Word: schist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Aberle and Burns are about to complete five hours of work. Giving the cavern a last look, they scramble to a steel escape ladder that climbs straight up, 110 ft., through a hole bored in solid schist. Shifting from that ladder to a creaky elevator cage, they hoist themselves higher still. Beside the cage as it moves upward-to a mere 5,600 ft. below the earth's surface-water streams down the timbers used to shore up the shaft, acting as both lubricant and fire preventive. In the hot shaft it sounds, and feels, like a tropical rain...
...Homestake, by contrast, has been worked almost continuously for more than a century, ever since 1876, when two brothers, Moses and Fred Manuel, first stumbled on a promising vein of quartz in the Black Hills schist. The mine's total yield to date adds up to about 10% of all the gold ever mined in the U.S. (an estimated 325 million...