and Its Economic Results," by T. A. Blake, Trans. Am. Inst. Jlin. Enij,, xvi. 753.
