through sluices. The water is thrown upon the dirt in these dump boxes through hydraulic pipes, a style of washing used in very few places in the State.

From 1853 to 1857 Columbia shipped $100,000 weekly; now the shipment is from $40,000 to $50,000 per month, and there is a steady decrease. The following are the principal claims in the Columbia basin:

The Columbia Boys' claim, 500 by 100 feet, has been worked regularly sinco 1850. Previous to 1853 it paid $20 per day; from 1853 to 1857 $7 50 per day, and since 1857 $3 per day. The dirt is hoisted by a wooden wheel. Five men are employed in the claim now.

The Tiger claim, 400 by 130 feet, was opened in 1849, but did not pay much for the first six years. Between 1855 and 1858, however, it was very profitable, and from 1863 to 1865 it paid still better than before. In 1863 the yield was from $100 to $600 per week to the man. It has not been paying expenses for the last two years. An iron wheel is used for hoisting. In the bottom of this claim is a hole leading into a subterranean channel which has its outlet below Jamestown, eight miles distant. On one occasion 2,500 inches of water ran down the hole for weeks; and the same water escaped at the outlet, where the stream was governed as to its size and color by the supply at Columbia. A similar hole is found in a claim at Knapp's ranch. Men have climbed down 150 feet, and gone 100 feet further with ropes to the bottom, where there is a stream 4 feet wide and 12 feet deep, with a slow current and clear water, no matter how muddy the streams may be on the surface. It is supposed that the outlet is at Springfield or Gold Springs.

The Cascade claim, 300 by 150 feet, has paid well for short periods, but has not yielded more on an average than $2.50 per day to the man. Five men are employed, and a hydraulic wheel is used for hoisting.

The McInroe claim, 300 by 100 feet, paid well in early days, but does not yield more than $2 50 per day now to the man. Three men are employed in the claim. The hoisting is done by a whim.

The Burns claim, 400 by 200 feet, paid $10 per day to the hand from 1853 to 1857, and averaged $100 per month to the hand since 1857. Five men are employed, and an overshot wheel is used for hoisting.

The Main claim, 300 by 200 feet, has paid high at times, but does not yield more than $2 per day to the six men employed. The hoisting is done by an iron hydraulic wheel.

The Millington claim, 300 by 100 feet, washes in a ground sluico, and has paid $20 per week over expenses. Four men are employed.

KNAPP'S RANCH.-Adjoining Columbia on the east is Knapp's ranch, of which about five acres have been washed, yielding $40,000 per acre or $200,000 in all. The bed rock here is limestone, but the boulders are large, and the miners can wash between them much more conveniently than among the smaller boulders of Columbia.

The following claims are on Knapp's ranch:

The Sullivan claim, 200 by 100 feet, is fifty feet deep, and is worked by a hydraulic stream thrown against the bank. Two men work the claim, and they make together about $5 per day.

The Peabody and Arnold claim, 200 by 100 feet, is also worked by a hydraulic stream against the bank, which is 50 feet high. No men are engaged in it, and they have at times got very good pay.

The German claim, 200 by 100 feet, has paid tolerably well.

The Grant claim, 200 by 100 feet, commenced working only a short time since. The Hunt claim, 500 by 500 feet, is remarkably rich. It paid $25,000 in one It employs six men, hoists by hydraulic wheel, and washes in a dump

summer.

box. The Dutch Bill claim, 200 by 100 feet, was opened in 1860, and has at times

paid $1,000 per month. It yields $3 per day each now to two men. The dirt is washed on the ground.

SAWMILL FLAT.-The following claims are at Sawmill Flat:

The Foley claim, 200 feet square, was opened in 1850, and has never paid more than moderate wages. Four men are employed, and there is a hydraulic wheel for hoisting.

The Dryden claim, 400 by 100 feet, washes in a ground sluice and pays well. It has lately yielded $2,500 to the man in a season. Five men are employed. SHAW'S FLAT.-Shaw's Flat and Springfield are on the limestone belt, but the deposit of gravel was shallow, and it has nearly all been washed away. At Springfield there are two large springs from which the town took its name; and to these miners brought the dirt in carts in 1850 and 1851, and washed out from $10 to $20 per day. As many as 150 carts were running at one time. There were single cart-loads that paid as much as $1,000. The ground was covered with a heavy growth of large pine timber, which has now all disappeared, and little remains save the rugged limestone. Springfield at one time had 600 voters, and now it has not one-tenth of that number.

