Bulls get rich, Bears get rich but Guinea pigs can get even richer.

This variant of the traditional market adage seems apropos as more good news from Guinea is heaped onto Cassidy's overflowing good news pile.

So call me a Guinea Pig. Not in the lab animal pig sense but in the over abundance piggy sense. Assay information from the most recent seven of the 125-KD series core holes of Kourassa project drilling is posted on Cassidy's website. I didn't believe that so rapid a turnaround from field to lab to office could occur during the holiday season. But there it is!  And it is good news!

Order of proceeding:  Details contained in the December 21, 2004 news release prove that the Cassidy geologists are learning how to cope with nature's variety of tricks. This end of the year good news is also somehow symbolic, being as it is, "at both ends of the trend" good news. I frankly don't know "which end is "most up" in choosing which topics to deal with first. My brokerage training says, "always mention the best first, because most people don't read beyond the first paragraph". My reportage training says "end with a statement of maximum impact ringing in the readers ears to make your point memorable".  I can't really decide which end is the better so I'll try to do a little of both.

FIRST: The sky was not falling!  Fortunately for us Cassidy "pigs", its geologists' persistence in believing that there is extension of the (Sanu Filanan) SF trend towards the southwest bore fruit in abundance!  Assays for the six holes drilled to evaluate the south end add "serious tonnage" fodder for the resource calculating people. For those of us addicted to the "what if process" the "what if" is that this trend, first chosen more by serendipity than by science, has become far longer, richer and wider than the "great unwashed" masses imagine. News of finding such rich grades in thick zones at KD-121, 122 and 123 should once more draw favourable attention to the stock. The making of the find and the acquisition previously of the exploration lands past the then southern border of Cassidy's lands underscores the quality of the entire working group looking after Cassidy's affairs. As an ex-explorationist I appreciate the angst of juggling costs of acquisition of new areas where a trend is leading you, against the reality of having a multiplicity of "maybe as good or better" leads elsewhere still to be investigated.   

Whistling Dixie. Here we are in the deep south y'all. The exciting news from the early days of SF trend exploration left many of us a little bit jaded and unappreciative of the steady stream of news of "only" workaday good grades found afterward. These did not stir the fast stock market crowd. Now, these latest three "sexy" holes may be what is needed to convince more people of Cassidy's progression towards an exciting future.  The more mundane "workaday" results from the other three southern holes will garner new perspectives as the importance of these in adding mining practicality is recognized. The widespread perception that Cassidy's find is a discontinuous minor quartz vein reflects prejudicial ignorance. The string of ignorance must break at some point as the trend gets longer and longer. The significance that three other in-country companies are actually mining and profiting from deposits clearly inferior to Cassidy's seems entirely unrecognized in the small caps market.   

I love hole KD-125!  I could sing about it! I love it not only for the jewel box quantity of contained gold assayed in its core, nor even for the fabulous true thickness of the high grade zone. Hole KD-125, I love you because you prove my contention, made several times, that it is unlikely that, entirely at random, the first few high grade holes on SF trend were drilled at the only location on the trend with high gold content. Now, for those with the imagination to make mines out of ideas, the missing part of hole KD-125 becomes all the more interesting. Consider....

AH SO! Geologists know that the concentration of minerals in a rock depends on there being space to host the minerals. One mechanism that creates space is what we call shears, the crushing and breaking which we see as having cause, meaning and pattern. The greater the crushing the greater the room for GOLD or any other desired mineral. When the shearing is very intense and white (often gold-bearing) quartz is injected, the rock appears as if it was put through a net or a sieve. We then call it a stockwork. When a stockwork is incredibly intense and riddled through with weak materials like GOLD! attempts to take ("cut") a core of such stockwork result in a crumbling of the rock by the diamond drill bit. There is then no core recovered from such a zone. Instead the material forming the stockwork is broken up and carried away by the pumped in drilling mud. The drill mud is usually not sampled or saved when coring in areas where good core recovery is the norm. So the probability is that the best (richest) part was not seen in KD-125! How rich were the missing eight feet?  Sing, "K K K Kadie where the gold shines brightly, how much gold did you really hold?".

