THE GOLD IN THE ITALIAN RIVERS
THE GOLD IN THE ITALIAN RIVERS|
It's possible to find out the gold in two very different ways. It can be well beneath the terrestrial surface, therefore digging to take it to the light is necessary. The other way is more exciting and it is the first used by the man: digging, combing and washing the sands on the river-bad (secondary deposits). This is the way which we use, goldpanners for hobby, using simple tools and ancient methods which refer to the tradition to recover the gold wisps of straw from the sands of the river-bad.
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When one unfailingly talks about the gold one thinks of the mythical, epic and picturesque, Gold Rush which recalled thousands of willing seekers and adventurers in California in 1848, in Australia in 1851, in the Transvaal (Sud Africa) in 1886 and in the Klondike (Alaska) in 1896 where the last big horde of seekers was poured. And yet, according to the searches of the geologist Dr. G Pipino, founder and curator of the museum of the gold and founder in 1988 of the Italian Goldpanners Association, there is not less gold in our Po rivers. It can be said that all the high Po Plain to be an immense "Placer" (alluvial deposit) aureum with a concentration that very from few milligrammes to beyond a gram per cubic meter.
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It's possible to find flakes made of alluvial gold in almost all the water courses that getting down from the Ligurian Appennini, from the Alps and Lombard they flock at Po, in particular in the Orba, in the Orco, in the Dora Baltea, in the Elvo,in the Sesia and in the Ticino. The dimensions of these flakes made of gold are various. The biggest measure to the maximum a centimetre, findable in the Orco and in the Orba, a dust of few cents of characteristics millimetre of the low course of the Ticino is pratically the littlest. |