At Sawmill Flat, near Columbia, the dirt is hoisted by wheel into a dump box and there washed. The diggings here will last for a long time. At Brown's Flat they wash in the same manner.

At Yankee Hill there are some rich hydraulic claims.

SONORA.-Sonora is situated on the slate, just below the limestone, and was wonderfully rich in early days, but is now nearly exhausted. The gold shipped nearly all came from placers previous to 1858; now it is about equally divided between quartz and placers. The amount shipped in May, 1865, was $80,000; in June, $84,000; in July, $95,000; in August, $102,000; in September, $91,000.

BIG OAK FLAT.-Big Oak Flat is on a granite bed rock, and the gravel on it was from 2 to 20 feet deep. Ditch water was not brought in until 1859, and in the next year it saw its best days. It is now pretty well worked out.

KINCAID FLAT.-Kincaid Flat, four miles east-southeast of Sonora, 150 feet above the level of Sullivan's creek, on the limestone belt, was formerly a basin. of 200 acres; but it has been worked continuously since 1850. The deepest workings are 75 feet below the original surface, but the bottom has not yet been reached on account of the abundance of water and lack of drainage. The richest pay has been found near the water-level. One claim 50 feet square paid $100,000, and it is estimated that the total yield of the flat has not been less than $2,000,000. There is a considerable area of rich ground that cannot be washed until some artificial drainage is supplied, and it has been estimated that by making an open cut 500 feet long and a tunnel 1,000 feet, at a total cost of $12,000, 75 acres might be worked. In addition to the cutting of the tunnel, the flume would be expensive, and a company has been formed with a capital stock of $30,000 to undertake the work.

JAMESTOWN.-Jamestown, on the bank of Wood's creek, was built up by rich and shallow placers in its neighborhood; but these are now nearly exhausted, and the town has become a little village. It is, however, situated near the northern lode, and it will, probably, with the development of quartz mining, recover its prosperity.

OTHER TOWNS.-Algerine, a mile and a half north of the Tuolumne river, and west of the main limestone belt, once had 800 voters, but is now reduced to a few score, the placers on which it depended being nearly exhausted.

Cherokee and Somerville, about eight miles east of Sonora, are on the granite, and they depend mainly on quartz mines for their support.

Chinese Camp and Montezuma are placer mining towns near the western border of the county.

TABLE MOUNTAIN.-One of the most remarkable features of Tuolumne county is Table mountain, which attracts attention from remote distances by its

black, bare, level surface, extending across the landscape like a gigantic wall. Examined closely, it appears to be a mountain capped with basalt, a quarter of a mile wide and 40 miles long. It poured out of a volcano near Silver mountain, in Alpine county, and took the same general course as the present Stanislaus river, which has cut across it in various places. There is a fork in the basaltic stream, 14 miles above Columbia. The average height above the adjacent ground in Tuolumne county is from 500 to 800 feet on the northern side, and from 200 to 500 on the southern. The adjacent earth has been washed away to a greater depth near the line of the mountain along its northern base, and for that reason nearly all the tunnels run in on the northern side.

The main strata of the mountain, commencing at the top, are: basalt, which is in most places 140 feet deep; under that is a stratum of volcanic sand 100 feet; then pipe clay and sand, 50 feet; then coarse gravel, 20 feet; then pay gravel, 5 feet; then bed rock. These strata vary greatly in thickness, however, in different places; there are spots where the pipe clay is 100 feet deep; but the above figures are given as an average.

The pay gravel is found in two places; there are really two channels, and whether they were the beds of two different streams or two beds of the same stream, occupied at different times, is not clearly determined, although the latter supposition is the more probable. The channels are not found under the middle of the mountain at every point; there are places where one of the channels is not covered by the basalt at all, and the other is only under the edge of it.* In a claim near Whimtown a tree standing erect 100 feet high was found in the pipe clay, and it looked as if it had never been moved from the position in which it grew; but it was all charred, though the basalt was a hundred yards

distant.

