New York Paper - The Extraordinary Faulting at the Berlin Mine, Nevada

The Berlin gold-quartz mine is situated in Nye county, Nevada, on the west flank of the Shoshone range, about 40 miles south and 30 miles west from the town of Austin, the county-seat of Lander county. The distance from Austin is about 60 miles by stage-road. The outcrop of the vein, at the top of the incline-shaft, is situated just at the base of the mountain proper, almost exactly at the intersection of the mountain-side with the gravelly bench that slopes for about three-quarters of a mile to the flatter sage-brush plain, or desert valley, below. The vein itself consists almost entirely of quartz, with perhaps 2 per cent. of sulphide of iron, copper, lead, zinc and antimony, and perhaps a trace of some of the compounds of tellurium with gold and silver, although none of the latter have been as yet positively identified. The relative proportion, by weight, of silver and gold in the ores, varies in different parts of the vein, from 12 silver for 1 of gold, to 7 silver for 1 of gold. The quartz vein-filling is usually frozen fast to the walls, and is very hard and compact, seldom showing the friable, fissured, or shelly structure often to be found in quartz-veins. Comparatively little evidence of relative motion of one wall of the vein upon the other is to be found—a fact indicating that during the formation of the vein, and prior to the extensive movements herein described, little disturbance had taken place. No evidence whatever of metasomatic origin has been observed. On the other hand, occasional occurrences of comby structure, in which the axes of the quartz-crystals are at right angles to the plane of the vein, rather indicate deposition from solution in a pre-existing fissure. Spurs, or branches, and small parallel veins, while not en-