This is where things fall apart. Even if Jacob was working some mine somewhere ...
The supposed claim as to its content seems absurd.
Let us math this.
Density of quarts is 4466.7 pound per cubic yard.
Assume the vein has 1% gold (pretty rich right?) Comes out to 20 pounds per ton or 9072 grams per ton.
Forget about the volume of all that gold, and think about only the volume of quarts with it, the 99% by weight of the vein. For a million oz gold you need 1520 Cubic yards of quarts. And that is just to accommodate Waltz's "known reserves claim" of what he can see, forget buried parts and where it pinches out and all that. Consider an 18" vein and figure how much face he had to have exposed.
Go ahead and assume it was 10% on average, now we have 'only' 152 cubic yards of vein. Still a pretty big exposure. And that is just what is in sight? The shear magnitude of this and no one can find it?
Even if Jacob had a mine rich in gold, it was no million ounces he could see and catalog.
Color me skeptical about this part. If LDM exists it is some far lessor lode.
Sound reasoning amigo however there are some issues.
First, no one is making the case that Waltz's statement is a literal, measured ore inventory. The statement is not even that well documented, and the situation was that he was offended by someone's comment that he had merely found a rich pocket that pinched out quickly. As in, most likely
a BOAST,
not any kind of
exact statement.
Second, Waltz's ore is rather on the rich side. An ore which is 1% gold today would be considered very rich indeed, however the only assay we have any kind of record on Waltz's ore, done by Joe Porterie decades ago for Dick Holmes when he wished to sell the gold from Waltz's candle box, showed a value of $110,000 per ton (with the price of gold then at $20.67 per ounce) or some 5300 ounces per ton, around
16% gold. So the amount of host rock is not
SO large. <see Helen Corbin's book, The Curse of the Dutchman's Gold for more info on this, and affidavits in the back of the book>
Third, Waltz had stated that the ore vein crops out in the canyon well below his mine, which he had covered up - perhaps he was counting this as well as his smallish workings, in which case he may have been "guessing" the amount not just showing inside his mine but a whole vein reaching down into the canyon as "showing".
Fourth we can not judge how thick the vein is, or deep, to say we can see a vein eighteen inches wide showing, is that one inch thick by eighteen inches, or ten inches thick, or three feet thick or ten feet thick etc. It is only ONE number of three necessary to get any estimate of how much ore there is. Waltz did not even say exactly how deep his shaft was, nor exactly how far down the canyon the vein crops out, leaving more guesswork.
It is a certainty that not all of the ore will be of the exact same tenor (values) as the ore from the candlebox, it will vary greatly. One version of his mine describes it as not more than a dozen feet deep, with an opening no larger than a barrel, which makes much more sense than the giant funnel-shaped pit and tunnel below, which by all logic should have been found already were it SO large. One old man working alone could much more easily conceal such a small mine than a huge funnel pit. Remember one of the statements attributed to Waltz was that
you could drive an Army pack train over his mine and never see it.
So you are most likely correct that the mine is NOT a large one, more like a smallish one, however the only way we will ever know how accurate or inaccurate that statement about there being
"enough gold remaining in the mine, in sight, to make millionaires of twenty men" may be will be
after the mine is found and the gold is extracted. My bet is that it will prove to be closer to true than false, but that is just an opinion.
If a gold vein having 5300 ounces of gold to the ton sounds impossible, consider this - other mines have been found with even
higher values. The old lost Cement mine of California had peculiar ore which looked like a reddish cement, loaded with lumps of gold. No one has ever found this mine since the 1800's, but from the descriptions of people who held and examined samples of this unusual gold ore, it was said to be nearly one-fourth to two-thirds pure gold. Even by the
lowest estimate of one-fourth gold, this is roughly $124,000 per ton or 6000 ounces per ton of ore, richer than the Lost Dutchman!
Now before someone jumps in to say well, this is a LOST mine so can't be proven or dis-proven, it is not
that unusual, certainly not unique or anomalous - in fact, for example here in the Black Hills, one gold mine which was also found by a Dutchman, <a different one obviously> had ore which put even the Lost Dutchman and Lost Cement ores to shame.
It was 80 percent gold, and in the mine two big slabs of pure gold were found. This is nearly $400,000 per ton at the old $20.67 per ounce price, or some 19200 ounces of gold in every ton of ore. Placer miners have found nuggets of gold too, some of enormous size but this is gold which has weathered out of the host rock. *
Please don't ask me the name of this particular mine amigos, I have my eye on it myself if it should become available to buy!*
Today it is rare for such rich veins of gold ore to be found, however a number of examples have been found through history, and remember Waltz was active in the "good old days", plus he was a successful and experienced prospector, having helped discover several good to excellent gold mines in the Bradshaws as well as working in the gold fields of California before finding his famous/infamous mine. Who knows, perhaps someone will find Waltz's mine tomorrow, and we will all be able to judge all the statements and "clues" for how accurate or inaccurate they were.
One other thing - if you were able to mine out just ONE ton of ore with some 5300 ounces of gold in it, the sale of that gold could bring you over six million dollars today! How many tons of that kind of ore would one need, to become financially comfortable?
Good luck and good hunting amigos I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
Coffee amigos?
