Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The
Poor Inhabitants Of Villa De Cura And San Juan Have Sometimes Gained
Thirty Piastres A-Day By Washing The Sand; But Most Commonly, In Spite
Of Their Industry, They Do Not In A Week Find Particles Of Gold Of The
Value Of Two Piastres.
Here, however, as in every place where native
gold and auriferous pyrites are disseminated in the rock, or by the
destruction of the rocks, are deposited in alluvial lands, the people
conceive the most exaggerated ideas of the metallic riches of the
soil.
But the success of the workings, which depends less on the
abundance of the ore in a vast space of land than on its accumulation
in one point, has not justified these favourable prepossessions. The
mountain of Chacao, bordered by the ravine of Tucutunemo, rises seven
hundred feet above the village of San Juan. It is formed of gneiss,
which, especially in the superior strata, passes into mica-slate. We
saw the remains of an ancient mine, known by the name of Real de Santa
Barbara. The works were directed to a stratum of cellular quartz,*
full of polyhedric cavities, mixed with iron-ore, containing
auriferous pyrites and small grains of gold, sometimes, it is said,
visible to the naked eye. (* This stratum of quartz, and the gneiss in
which it is contained, lie hor 8 of the Freyberg compass, and dip 70
degrees to the south-west. At a hundred toises distance from the
auriferous quartz, the gneiss resumes its ordinary situation, hor 3 to
4, with 60 degrees dip to the north-west.
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