CALIFORNIA.

SECTION I.

GENERAL CONDITION OF THE MINING INTEREST.

The information and statistics relative to the gold mines of California were collected between the 17th May and the 25th July, but some interesting changes have occurred since the tour of inquiry was made, and the facts, when ascertained, have been mentioned. Many of the figures and data could be obtained only from the mine owners, who may sometimes have misrepresented the character and yield of their claims in a favorable light for the purpose of selling, or in an unfavorable light for the purpose of misleading the assessor and tax-collector. It is believed, however, that the statements as made are generally true, and it is hoped that, taken together, they will be found to be the fullest and most correct collection of important facts ever made relative to gold mining.

The general condition of gold mining in California is that of decline. The amount of production becomes smaller every year, but the decrease is confined chiefly to the placer yield. In quartz more work is being done; it is being done better than ever before, and there are more mines in successful operation. The business is flourishing and improving, with a fair prospect of continuous increase; and the success of many of the mines is most brilliant.

In 1864 Professor Ashburner wrote a report on the Mariposa estate, and in it he made the following general remarks:

In 1858 there were upwards of 280 quartz mills in California, each one of which was supplied with quartz from one or more veins. The number of stamps in these mills was 2,610, and the total cost of the whole mill property of this nature in the State exceeded $3,000,000. In the summer of 1861, while I was attached to the geological survey, I made a careful and thorough examination of all the quartz mills and mines of the State, and could only find between 40 and 50 in successful operation, several of which were at that time leading a very precarious existence.

Many of those old enterprises have not yet become, and never will become, profitable; but of the quartz mills built within the last four or five years, the successful proportion is much larger than before 1860. No business offers greater facilities to ignorance and folly for losing money; and, unfortunately, most of those who engaged in it had no experience and were led by their presumption into gross blunders in both mining and milling.

The greatest common blunder in quartz mining, and the most common error in early times as well as in our own day, has been that of erecting a mill before the vein was well opened and its capacity to yield a large supply of good rock established. The commission of this blunder is proof conclusive of the utter incompetency of its author to have charge of any important mining enterprise. If there were any possibility that it should in some cases lead to considerable profit, there might be an excuse for it, but there is none. It never pays. All the chances, including that of utter failure, are against it.

The next blunder was that the difference between a pocket vein and a charge vein was not understood, and the existence of rich specimens was considered proof of the high value of a mine, whereas among experienced quartz miners it excites their suspicions and distrust. Nine-tenths of the lodes which yield rich specimens do not pay for milling. West Point, in Calaveras, and Bald Mountain, in Tuolumne, the richest pocket districts of the State, are not to be compared for yield with Sutter creek or the Sierra Buttes, where there is scarcely a passable specimen in a thousand tons.

The next error was that nothing was known of pay chimneys, and if good quartz was found in one place, it was presumed that the whole mine was of the same quality. In some cases the pay chimney was near the end of a claim, into

which it dipped not far from the surface, leaving the mill without rock. In other cases the miner had his pay chimney in his own claim, but he did not know enough to follow it, and he worked straight down into barren rock, while there was an abundant supply of good quartz higher up.

Another error was that of sinking when nothing was found at the surface; a policy that may do in mining for other metals, but is very risky in gold. If the croppings are barren along a considerable distance, deep sinkings will rarely pay; but if the vein does not crop out, the only way to-examine it may be by a shaft. Much rock has been crushed without examination and without any proper selection.

In the mortars it is a common mistake to use too much quicksilver and too much water.

It has not been customary to make assays regularly of the tailings, so as to know what was passing off.

The mine owners, in a large proportion of the cases, have not resided at the mines, and have not made a study of the business; and no occupation requires personal supervision and thorough knowledge on the part of the owner more than mining.

These blunders are gradually being corrected, and if they were not still quite common the quartz mines of California would yield nearly twice as much as they do. The business will never be established upon a proper basis until the superintendents as a class are well-educated chemists and mining and mechanical engineers, and the mine owners frequent visitors, if not regular residents, at the mines. In placer mining there is not room for much improvement. All the processes are simpler, and the work has generally been done well.

The southern mines-that is, in the counties of Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, and Mariposa-have nearly exhausted their placers. They had few deep gravel deposits, and in all four there has not been one large hydraulic claim such as abound north of El Dorado. Placer, Yuba, Nevada, Sierra, and Plumas are more prosperous than the counties further south, mainly because of their extensive beds of auriferous gravel more than a hundred feet deep.

THE ACT OF JULY 26, 1866.-Few applications have been made for the purchase of quartz mines or of agricultural lands in the mineral districts, under the act of July 26, 1866, "granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands, and for other purposes."

The farmers of the mining districts have long been anxious to get titles, but the value of their possessions has decreased considerably of late, and many of them do not feel able to pay for the expense of a survey. They are required to pay not the survey of their respective farms alone, but for the survey of all the agricultural land in the whole township in which they are situated, and in some cases this expense may be $400. If several unite, the cost is less to each; but the whole expense comes upon the first application, whether made by one or many. After the survey has once been made, applicants have no expense save the price of the land and a few small incidentals. Previous to the first of June twenty-five farmers in Tuolumne and Stanislaus counties had expressed a desire to get patents, and all would undoubtedly have taken them if the survey had not stood in the way. The public sentiment of the State is unanimously in favor of the sale of these agricultural lands.