Table mountain has been an unfortunate locality for miners. It is estimated that at least $1,000,000 more have been put into the mountain, counting the regular wages, than were ever taken out. Nine-tenths of the miners who undertook to work claims there were the losers. There was enough gold to pay well, but the miners did not know how to get it. They worked in companies, and many of the members were shirks and idlers. They had no experience in this kind of mining, and did not know how to manage so as to do the most execution with the least labor. They guessed at the level of the channel, and started their tunnels too high, so that they could not drain their ground, and either had great expenses for pumping or had to cut new tunnels. The old channel, when first discovered, was extremely rich, and it was presumed that the possession of a claim anywhere on the mountain was equivalent to a fortune; so no economy was used. Two companies side by side might have united to cut one tunnel, but, instead of that, each made its run. But the outsiders who did not get claims when the mountain was first taken up, in claims 300 feet in length, running across the channel, held a meeting and resolved that those claims were too

* Mr. J. Arthur Phillips says, in his recent work on the mining and metallurgy of gold and silver: "The summit of this elevation is occupied by a thick bed of basalt, of a very dark color and great density of texture, which is occasionally distinctly columnar, and appears to have been poured out in one continuous flow. This, in the neighborhood of Sonora, is from 140 to 150 feet in thickness, and its width near the entrance of the Buckeye tunnel is about 1,700 feet. Beneath this capping of basaltic lava is a heavy deposit of detrital matter distinctly stratified in almost horizontal beds, but with a slight inclination from either side side towards the centre of the mass. These sedimentary beds chiefly consist of a rather finegrained sandstone, which rapidly disintegrates on exposure to the atmosphere. Interstratified with this sandstone, and more particularly in the proximate vicinity of the bed-rock, are clays and fine argillaceous shales, frequently nearly white and often beautifully laminated. With these are associated beds made up of coarse grain, strongly cohering together, forming the cement of the mines; and at the bottom is found the pay gravel, exactly like that seen in the bed of an ordinary river. The entire thickness of this detrital mass at its greatest depth is at least two hundred feet. This thickness, however, diminishes towards the extremities of the deposit, where the edges of the basin formed by the rim-rock gradually rise." (Pp. 43, 44.)

large, and no man should hold more than 100 feet square. These jumpers, as they were called, far ontnumbered the original locators, and they took up a large part of the mountain, held their own for a long time, and spent large sums in prospecting, but were at last defeated in court and ejected. Not one of them made anything by the jumping operation, and it is now conceded that the 300 feet, instead of being too much, was too little, since most who held even those large claims lost money by them.

The old channel was discovered at Springfield in 1852, in the Fox claim, in a shaft eight feet deep, on a flat from which the basalt had been washed away. The next year the Berry shaft, 55 feet deep, struck the channel; but it was not till the first of May, 1854, that the first tunnel was started, and the theory of lead running under the basalt was generally considered absurd until October, 1855, when the first tunnel reached the channel under the basalt.

The tunnels, to reach the channel, average about 1,000 feet in length, and the present cost of cutting tunnels at Table mountain is $16 per lineal foot. The common size of the tunnel is six feet high and four feet wide. The grade is one foot in a hundred. At the bottom of the tunnel is laid a tramway, 28 inches wide. Sleepers, three by four inches, rest on ties of the same size four feet apart, and are covered with iron straps an inch and a half wide and a quarter of an inch thick.

The following is a list of the claims in Table mountain, with a brief statement of their success and present condition, commencing near Columbia and running down stream:

The Buchanan claim, 300 feet long, has a tunnel which never paid expenses nor reached the gravel; it is not working now.

The Springfield claim, 2,000 feet long, has a tunnel 1,500 feet long, and paid well. The claim is working now. Three channels were found in this claim, and all were rich.

The yield

The Joint Stock claim, 2,400 feet long, has one tunnel of 1,000 feet and another of 1,200, that was commenced in 1855; and the claim is not abandoned, although $150,000 have been spent on it and only $50,000 taken out. Good gravel has lately been found, and the claim is considered valuable. The Saratoga claim, 1,200 feet long, has a tunnel 1,200 feet long. was $300,000, but rumor says the expenditures were still greater. owners sold out at a high price, making a profit by speculation, but much more loss to the purchasers. The claim is not working now. Here comes a gap in the mountain, and below are the following claims: The Crystal Spring claim, 800 feet long, reached the channel and produced much gold, but the sum was not ascertainable; it is standing idle now.

