Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

George Stuart’s Near-Misses

For all his successes, historical gold miner George W. Stuart also had heartbreaking near-misses that illustrate how difficult it is to find and extract the minerals we all use every day.

Stuart, a highly respected gold miner and mayor of Truro, was interviewed by the Halifax Herald in February 1886.

He discussed his first major success: “It was in 1861 that I did my first mining in Waverley. It was scarcely worth calling ‘mining’ however. Since 1878, I have devoted my time exclusively to it as a business at Montagu, Waverley, Carribou, and more or less in several other districts. I have done the most work at Montagu, where in connection with B. Gladwin, I discovered the Rose lode – or rather was credited with the discovery, notwithstanding that it had ben struck, opened, and abandoned years before; several hundred feet both east and west of where we found this famous lode.”

Stuart then illustrated how extraordinarily rich the Rose lead (a gold-bearing quartz vein) was: “In those places, however, it was both small and poor; the surface running deeper and west toward where the lode grew larger and richer. The first 20 tons [of ore] we mined gave 50 ounces of gold; the next 50 tons 250 ounces, and the following 60 tons nearly 400 ounces…In a little over four months the mine cleared $10,000.”

Nova Scotia’s historical gold mines often produced an average of one ounce of gold or less per ton of ore (the rock that hosts the gold), so the quantity of gold produced by Stuart on the Rose lode was tremendous. To further put it in perspective, output at successful modern gold mines is measured in grams per ton, not ounces, so multiple ounces per ton is spectacular by today’s standards.

This success drew the attention of investors and “we sold the mine to J. R. Robinson, connected with Wells, Fargo & Co., of New York. We received $50,000…The purchasing company sent a gentleman fresh from a New York commercial house, and entirely ignorant of mining matters, to take charge of the mine. By arrangement I assisted hm for three months. The third month after their possession of the mine it produced from the work of twenty-five men (in one month) 798 ½ ounces, the ore running ten ounces to the ton. The company very soon had their purchase money back; but later struck a ‘break’ or ‘fault,’ lost the pay ‘strike’ and sunk much of what they took out, became discouraged, ‘pulled up stakes’ and directed their attention to silver mining in Mexico.”

In geology, a fault is a fracture, or zone of fractures, between two blocks of rock. Faults are caused by geological forces like tectonic plate movement, and they allow the blocks of rock to move relative to each other. Faults are a challenge in mining because they can cause deposits to be split, moving part of a deposit to a different, often hard-to-find, location.

Abandoning the mine because a fault had split the Rose lode is an example of the sort of mistakes made by many of Nova Scotia’s historical gold mine operators. Instead of investing in the site and working systematically to find the extension of the Rose lode, the company just moved on when profits dropped.

Even in 1886, Stuart said, “I have no doubt but other rich strikes exist on the same lode.”

Stuart also discussed two examples where things did not work out well for him: “The New Albion mining property in Montagu when owned by the late T. L. DeWolf, was, for a time, held by me under bond. On the same lode from which the present owners have had such magnificent results, there was an old shaft sunk years before. I drove a tunnel in the rock from this shaft on the lode 120 feet, going east under the swamp. Not striking ‘pay rock’ and the bond about expiring I stopped the work. Had I continued 30 feet further I would have struck the big ‘strike’ that has since made this property famous.”

Coming within 30 feet of a bonanza is bad enough, but Stuart went on to tell an even more heartbreaking story: “On the other side of the swamp on the B. A. Mining Co.’s property I sunk a surface shaft and tapped this same lode. It looked rather poor…. [T]he next morning the surface had caved and the shaft was full of water. The company not caring to put up an engine to pump, the place was abandoned. Three years later, Mr. Gladwin put up a $300 donkey engine, cleaned out the hole and struck 12 ounce ore…Thus you will see I was within one foot of rich ore when I quit.”

Stuart did not discuss it in the interview but his discovery of the Rose lode, so-named because its quartz was rose-coloured, is an example of how he applied scientific principles to prospecting in an era when most prospectors just found visible gold in an outcrop and followed it, smashing the quartz with a hammer near-surface.

Stuart traced gold-bearing boulders back to the bedrock gold deposit that was their source by carefully examining the evidence of glaciation in the area. Boulders that contain gold-bearing quartz are often eroded from bedrock deposits by glaciers that carry the boulders and deposit them as the glaciers melt. By figuring out what direction the glaciers had travelled, Stuart was able to find the deposit that launched his career. A number of others had tried to decipher the clues of the gold-bearing boulders over the years, but none had succeeded.

Only one in every 10,000 mineral exploration projects ends up being a mine. That is why it is important that we develop mineral deposits when we can, both for the materials they provide and the jobs and economic benefits they create.