The surveys of quartz mines are not so expensive as those of agricultural claims, because it is not necessary to survey the whole township for a mine claim, but only to connect it with the public surveys by some one line, so that it can be laid down accurately upon the map. The expense depends upon circumstances, but it will seldom exceed $100 for every step from the beginning until the issue of the patent, exclusive of the time and travel of the surveyor in getting to the place where the mine is situated.

The owners of quartz mines generally desire to get patents, but the fact that

the claims on public lands are not taxed, and that those which have been granted by the government are taxed, is a strong objection. The tax in the mining counties varies from three to four and a half per cent. annually, and that is a serious consideration with. many.

The revenue law of California says:

All property, of every kind and nature whatever, within this State shall be subject to taxation, except mining claims. (Hittell's General Laws, article 6298.)

A supplementary act says:

All provisions of law exempting mining claims from taxation are hereby repealed so far as they apply to lands or mines in the condition of private property, and granted as such by the Spanish or Mexican government, or the government of the United States, or of this State. (The same, article 6265. Instructions under the act of July 26, 1866.)

The instructions issued by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to the surveyor general of California, and by him to his deputies, are worthy of being placed within their reach, and will be found in the appendix.

SURVEYS.-Up to the 10th of October, 1867, eleven surveys, made under applications for patents of lode mines, have been received at the United States. surveyor general's office in San Francisco. These eleven are the Peñon Blanco, Virginia, Jones, Potts, and Oakes & Reese, (these two last adjoin, and may be considered as parts of the same mine, though on different veins,) in Mariposa county; the Trio, McCann, Arbona, Hitchcock, and Grey Eagle, in Tuolumne county; and the Kelsey, in Eldorado county. Applications for surveys for patents have been made in many other cases, probably fifty, at least, and notices of the applications have been advertised in the newspapers in the mining counties, but the surveys have not yet reached the surveyor general.

The State has been divided into nine districts, with a deputy surveyor in each. The following are the districts:

First district.-Del Norte, Klamath, and Humboldt counties.

Second district.-Siskiyou, Shasta, and Trinity counties.

Third district.-Plumas, Butte, and Sierra.

Fourth district.-Yuba and Nevada.

Fifth district.-Placer, El Dorado, and Sacramento.

Sixth district.-Amador.

Seventh district.-Alpine, Mono, and Inyo.

Eighth district.-Tuolumne, Mariposa, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno, and Cala

veras.

Ninth district.-Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Kern, San Diego, and Tulare.

SECTION II.

THE MOTHER LODE.

The mother lode is in many respects the most remarkable metalliferous vein in the world. Others have produced and are producing more, but no other has been traced so far, has so many peculiar features, has exercised so much influence on the topography of the country about it, or has been worked with a profit in so many places. The great argentiferous lodes of Mexico and South America, the most productive of precious metal of all known in history, can be followed not more than six or eight miles; while this Californian vein is distinctly traceable on the surface from Mariposa to the town of Amador, a distance of more than 60 miles.

COURSE AND DIP.-The general course of the vein is very nearly northwest and southeast, but to be more precise it is north 40° west. If a straight line be drawn

on the map from Mariposa to Amador, the mother lode will be in several places two or three miles distant from the line, but usually within half a mile of it. The dip is always to the eastward, and usually at an angle of 45° or 50° to the horizon.

CHARACTER OF THE GOLD.-The gold is generally in fine particles, and is distributed evenly through a large portion of the lode in the pay chimneys, and there is very little of the rock entirely without gold. The sulphurets are not very abundant nor very rich, and when found they consist almost exclusively of pyrites of iron and copper, without those mixtures of lead, arsenic, antimony, and zinc which interfere with amalgamation seriously in some other lodes. The quartz of the mother lode is usually hard and white; and in most of the pay chutes near one wall or the other, ribbon rock, or rock with numerous black seams lying parallel with the wall, is found. In some mines, especially at the Raw Hide, the quartz is colored green with carbonate of copper; and the same color, though not so strong, is observed in portions of the Princeton mine.

WIDTH.-The width varies from a foot to thirty feet; that is, the main vein as worked; but it is accompanied by branches or companion veins, so that the total width of vein matter is sometimes nearly a hundred feet. In some places these side veins are known to be branches separated at the surface from the main vein by "horses;" in others they are different in material and do not unite at the deepest workings. The most remarkable side veins are those of talcose slate, which in some places can be traced for miles. They are from two to twenty feet wide, and are rich in gold. We do not find, in our books, mention of any similar auriferous deposit in other countries; but in California a number of them have been found, remote from the mother lode as well as near it.

South of Maxwell's creek is a parallel talcose vein, on the west side of the main mother lode, known as the Adelaide, which name was given to it by Mr. J. F. Johnson. The same name has been given by mistake in Tuolumne county to a companion talcose vein on the east side of the main lode. There is no reason that the two are the same vein, or for extending the name of one to the other.

