[Illustration: _CROSS SECTIONS OF SILVER KING MINE TAKEN FROM COURT RECORDS IN SUIT OF JOHN S. DOE VS. WATERLOO MINING CO._]
[Illustration: REPORT STATE MINERALOGIST W^M. IRELAN, JR. STATE MINERALOGIST. VERTICAL CROSS SECTION SHOWING THE FORMATION OF THE SILVER KING LODE CALICO MINING DISTRICT. SAN BERNARDINO CO. CAL. COPIED FROM EXHIBIT “P” COURT RECORDS OF JOHN S. DOE VS. WATERLOO MINING CO.]
[Illustration: STATE MINERALOGIST’S REPORT W^M. IRELAN, JR. STATE MINERALOGIST _SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE FAULT SYSTEM OF THE CALICO MINING DISTRICT_ PARTLY TAKEN FROM A MAP BY W. LINDGREN, E.M. BY W. H. STORMS, E.M. ASSISTANT IN THE FIELD.]
The Odessa Mine offers good illustrations of impregnated masses, as does also the Waterloo. In each of these mines, as in many others, the ore bodies are found in bunches or pockets, varying from little deposits of nominal value to great ore chambers containing thousands of tons of pay rock. In these cases, as at the King Mine, a system of faulting planes marks the general strike of a mineral-bearing zone or lode, but the great rock masses of tufa, in which these ore bodies occur (and also of sandstone in the Waterloo), are quite loose and porous in texture, and undoubtedly the ore bodies in these mines resulted partially, at least, from the impregnation of the rock with the mineral solutions which found an easy passage along the fault planes that had cut the rocks in every direction.
In the Waterloo Mine one of the fault planes exhibited a regularity seldom seen in any mine. It coursed through the light-colored, soft tufa in an easterly and westerly direction, was perfectly true, and as smooth as any hard-finished wall could be made by the most skillful artisan. The fracture was of knife-blade thinness, and its sides were coated with dark red iron oxide. It dipped to the southward at an angle of about 40°. At one time it was considered to be the hanging wall of the lode, but a miner broke through the wall to cut a hitch for a timber and it was found that the overlying rock beyond the slip was ore-bearing also. Stopes in this mine were frequently over ten sets in width, or over 60 feet. At the eastern end of the claim some extremely rich ore was mined from a belt of jasper, a metamorphosed clay shale, which by heat and pressure had become an intensely hard, fine-grained, flinty rock, yet some of this jasper contained over 1,000 ounces of silver per ton.