nty where
gold or silver, lead or tin, will be found in the greatest quantity.

"Then there's another complication. As you know, most of the metals
have chums or affinities with other substances, just as gold has with
mercury. These chums of the metals were also in that molten ocean, but
not always in the same proportions, nor yet distributed regularly. So
metallic compounds were formed at different times and in diverse
places. These compounds had varying densities, with the result that in
later ages they behaved in a way quite different from the pure metal.
You see, Jim, long before the crust of the earth was even formed, gold
was scattered far and wide, and already was in different forms.

"Then, little by little, the crust began to form as the earth cooled.
It was just a scum, at first, and was constantly broken up from below.
As it got thicker, it resisted more and more, until the upheavals of
the crust formed the mountains of the earliest or Primary Age. This
crust, which was now solid rock, contained gold, but, naturally,
nowhere in the same proportions. Some had much metal inclusion; some,
little; some, none at all. Besides, between the mountains or in them,
were vast volcanic craters, pouring up molten matter which became what
are known as the eruptive rocks, and these, too, carried up gold from
below. These rocks crystallized and the gold remained in them.

"But even that wasn't complicated enough for Mother Nature. In those
same eruptive rocks, both of the early and later periods, gold is
mainly found in veins. These veins are of dozens of different sorts,
depending on the rock in which they occur and on Nature's ways of
putting them there.

"To make it simple to you, I'll only mention two. The most general
method was by fumaroles. These are subterranean blow-holes of vapor
containing sulphur, tellurium, and chlorine compounds, as well as
super-heated steam. These vapors, projected from deep down in the
earth with incredible pressure and energy, acted on the new-made
rocks, formed compounds with the metals, or, when united with hydrogen
in the steam, separated the metals from solutions of their salts, and
forced the metals into cracks in the new-made and cooling eruptive
rocks. According to the kind of rock and the nature of the chemical
agent, a geologist will know for what type of vein to search. The
other most general agent of vein-making was hot water--generally
heavily saturated with sulphur and other