S. Meranging (Sungei Meranging, modern Sungai Meranging) is a river of Atjeh whose quartz-veins yielded, in the 1922 survey of Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp, the second-highest-grade gold assay of any Atjeh primary-gold occurrence recorded in the colonial geological literature: 10.8 gr Au/ton. The S. Meranging locality is recorded in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) alongside the S. Assai assay (11 gr Au/ton) as one of the two positive assays from the 35 quartz-vein samples taken in the Atjeh interior.
The 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp assay
For the full context of the 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp survey and the 35 quartz-vein samples, see the entry on S. Assai. The S. Meranging assay of 10.8 gr Au/ton is the second-highest of the two positive assays, and is near-identical to the S. Assai assay (11 gr Au/ton). The near-identity of the two assays is geologically significant: it suggests that the Atjeh primary-gold mineralisation is hosted in a coherent quartz-vein system with a relatively uniform gold grade, rather than in a series of disparate veins with widely varying grades. The S. Meranging locality, however, is not specifically recommended by Van Bemmelen for further investigation — only the upper-Assai region is — which suggests that the S. Meranging assay, though positive, was either from a less accessible or less extensive vein system than the S. Assai.
Significance
S. Meranging is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the site of the second-highest-grade gold assay of any Atjeh primary-gold occurrence recorded in the colonial geological literature — 10.8 gr Au/ton from a quartz-vein in the slate-formation. The near-identity of the S. Meranging assay with the S. Assai assay (11 gr Au/ton) is geologically significant, because it suggests that the Atjeh primary-gold mineralisation is hosted in a coherent quartz-vein system with a relatively uniform gold grade. The S. Meranging locality accordingly belongs, with the S. Assai, to the small group of Atjeh primary-gold occurrences that yielded positive assays in the colonial geological survey, and it accordingly occupies a place in the printed record of Atjeh’s mineral geography that is disproportionate to its modest individual prominence.
See Also
- Acheh
- B. B. Lindberg
- Gold and silver in Atjeh
- H. Wolvekamp
- P. J. J. Jansen
- S. Assai
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1922
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 122 (Summary of the Explorations in Sumatra, Atjeh primary deposits).