Gold Mining Historical Notes: Metallurgical, Statistical, Mining Page 32



	32 GOLD jrxXXVG IN NORTH CAROLINA. where the [hydraulic] process is now in successful operation.....The average yield, as shown by the results at several of the North Carolina placers, is about $0.00 a day to a pipe attended by two men, or by a man and a boy. At some of the placers the average is not less than $10.00 a day......At Brin- dletown, in the bed of a little brook which has a rapid descent. Mr. Hamilton has been washing very successfully with two pipes and five men and boys..... I am confident that the yield cannot be less than $20.00 a day, even among the former excavations where the gravel has been washed over more than once before." Lieber' mentions the hydraulic process as being practiced previous to 1859 at Pilot mountain in Burke County, X. C, and he evidently has reference to the above described localities. The Dahlonega method (a combination of hydraulicking, sluicing and milling) originated in 1868. The first record that we have of dredge mining is that carried on by a Mr. Gibson in 1843-4, in the Catawba river, Gaston county, X. C. The river sediments and gravel were scooped out on flatboats by men using long-handled scoops, and the material was carried ashore and washed. Later on mechanical dredges of various designs came into use, chiefly on the Chestatee river, in Georgia. The advent of the hydraulic gravel elevator dates from about 1883. It was first applied at Brindletown, X. C, and at Dahlonega, Ga. The well-known type of this mechanism, known as the llendy lift, was employed at the Cincinnati Consolidated Company's mines in Dawson county, Ga., in 1883. The plan was to divert the Etowah river and to suck up the gravel from the old channel. The Roy Stone method" was experimented with in the Chestatee river in 1883, but the results are not known. The Crandall hydraulic elevator,³ as used at the Chestatee mine, Georgia, in 1895, contains important improvements over other types of similar mechanisms. VEIN MINING. FREE-MILLING ORES. Vein mining probably followed more or less closely on the exhaustion of the richer gravel deposits. The first account of vein mining is in 1825, at the Barringer mine, Stanly⁴ county, X. C. In Virginia the veins of the Tellurium and Vaucluse mines were discovered in 1832: and in Georgia the Reynolds vein, lot Xo. 10, near Xacooeliee, in "White county, was discovered some time prior to 1834. ¹ Supplementary Report to the Survey of South Carolina, 1859, p. 154. ² Tram- Amer. Inst. Min. Enq., vol. viii, p. 254. ³ Ibid., vol. xxvi, 1897, pp. 62-68. ⁴ This part of Stanly was then a part of Montgomery county.