PAY CHIMNEYS.-The pay chimneys are usually large and regular, and are either vertical or have a slight dip to the north.

In the companion talcose veins the pay chimneys are not distinctly marked, nor are the character and limit of the lode well defined.

HILLS AND HOLLOWS.-The streams seem to have made their beds in places where the mother lode is split up into a number of branches, as at the Mercede, Maxwell's creek, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Mokelumne rivers; while in those places where the lode is wide and solid there are high hills, as at Peñon Blanco, Pine Tree, Whiskey Hill, Quartz Mountain, and Carson Hill. The richest part of the vein was on the top of Carson Hill, and next to that in richness was Pine Tree Hill. The Hayward, the Oneida, and the Keystone are in valleys. The Golden Rule and the mines at Angels are neither on hill nor in hollow, and are yet very rich.

No other class of quartz mines in California is so poor in specimens as those on the mother lode, nor, with two or three exceptions, are there any others in which the gold is so regularly distributed through the pay chutes.

PECULIARITIES OF THE LODE.-The chief peculiarities of the mother lode are its great length, its great thickness, its uniform character, the near proximity of large companion veins, of which at least one is usually talcose, and the richness of the talcose veins. In reply to questions about the chief distinguishing feature of the mother lode, the miners engaged in working various mines gave very different answers. One said it was the presence of a belt of green stone on the eastern side. Another thought it was a black putty gouge. A third spoke first of the occurrence of places as smooth as glass on the walls. Another considered the mother lode to consist of two branches, one the luminated, the other the

boulder branch. The former is usually on the west side; the latter has the most curves. The lode is richest where the two meet. Another says the mother lode is a series of branches, sometimes a dozen in number, covering a width that varies from 500 to 3,000 feet, with a greenstone porphyry wall on the east, and dioritic porphyry wall on the west.

IS IT A FISSURE VEIN?—The question whether the mother lode is a gash or a fissure vein has little practical importance. Such an inquiry is serviceable in regard to deposits the character of which is doubtful; but we already know that in regard to length, uniformity of veinstone, continuity in depth, and number of pay chutes, few fissure veins exceed this. Professor Ashburner, in a report made on the Pine Tree and Josephine mines, in May, 1864, expressed an opinion that the " great majority" of the auriferous quartz lodes of California are gash veins; and he implies that the Pine Tree, which is a part of the mother lode, belongs to that class. Whitney, in his "Metallic Wealth of the United States," says:

True fissure veins are continuous in depth, and their metalliferous contents have not been found to be exhausted or to have sensibly and permanently decreased at any depth which has yet been obtained by mining.

Segregated and gash veins, aud the irregular deposits of ore not included under the head of veins, and not occurring in masses as part of the formation, cannot be depended upon as persistent, and they generally thin out and disappear at a not inconsiderable depth; at the same time they are often richer for a certain distance, and contain larger accumulations of ore than true veins, so that they may be worked for a considerable time with greater profit than these, although not to be considered as of the same permanent value.

In a report on the Princeton mine made by Professor Blake, in December, 1864, he said:

The identification of the Princeton as a fissure vein leads us to the question whether all the gold veins of the Sierra Nevada and other gold districts of similar formation are not also of fissure origin, rather than formed by metamorphism from materials pre-existing in the strata. It certainly is not essential to a fissure vein that it should cut across the strata of a country. In a region of regularly stratified slates, the line of least resistance to a breaking force is certainly the line or plane rather of the stratification. In that line or plane the rocky crust may be most readily split, and hence it is, I believe, that most of our veins are found conforming to the stratification. Professor Tuomey, in his report on the geology of South Carolina, describing the gold-bearing veins of that State, mentions several that for a part of their course follow the bedding of the rocks, and in other places cut across the bedding. I have observed similar conditions at various places in California, and I am daily more and more inclined to the view that gold veins are the results of emanatious from great depths below, which, ascending through rifts and fissures of the rocks, were condensed or deposited upon the walls.

CLAIMS IN MARIPOSA. The following is a list of the claims on the mother lode, beginning at the mother lode and going northward:

The Crown Lead, 4,500 feet on the mother lode, besides claims on two parallel lodes. Not at work. Noticed elsewhere.

The Virginia, 2,500 feet, crops out largely. A tunnel 160 feet long strikes the vein at a depth of 100 feet. Several shallow shafts have been sunk. Some good quartz has been found, but no work is being done now. There is no mill.

The Pyles, 1,200 feet; no work done.

The Mary Harrison has a mill, and is at work.

The Clayton, 3,000 feet.

The Louisa, 3,000 feet, is being opened and explored. One shaft is down 130 feet, and another is being sunk to the same depth, and a third, commenced on a lower level, is down 90 feet. A tunnel started near the level of Maxwell's creek, strikes the bottom of the 90 foot shaft. About 2,000 tons of ore have been taken out, and have been crushed at the mill of the Maxwell Creek Mining Company, yielding $8 or $9 per ton. The mother is split up here into a number

of branches.

On the Margaret, 3,000 feet, no work has been done. In this claim the mother lode is split up into a number of narrow branches, at least at and near Maxwell's creek, which separates it from the Louisa.