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Sylvanite crystals that have been situated in such a way that they are exposed to leaching <br />by the water will result in a powdery brown "rusty gold." This is from the author's own <br />personal experience: In investigating the extent of the telluride vein, to take samples for <br />assay, I encountered a very rich area with the gossan in place. The gossan was about 8" <br />thick and 12" wide along the vein. It was a rusty brown color and somewhat friable. It <br />was about 25 feet from a known area where rich rusty gold had been exposed earlier and <br />had been formerly disturbed in the 1930's. The gossan had been protected from <br />disturbance by the dump of the former disturbance and natural overburden under the <br />waste rock pile. When I found it, I had to go to my home kitchen to get a tablespoon to <br />dip out the rusty gold from the vugs that were exposed on the vein. Below the first <br />encounter, the vein increased in tenacity and required a pick to dislodge the pay streak. <br />Below the quartz nodules, the vein became more compact and the telluride minerals <br />gradually showed less and less leaching until fresh sylvanite was encountered at about 7 <br />feet in depth. The former disturbance was a shaft that had been driven down 35' and then <br />drifted along the vein for 65'.The shaft had been lined with cribbing and the prospector <br />had not recognized the rusty gold streak that was in the south wall and had cribbed over <br />it. That's another story. <br />3