And what's more.  While continuing in my feel good mood I want to crow a lot about one "fearless forecast" made on my Santa Calls page. Cassidy also announced on the 21^st that it has come across more nearby vein trends to explore. My forecast that many added mineralized shear zones are indicated by the pattern of major structures is therefore, already vindicated. So riding the wave I make :  Fearless forecast number nth : "Sometime in 2005 the exploration effort will result in an assay that will be higher grade than any reported to the end of 2004". Wanna bet?

Sorry about the geology lessons. I waited to introduce some tech terms used by my old geology professor, Dr B. Mawdsley. He cannily used descriptions appropriate to the understanding of geology by Saskatchewan students who had never come within a couple hundred miles of an outcropping of bedrock. For instance, he described shear zones as being "mixed up like a dog's breakfast". The vast mass of seething boiling molten rock or "magma" that provides both, the energy to shear the rocks and the juices that carry in the minerals, was referred to as "the goozly mess".  How could one fail to understand? So now, when I lapse into a techno-tongue, you will of course, understand me fully.

Restoring the dream. The year ending press release has great importance from the Cassidy investor's point of view. The results reinforce that short term history, i.e. the last past assay results, does not even begin to indicate the mineral potential of the region where Cassidy is conducting its exploration. The thought process needs to involve a look at the long time evidence. The history of several millennia of gold production history from Guinea has not exhausted its potential. Cassidy has barely sampled the potential. The indication of so much gold remaining at so many places is truly incredible. To me, it is nearly impossible for Cassidy not to eventually end up with mineable reserves measured in millions of ounces. How many? Confirmation of that potential requires time and taking of action. Right now doing that calculation is a bit like solving the equation that says" Telephone pole 15 meters high find the length of the wire". Recognition of that potential will come slowly. It doesn't attract the day trader or the short seller. This discourse is not aimed at them in the least.

Speeding things up. Cassidy's 2004 exploration effort ran like a well-oiled machine. The fact that so effective an overseas effort was organized and managed from Kamloops, B.C. amazes some people. Not me. I know JT too well to ever be surprised at what he can accomplish.  But you ain't seen nuthin' yet. In 2005, the Cassidy exploration juggernaut should really speed up. The core drill which operated so efficiently that geological staff were hard put to keep up with generation of appropriate targets, will be in use again. It will go after finding and confirming added areas with gold potential. The core drill will be joined by a reverse circulation drill. An "RC" drills holes much faster and more cheaply than a core drill. Reserves can be determined more cheaply with an RC after one knows where to drill. The RC samples are crushed bits of rock rather than cores, (cylinders of rock). Cores are a necessity in areas of new exploration where seeing the geometry and relationships between layers of rock is essential to understanding where to aim your efforts. Cassidy recently brought in a caterpillar tractor for the project. A "cat" can be an incredibly useful exploration tool. It builds roads to new areas of work, drags rigs to new drill sites and does trenching. Trenching is one of the cheapest exploration tools. The cat digs a ditch, but not along the length of a trend as an artisanal miner would prefer, but across the trend. Fresh, uncontaminated samples are taken in the form of chips gathered in a pattern that provides true representation of the average mineral content. Trenching speeds up the effectiveness of exploration drilling tremendously by pointing to the best trends, so you drill them first. By this time next year, we all will have some "numbers".  

The Guinea

Gold from Guinea was used to mint gold coins in England from the pure gold gathered by Guinean natives. This gave rise to the English word "guinea" for a gold coin. A Golden Guinea, exactly 21 shillings, from the reign of George III is pictured below. In 1717, Sir Isaac Newton, as Master of the Mint, fixed the weight of the Guinea at 129.4 grains (0.2461 troy oz.) of Gold. With the exception of two short wartime periods, that weight was the unvarying benchmark for British circulating coinage and currency until 1931. In the Middle Ages, the eastern region of Ghana and Guinea known as Boure was Europe's most important source of gold. Production from there dates back to ancient times. An Ancient Greek historian, Herodotus says that merchants from Carthage traded gold from West Africa 2,500 years ago.  The emperor of Guinea, Mali and Ghana took 100 camels loaded with 13 tonnes of gold to Mecca and Cairo in 1324. Those half million ounces of gold are said to have lowered the price of gold in Cairo for 25 years.