WEALTH IN THE SEA

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 40, 15 August 1930, Page 9

WEALTH IN THE SEA

GOLD FROM ITS WATER

A PATENTED PROCESS

(From "Tha PostV Representative.) SAN PBANCISCO, 23rd July.

Five tons of water from the Pacific produces gold worth a penny. This is the basis of a now industry. A sample of the Pacific's gold, obtained by two Berlin mining engineers, has been sent to tho Smithsonian Institution for record. One of them, Hcrschcl Parker, who is a Fellow of the Eoyal Society and ox-president of the Explorers* Club of New York, says the new process has been patented. The water is piped into a tank, in the bottom of which is a quantity of iron ochre or oxide of iron. This ochre, which is mined in large quantities, attracts gold to itself.

"When the ochre is rich enough in captured gold," Mr. Parker says, "we put it through an ordinary chlorination or cyanide process to extract the gold. Then we reclaim our chemicals and repeat the process. An agitator at the bottom of the tank keeps the water constantly feeding gold to the ochre.

"Since the earliest mining days prospectors often have gazed yearningly at the sea. Minute quantities of valuable metals are washed down to it by rivers running over masses of primary eruptive rock. Tho Forty-niners panned the river sands, knowing of the vast wealth that must be pouring annually into the sea. Our process docs not touch tho sea sands, but the sea itself—the gold held imprisoned in tho water. And we believe we have reached a point where we can expand and go after sea gold on a larger scale."