tons per annum, requiring the constant labor of thirty
men, as shown by the large experience already gained throughout the
Province. And this, says Professor Silliman, "is not a very formidable
force for a profitable mine,"--particularly when we consider that the
price of miners' labor in Nova Scotia rarely rises above the moderate
sum of ninety cents per day.

If the quartz cost, to turn its product into gold bars, as high as
twenty dollars a ton, there would be, says the same eminent authority,
"a deduction of one-fourth [as expense] from the gross gold-product. The
gold is about nine-hundred-and-sixty thousandths fine, and is worth, as
already shown, over twenty dollars per ounce. But the cost of the quartz
cannot be so much by one-half as that named above; and there is the
additional value of gold from the pyrites and mispickel, as well as
probably fifteen per cent, saving on the total amount of gold produced
by improved methods of working."

The reason why so little _alluvial_ gold is to be found throughout this
district may be very simply and concisely stated. It will be observed,
that the length of the gold-field lies mainly from east to west, while
its width from north to south is over a much less distance, and
therefore lies almost at right angles to the scouring and grinding
action of the glacial period. No long Sacramento Valley, stretching away
to the south and west of the quartzite upheavals, has here retained and
preserved the spoils of those long ages of attrition and denudation. The
alluvial gold has mostly been carried, by the action alluded to, into
the sands and beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean; and it is only at
the bottom of the numerous little lakes which dot the surface of the
country, that the precious metal, in this, its most obvious and
attractive form, has ever been found in any remunerative quantity in
Nova Scotia.

This statement brings us naturally to the consideration of another of
our opening positions, namely, that the gold of Nova Scotia is to be
successfully sought only under the application of the most scientific
and systematic methods of deep quartz-mining. That no pains nor expense
has been spared by the present promoters of these important enterprises,
in the very commencement of their mining-works, will perhaps be
sufficiently evident from the fact that no step has been taken without
the full advice and concurrence of the eminent mining authorities
already cited. A summ