Possible Contribution to the Formation of Gold Deposits

Experts have said that after a number of years of observing that gold, in small amounts and proportionately distributed through ultra basic rocks, can be chemically dissolved and re-precipitated in possible commercial deposit concentrations by the normal lateral process.

The arrival to such premise has come accompanied by some restless reflections that go back to 1955, after a detailed study of a gold placer in the French Guyana was made. During that time it was concluded that the only possible source of gold placers was the deep and red lateral ground cut by river channel. What was even more interesting yet was the fact that obviously one part of the gold had been rapidly moved from a state in a solution.

If this premise is correct, it could give us a reason why some auriferous deposits in the channels of the superior tertiary in the Mother Lode in California and in the western hillsides of the Sierra Nevada. Even more so, this premise can explain the occurrence of very exceptionally big nuggets that are also very fine that the old time miners did not want to accept as the product of eroded vein structures. It could also explain somewhat about the gold in dispersed deposits of the southwest of Oregon and the abundance of gold in the channels and tributaries of the Klamath and Trinity rivers in the northeast area of California after the supposed solidity of this premise, a key is suggested for the exploration of deposits that have not been discovered and that are very large by law, exploitable by the methods of an open hole in various number of the world.

In 1955 the prevalence concepts about mineralization of gold only recognized the fact that a good number of the main areas of gold placers were centered in rocky regions. The perception that was held for such a long time that gold was insoluble under normal conditions closed the door to the idea that they could concentrate by solution and re-precipitation, even though this idea was sent out by some of the first ones that participated in the gold fever in California.

By 1972 however, contributions to the literature were given out the necessary chemistry to allow questioning the supposed insolubility of gold.

This suggestion does not imply that these types of deposits had secondary concentrations that were not of gold. And it does not suggest that a lot of the mines of nickel silicate that were successful as a group were going through by high values in gold sub products. In reality, the study of many excellent publications about exploitations of nickel all over the world has not revealed any evidence whatsoever to gold, nor in minerals or concentrates and not even in the refined product. The suggestion allows us to consider the possibility that these deposits separately, but not in combination, can have a common origin of laterality.

These lateral deposits are the results of the alteration of the masses of rock. The conditions that produce such alterations include tropical climates in order to speed up sustained chemical disintegration, a regionally flat surface etc, to insure that there is not a lot of movement of the solutions after they enter into the saturation zone; the long intervals of time to allow the chemical action to penetrate into great thicknesses of rock.

The lateralization of acidity rocks that have light coloring has produced bauxite deposits in the Caribbean, throughout the coast of South America, in the South East of the United States and in Costa Rica and Australia, amongst other places.