GOLD AT THE VIENNA EXPOSI TION.

Thames Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 1858, 7 July 1874, Page 3

GOLD AT THE VIENNA EXPOSI TION.

In the review of the exhibits of metal at the Vienna Exposition, says: —Before passing on to review, the .gold exhibits, 1 we may say a'few..words respecting the relative value of. that metal and silver. When, since the gold discoveries in California, about 1848, and in Australia in .1851, the quantity of that metal, which, was annually produced, began to increase enormously, it was .feared that the,prioe of gold, as compared with that of silver, must fall,, This, liow* ever has not been the case in any remarkable degree. While in 1848 the value of one pound of gold-was equal to 15. BIIIh of; silver, it certainly declined in 1853 :to 15'20Ibs, but since then.it has kept up steadily to over lS'dOlbs, and it is now over 15'50lbs of fine silver. ' In 1 former times the difference was 1 very much greater. In the year 1500 the value of gold was equivalent to 10*50, in 1600 to 11*60, ia 1650 to 11;13, in 1400 to M9O, in 1750 to 14 93, and in 1800 to 15'421bs of;silver, thus showing a constatit increase'; while the value of silver was successfully reduced,. In beginning our review with Gil eat Bbitain, we could of course look for gold only amongst the exhibits.of our c ilonies. In the Indian Department we noticed samples of alluvial gold from Maunbhoom and Chaibassa, in, Bengal, fr ! om Upper Assam, and auriferous quartz from Malabar; .while from'the Gape, Colony there were similar samples producer! by N. Adler, of Port Klizabetb, and Sir John Swinburne, of Capheaton, Newcastle-on-Tyne, who also exhibited gold quartz and gold in bars. In Cape Colony the newly discovered goldfields of the Transvaal Eepublic and of Natal, contain lodes of rioh gold quartz, which yield 70ozs ( to the, ton. From our. Australian colonies, we found in the department of Queenslanda large nugget of gold, weigh: irig. 10'Jjozs, which still showed the traces of the lucky digger's, pick. The value of the Queensland goldfields is, of course, variable, as in the districts of Etheridge, the gold quartz: yields on an average 0.0076, in Gilbert , 0 0073, in - Gympie 003816, in Havens wood 0.00917, and in Charter Towers and Broughtod district 0.0178 per cent.,of gold. In Victoria the average, yield of- 900,000- tons of quartz was 0.0037 per cent.' '■ In that colotiy the diggings in the alluvium give way more and more to quartz-mining. The 1 biggest, lumps or nuggets, which wereinstruotively represented t by m)dels, exhibitedby the Government Mining Department of Melbourne, were' found id the former.; Thus the '.'rWelcoita," found' in 1858, at Bakery Hill, Ballarat, 180 ft belowsurface, weighs 2,1950z5, and the " Viscount Canterbury," raised 1870,' at Join's Pad-' dock, Berlin diggings, 15ft from surface, is i,losozs in weight.' There was in the first half of 1873, in' Victoria,' 35,806 alluvial miners, who won 123,6430z5, and 17,079 quartz miners;. who produced 159,6050zs of gold, over 14,000 men being, Chinese.: The quartz, lodes. or reefs .are" regular y worked with'shafts and pumping and drawing ' msohinery ; the deepest mine,-worked, by-a Sta^ell.company, is called tiiq " Magadala," and his-reached la ' depth of 1;225ft : from ; surface." The. Victorian 'exhibits 'comprised also samples of gold quartz from the Ajar Gold Company of Castlemaine; and the Golden. Fleece and. .the Hustlers lieef Company of Sandhurst. > I New Zealand made, at Vienna, a good show of her gold production," of which . the total yield,- up to 1873, amounted to 6,718,248 ozs., worth £25,814,260. About 731,269 ozs. of this quantity were obtained by lode m'ning in ignoous rocks of the tertiary period, on the North Island,' while by far tbe greater mass came from alluvial deposits, connected with' mefcaphoric rocks on the South Island. Tlie Principal alluvial gold deposits are' in the provinces of Otago, Nelson, and the county, of Westland. The, gold always contains, silver, sometimes one-third, and the metals are seperated by dissolving the gold in a solution of chlorine,' when ohloride of silver is left in tho residue, and mitallic silver is obtained through reduction with iron, by the,use of a galvanic~ battery and acidulated water.- The gold, which is precipitated from the solution and melted ;into bars weighing as much as 375 oz<., isJ99'4s per cent. fine. • The quartz reefs or lodes are principally worked in the and Lyell districts, province of Nelson, and 85 tons of quartz of the Alpine reef yielded 860 ozs. of fine srold. A bar of unrofined gold from Uokitiki contained only 0037, per cent, of silver and o'ool of copper, while another from the Thames district, Auckland, was composed of 65'05 gold, 33*90 silver, 0'45 copper. ~ : . ; ~

