OK Blog, let's not compare them!
But I have to reply regarding your following comment
"IMO a pick and shovel brigade that wasn't totally organised couldn't shift maybe 25 million tons of dirt in a fairly tough environment, 3 million oz is unbelieveable IMO."
The gold won by artisan miners would have been overwhelmingly nuggets and small visible gold gleaned by panning. This gold lay on or close to the surface, the result of millions of years of weathering of the mountain. So what of the rest of the still intact mountain? Even if the drill hadn't found bonanza and high grade zones, it would beggar belief to think that there weren't huge quantities of gold and silver remaining in the mountain.
Your figure of 25m tonnes of ore to recover 3m ozs of gold just doesn't stack up in the above scenario. That equates to 4 grams per tonne, which is the kind of grade which would be processed through a CIP plant, and bears no relation to artisan mining.
So they didn't need to move anything like 25m tonnes.
23.
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