companies.
The machinery of the last-named dredges was made in England at Arthur
Brown's works, the pontoons [scows] themselves being constructed on the
spot. The Neviansk Co.'s dredges were made by Werf-Conrad in Holland.
Many of the dredges were, of course, constructed by the Putiloff works
at St. Petersburg. Costly experience in the past has led to the
companies exercising greater care in the selection of dredging ground.
* * * But while platinum dredging has undoubtedly a great future in the
Urals, neither in the Blagodat nor Nizhni-Tagilsk fields is it possible
to expect the discovery of new placers, as in the 80 years that they
have been worked they have been thoroughly investigated.
We
can predict, therefore, that in 30 to 40 years' time these
platiniferous districts of the Urals will be entirely exhausted. Hopes
of fresh ground can only be entertained in the north of the Urals,
where the olivine rocks are often met, and little prospecting has been
done—as, for instance, on the River Ioutyn.
The
exhaustion of the Russian platinum deposits may be delayed by the
discovery of platinum in the Nikolaie-Pavadinsk district in the
northern part of the Ural region, on the Crown estate of Vag-ransk,
where the investigations of Prof. Dyupark have shown such splendid
results as to cause considerable investment of capital on Nyasma River
where dredges are being built. One of these is of the American type
(Marion) and is driven by electricity. It would appear from reports
that the reserves of platinum in the Urals are not so small as many
believe.
By
the end of 1913 the high price of platinum had taken labor from the
gold fields of Russia to the platinum placers on account of better
wages, and all available ground had been worked over. The tendency of
the industry is to go into the hands of companies capable of operating
on a large scale. As quoted by the Mining and Scientific Press there
are among these companies the Ovsyankin Co., which is a purely Russian
organiation controlling 109 placers in the Orenburg government.
Counsellor Ratkoff-Rashnoff has formed a company with a capital of
10,000,000 rubles, known as the Lower Tagil Platinum & Mining Co.,
which will operate in the Perm government. Another company has been
formed to work platinum deposits in the lower Tagil district belonging
to the Demidoff successors and Prince San Donato. The passing of the
control of the platinum fields into the hands of the larger operators
is the natural sequence, in that the deposits have become of lower
grade and it has become necessary to handle large quantities of
material, requiring more expensive equipment and larger capital to work
them. According to the Mining and Scientific Press, the method of
working the deposits consists in dumping the sand into a stirrer and
trommel, from which, after screening, it passes to the tables. The
tailings from these ascend through a revolving cylinder containing a
screw to a stacker.
The following description of the occurrence of platinum in the Ural Mountains is abridged from a contribution by E. de Hautpick.1
Occurrence of platinum in the Ural Mountains.—The
search for platinum over the world has always been an interesting one
to mining circles, and it has become still more engrossing as the
period approaches for the introduction of the new Russian law to
prevent the export of crude platinum. Therefore, it appears to me
convenient to add to all my previous articles on this metal a
geological description of the positions in which platinum is found in
the Ural platinum placers, which have hitherto almost alone satisfied
the requirements of industry.
iMin. Jour. (London), Sept. 20, 1913.