The Know-Nothing, a jumper claim, never reached the channel.
The Gold Hunter, a jumper claim, never reached the channel.

The first causing so

The Virginia claim, 1,700 feet long, reached the channel with a tunnel 800 feet long, but took out only $5,000 and spent $100,000. The company had very long and costly litigation with jumpers on both sides.

The Blank jumper company started a tunnel on the Virginia ground, but never reached the channel.

The Independence jumper company reached the channel by a tunnel 500 feet long, but found no gravel, and lost $75,000 by their enterprise.

The Mary Ann, another jumper company, ran a tunnel in a considerable distance, but found nothing.

The Cape Cod, also a jumper, had similar bad luck.

The American claim, 1,600 feet long, has a tunnel 900 feet long, and cut across the channel with a drift five feet wide. No pay gravel was found here, and the company were so poor and so much discouraged that, instead of examining the channel further, at a slight expense, as they could have done, they

stopped work, and nothing has been done now for three years. Their loss was $30,000.

The Buckeye claim, 1,000 feet long, now includes several old claims, and has three tunnels, only one of which, 2,000 feet long, is now used. One of the abandoned tunnels was 1,650 feet long. Work was commenced in 1854, and has been kept up, with the exception of one year, ever since, at an expense of $100,000, while the total yield has been only $10,000. An artesian auger was used in prospecting this claim, and Mr. Gould, who tried the experiment, thinks it should be used frequently. His drill was four and a half inches wide, and he bored four or five feet in basalt and eight or ten feet in slate in 12 hours. The cost in slate is $6 or $8 per foot. A water blast is used for ventilation.

The Boston claim, 3,000 feet long, commenced work in 1855, and has worked steadily ever since. The total yield has been not less than $500,000, and the total net profit nothing. Much of the work was done at first by a joint stock company, the shareholders in which claimed the right of being employed, though some of them were of little value as laborers. The manager did not know how to work to advantage, and did not pursue any steady plan. They worked first in one place and then in another, without exhausting either, and then the timber rolled and the roof fell in. There are now two owners in the claim, and they are doing better than any of their predecessors, though the gravel is not so rich as it was some years ago. There is still a large amount of ground untouched. Ten men are employed, and there is pay dirt enough in sight to keep them busy for half a year. The average yield per day is $8 to the man, or $1 per ton. The dirt is soaked over night in a dump-box before.

The Maine Boys' claim is 1,200 feet long on the north side of the mountain, but the lines converge so that they are only 550 feet apart on the south side. The expenses have been $120,000, and the yield very little. The original shareholders, having starved themselves out, sold conditionally to a San Francisco

company.

The Scraperville claim, 1,200 feet, has paid. It is said that the owners of one-fourth of the stock saved $5,000 in a few years.

The Oliver claim, 4,000 feet long, has yielded $200,000, and report says $8,000 have been taken from a single dump-box, which holds 150 tons. The profits were moderate till the end of 1866, and are now large. This company has been engaged in litigation for six years, has spent $30,000 on the suit, and has been before the Supreme Court, in one form or another, with it four times. The company is working the side channel.

The New York Company claims 2,400 feet, and their ground is considered the richest in the county. They are working on the side channel, which is there about 60 feet wide, and each longitudinal foot on it pays $1,000. They say they have taken out $250,000; others say $300,000.

The Chinese claim, so called because the shareholders came from a Chinese camp near by, is 2,000 feet long, and never paid anything. The tunnel was run in 300 feet.

The App claim, 2,000 feet long, has a tunnel 1,500 feet long, cut at a cost of $50,000. It never paid anything.

The Know Nothing claim, 1,500 feet, has yielded nothing and swallowed up $7,000.

The Chicken Company claimed 2,500 feet, spent $20,000, cut two tunnels, and got nothing.

The Montezuma Company claimed 3,000 feet and sunk $20,000 in a tunnel 2,000 feet long.

The Rough and Ready Company claims 5,400 feet, and have taken out not less than $200,000. One of the shareholders observing some gravel on the mountain side, filled his pan with it, and on washing it found a good prospect. They set to work here and found it rich. It was a bar of the old river, 75 feet