Jacob Waltz / prospector

sgtfda

Bronze Member
Feb 5, 2004
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3,933
Mesa Arizona
Jacob worked his way across the goldfields. Jacob would have used the prospecting methods of the day. Including mercury! Have you every found a pile of old rusted sardine cans out in the hills? There will be a mine nearby. Why sardines? Sardines contain fish oil. Fish oil removes heavy metals from your body. Fish oil was used by miners for over a thousand years.
The chances Waltz suffered from heavy metal poisoning is very high. Mercury poisoning affects the brain. Stop at the Blue bird and talk to John to see it in action. Are the Waltz clues and the lost mine story the results of a brain destroyed by heavy metals? Are you following those clues?
Think about this!
 

Hi Frank:

What about the tests showing very high levels of mercury vapour within certain areas of the mountains.
Could repeated exposure have affected Waltz's memory as well, making those clues which fit the pit mine useless ?
Perhaps the best clue then, would be where the concentration of mercury vapour was highest.
Does John remember how he was exposed to mercury, and when ?
 

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Wayne. John is lucky he remembers to put his pants on. The mercury vapors that are concentrated in spots in the mountains will affect your brain. This could explain a few things. Sleep in the wrong place. Next thing you know we have missing people that died in strange ways and places. The water in the area also has heavy metals. Remember soaking in a water pool Wayne? You can absorb this **** through your skin.
A reminder to all. Hiking in the mountains take your fish oil!
 

Frank. Wish I'd known that years ago. Woulda been a good excuse for forgetting that anniversary.
Now I sometimes even forget their name.....???
 

Sarge

I believe Waltz was sane when he told the clues . He don't used mercury because he don't crashed the ore . Just picked out flakes of ore or dry washed some nuggets and after sold them .
None story referred how Waltz sold pure gold bars .
 

Sarge

I believe Waltz was sane when he told the clues . He don't used mercury because he don't crashed the ore . Just picked out flakes of ore or dry washed some nuggets and after sold them .
None story referred how Waltz sold pure gold bars .

Waltz worked the gold fields in California to Az. They all used mercury in copper pans. One reason why there is so much mercury in the gold creeks. There was some natural but but most came from the miners.
 

Any mercury out where you're finding the gold, Frank ?
 

Any mercury out where you're finding the gold, Frank ?

Jerry a friend was working one of my spots and was overcome by fumes. He is dealing with lung issues now. A geologist looked over some of my nuggets and said a few were formed in a mercury environment. I'm half nuts so who knows.
 

In the old days, after amalgamating the gold into an amalgam ball, the old prospectors would drop it into a skillet and cook the mercury off. They didn't realize back then how mercury destroys the body at a genetic level. Thats why all the old timey prospectors have missing teeth and are all mostly nuts (between the mercury and all the time alone in the mountains).

Mike
 

To this day you will prospectors cooking their gold in a frying pan to dry it out. Yes there is mercury coating some of that gold. Get near some of that cooking and take a whiff.
 

No wonder all these mines got lost. Kinda makes me wonder how many assayers went nuts or croaked back then.
After all, how accurate could an assay report be, when the guy writing it has probably been sucking mercury fumes every day at work ?
 

Sarge I can remember playing W/mercury when I was a kid, you know the penny thing etc. I think its was somewhere in pinto valley my pardner & I came across a large pile of sardine cans (open), we thought someone really likes sardines. Than I remembered that trappers use sardines in their traps he (they) could have at least removed their trash. Thanks for all of you're input to this forum, Take care GOD BLESS. Broken PIck
 

Sarge

The toxic vapors and the radiation were the " curses " of the most famous treasures . The Egyptians Kings and many others used radioactive minerals to protect their tombs and treasures .
For this , be careful . The most treasures and rich mines are not cursed but " contaminated " .
 

Sarge

The toxic vapors and the radiation were the " curses " of the most famous treasures . The Egyptians Kings and many others used radioactive minerals to protect their tombs and treasures .
For this , be careful . The most treasures and rich mines are not cursed but " contaminated " .

I've heard of Arsenic and other poisons being used but never "radioactive minerals". :icon_scratch:
 

Fish from Roosevelt Lake and Lake Pleasant have made the "mercury" advisory list.
No warnings for Apache, Canyon, or Saguaro Lakes though.
 

Ducking wont get the out, but I do remember the "biggest" fish more for what it took to put him in the pan, than what it weighed.
Not sure how good that one's memory was, but it wasn't good enough.
 

It's so rare that I actually come across a subject I feel like I'm qualified to talk about :).

Elemental mercury - you know, the stuff you might have played with as a kid - the stuff that falls out of an old thermometer when it breaks that you can roll into little balls and is incredibly heavy is really not as dangerous as you may think. I suppose if you bathed in it, drank it or played with it every day for years you might have some problems, but it's not readily absorbed through the skin.

The REAL danger to using mercury is being exposed to the vapors because getting it into your respiratory system is what can cause it to get into your body and eventually affect your neurological system. Yes, elemental mercury slowly evaporates even at room temperature, but miners did (and still do) use it because it basically absorbs gold and you can easily remove the mercury leaving behind the gold just by heating it up. There are communities in Africa and 3rd World countries that have SEVERE problems with native populations seriously affected by mercury poisoning because of this.

As hot as it gets in Arizona, it isn't surprising to have mercury deposits close to the surface evaporate leaving dangerous vapors in the air which you wouldn't smell or know you're around. I would probably think twice before trying to drink from any surface water source if I knew it was near a mining area - odds are higher than most that you could be ingesting things like mercury or cyanide and those water filtration units don't do much to get rid of those things.

I never was able to find the mercury vapor report that was supposed to have been done in the Superstitions at one time. I'll have to look through my notes and get back to looking for that because I would tend to agree that those areas with high Hg readings may tell an interesting tale.
 

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