FuiNSE, alio showed some gold from her colonies, there beiag some fiae nuggets from Guyana, where the annual produce comes up to about £80,000 per annum, and some from New Caledonia; 1 Spain exhibited.gold quartz from Jaden'amines, province of Toledo, containing 13 ozi. to sdoz3. per ton, and Italy was represented by Ludovioo tiocco, who e^hibite! auriferous ores from the miueVFiaudello and AJpetto, at Donw-d'Oasola, aeac JJovara, , h (jEBAUOT, m found. X

exhibits from the smelting works of"' Goslar, which produce 800 lbs. per annum, , as well as from Clausthal and Freiberg, which have ; annual productions of 200lbs.:; >; and '400lhs. respectively. The yield of ; gold in the Austro ■ Hungarian Empire was in 1871, 2,802 1b3., the greater part of which came from the Royal Hungarian Smelting Works. There are, however, some very old, even .ante-Roman . gold mines upon quartz lodes in Gneiss in the Duchy of Salzburg; but their yield has very much declined in our times, the Goldberg of Bauris having produced only 14'1 lb. of gold in 1871, and the Ratbhausberg at Gastein still less.. The gold is extracted from the crushed quartz by amalgamation in Hungarian quick mills. From the gold mine of Dollach gold quartz, maps, and samples of galena were exhibited by Baron May de Madys, gold and silver ores by John Rohrer, of Lind, near Sachsenburg in Oarinthia, and ores, amalgamated gold, fine gold, and fine ~, silver by' the Gastein-Rathhausberg com- "- pany of Oberndorf in. Salzburg., The , government mines of Transylvania at Verospatak, Offenbanya, Valathna, andNagybanya are the chief producers ,of ,i this metal, the mining directors of the last place-showing a good collection of. .. gold from Felsobanya and Abrudbanya,,' Btad of gold-tellurium from Nagyag and Offenbanya. The gold is generally extracted in, iron quick mills .by. amalgams, tion, only a part being won from regulus,"' as in the Upper Hungarian works. Russia, though she got in. 1871786'21 lbs. of gold from her diggings and gold ' mines in the Ural mountains and, Siberia, was only represented by the, Jekaterin-;. burg mining district, in the Perm govern?;-,: ment, there being shown samples*of.gold,gold sand, and drawings and ! :models of 1 J the gold-washing machinery, as employed' 4. iri that district...Russia.had in 1870,1,126 : < gold diggings and mines, which gave,, employment to 68,000 workmen. They are mostly situated in Eastern Siberia, iu,. the districts of Slatoust and Nertschinsk,' and near Jekateriubiirg jand Nischuei Tagilsk, in the Ural, while'the gold mines are in the Altai; near Nertschinsk and at ;. Beresow.' The gold sand is first riddled with water and .then swept ; over an inclined plane or buddle where tho heavy ; material • settles 'down, i- This, is ithea ; • rewashed with mercury and the gold ■ freed from the amalgam by distillation... The Siberian wash gold contains 10 per' - cent, of silver. Turning lastly to _ Ameeica, we found some exhibits' 0 gold quartz by Mobrbardt and Robinson, . of Bethany, in Pennsylvania, and-in the interesting mineral collection of Professor Guido KMel, of Utah, were specimens of gold and tellurium-gold from Jefferson . , Canon, in Nevada. British Columbia, . which in fifteen years, in the gold district of Frazer river and others, has produced gold worth at least 45,000,000 dollars, did not show anything, neither did California.'-th From Yenezuela, 'however, we' found rich gold quartz, from the mines ( Upata ,; . . - and Caratal, in Guyana, which produced in 1867, .17,118 ozs.; in 1868,17,053 ozs.; ins 1869, 22,5/5 ozs,; and in 1870, 35,713 ozs. ; of gold.'Finally Brazil:was : : represented," by. J3r.:Oontinlib; of,;Rio,^: v : with palladium gold from Gongo Soco, in ' " Alinaa Geraes, and wash ..gold, iu the : 'shape ! of. scales, wire, and little discs, and. .. by .the -Imperial,' Museum and . pr. Da',' Silva with gold nuggets, gold-dust, diamonds in their native .rock, the ; ; mite, which mueli resembles a brownish,,, .fine-grained kind of. niica.schikt!'