The New Way of Extracting Gold.
In these days, when so much is heard about gold and silver, I thought the Table might like to know something about gold-mining at Cripple Creek. Well, everything here is new—the buildings, the shops, the whole town; but more remarkable than that fact is the one that the method of getting gold out of the earth is new too.
It is estimated that not fewer than 2500 men are at this moment walking over the rocks of Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and California looking for gold. Nobody prospects for silver nowadays. It is all gold. The reason for this is that gold is so valuable, and silver so cheap. But there is another reason, and that is that gold is found everywhere, and a new way has just been discovered for getting it out of the rock or sand in paying quantities. Hence gold-fields that once were not worth working are now rich in promise. Gold is one of the most plentiful of metals, but we have just found out how to get it.
Near Cripple Creek is the largest reduction-mill in the world. Into it are poured vast quantities of what look like cobble-stones, and out of it come fortunes every month. The way this is accomplished is by putting into the mill, with the cobble-stones—which cobble-stones have the gold in them—cyanide of potassium. This stuff looks just like common alum, but it is not alum by a good deal, for it is deadly poison. It is made from the hoofs, horns, and refuse of cattle. It has a wonderful way of taking hold of the particles of gold after the rock has been ground to a powder, and of letting the gold go again when it is wanted to do so. The effect is that rock that under the old processes was not worth handling is, under the new cyanide process, a "gold-mine" in reality.
This method of gold extraction was invented by two Scotchmen, and came here from Australia. Now there are a score of cyanide-mills in Colorado, and it is predicted that the next twenty years will see gold far more plentiful than the world ever dreamed possible for it to be.
Walter C. Newport, R.T.K.
Cripple Creek, Col.
Another Word from Distant South Africa.
I live in Africa. I am thirteen years old. My sister wrote you, and a great many American children have answered her letter. One little girl named Xena gave a description of herself which was so like me that when Bertha read the letter they all looked at me and laughed. So Bertha thought I'd be the best one to answer her. I wrote, but after five months of anxious waiting, my letter was returned to me. If Xena sees this I hope she will write again, and send her proper address in print writing.
Can you tell us what has become of the "Author of the clever contrivance"? He was among the first who wrote to Bertha. We are most interested in him, because he was an invalid. Bertha answered him, but he has not written again. Father gave us leave to subscribe to the Round Table, but there are so many troubles lately that we have been obliged to put it off—war, drought, and locusts. Besides eating the grass, beans, potatoes, and pumpkins, they have eaten the leaves off the fruit trees. The latter all look as if winter had come—all except the orange-trees. Father kept them off these trees with flags on long bamboos.
Florence Maria.
Koonah, via Grahamstown, South Africa, February.
Playing at Newspaper-Making.
When amateur papers attain the excellence of those made by professional journalists it is time for the latter fellows to bestir themselves. Ye Round-Table Jester comes to us from Brooklyn—the Avalonia Chapter, No. 792, No. 369 Lewis Avenue. The publishing committee consists of Sir Knights William Hathaway, Beverly Sedgwick, Frederic Cook, and Russell Molyneux. It is mimeograph print, type-writer text, in two colors, and profusely illustrated by "Bev"—Mr. Beverly S. King, who has won several Round Table illustration prizes. The prospectus says the artistic abilities of the Chapter "had to find vent somewhere." Genius always "gets there," you remember.