the
Pacific. The trip may be made in four or five days from Cartagena,
allowing for touching at way stations and other detentions.
Properly
managed, there appears to be a broad field for American capital and
enterprise in the mining districts of Colombia. The inhabitants of
those districts have merely gathered from the surface of the soil an
infinitesimal fraction of the mineral wealth of the Republic. The
alluvial placer deposits are in the hands of small miners, who spend a
portion of the week in washing the gold-platinum sands and clay,
another part in their corn and garden patches, and the rest of the week
in placid enjoyment of life. It is said that no effort has ever been
made to discover platinum in ore bodies or vein deposits nor, so far as
can be learned, has it ever been found in quartz, even in the shape of
float.
Concerning
the location of the best platinum mines of Colombia, Mr. Lucindo Posso,
of Cartagena, an exporter of the metal, gave Consul Manning the
following information:
The
richest mines are on the Condoto, the Opagado, and the Tamanal, all
branches of the San Juan River. In the province of Atrato there is only
one small district, Negua, from which platinum is taken. Some new mines
have lately been discovered in Nobitu which promise to be very rich,
and a company of French capitalists has recently made very large
purchases in the platinum district. This company is headed by Albert L.
De Lantreppe, of London, England, and it is soon to send competent
engineers to make a careful study of the region and especially of the
properties which have fallen into its hands. Gen. Ramon Buendia, a
Colombian, has bought a great quantity of mineral lands in Condoto and
Nobitu. There is yet a great expanse of country there rich in minerals
of all kinds where platinum must exist in goodly quantities yet
unprospected and virgin. There is certainly a great field for the
prospector and miner there.
Judging
by the statements of various exporters in Cartagena, there is reason to
believe that a great deal of the platinum and gold of the Cauca is
shipped out through Buenaventura and via Panama, and that it is divided
between France and the United States. It seems that France and other
European countries received the larger portion up to a short time
since, but now there seems to be a tendency to forward the bulk of the
output to the United States, where the demand has increased wonderfully
and where the price is satisfactory.
Through
the courtesy of Senor Don Washington Mendez, of Cartagena, Mr. Manning
has been enabled to make public the following extract from a report
made by the former in January last to a firm in Paris, which report is
very valuable as giving essential information regarding the character
of the country in which the mines are located, its healthfulness (or
unhealthfulness), etc.:
Platinum
is found in its greatest abundance in the region of Choco, Barbacoas.
and San Juan, and especially in the latter. The district is easily
accessible by steamboats to Quibdo by way of Cartagena in four and
five days of travel, including in this time the detentions in the
ports. The principal places are Quibdo and San Pablo, especially
Quibdo, which is the capital of the province of this name.
There
are no mines in exploitation. The mineral which they export from here
is that encountered in the bottom of the canyons of the rivers in the
form of powder (dust) and in the exploitation of the bars which contain
it. The work is of a very primitive mode, like that in practice in
ancient times. Up to the present the indolence of the people has been
so great that they have not discovered the first ledge which would
carry platinum, because they have made no serious study or scientific
exploration. Labor is abundant.
It
is not possible to find anyone willing to contract a certain quantity
of platinum, no one having, as I have said, made serious explorations
and there being no acquired rights. In order to understand the
situation properly, it would be necessary at the beginning to send a
mining engineer- to study the ground. However, the enormous
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