LETTER XIV.

THE RIDE THROUGH THE SAGE BRUSH AND THE GREAT BASIN.

VIRGINIA, Nevada, June 28.

            WE are nearly out of the Sage Brush! Nearly into a "white country," where the grass grows green, and water runs, and trees mount skyward and spread sweet shade. Like some of the dry, barren plains that lead up to the Rocky Mountains on the east, the six hundred miles we have come over from Salt Lake to this point, pass through a region whose uses are unimaginable, unless to hold the rest of the globe together, or to teach patience to travelers, or to keep close-locked in its mountain ranges those rich mineral treasures that the world did not need or was not ready for until now. The Basin of the Great Salt Lake, that I briefly described in a late letter as the center of the Mormon development, is but the south-eastern and most fertile corner of an immensely large intramountain basin, that has no water outlet to the ocean, that absorbs all the water developed within its limits, and cries, oh how hungrily for more, whose chief natural vegetable product is Sage

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Brush, and which holds within its bounds the great, if not the sole, silver mines of the nation.

            This Great Desert Basin,—but desert only because comparatively waterless,—lies on the very central and commercial line of the Republic,—the line of greatest population and thrift and wealth both east and west of it,—stretches three hundred miles from north to south and six hundred miles from east to west, is about equally divided between the two states of Utah and Nevada, and is walled in on the one side by the Rocky Mountains and on the other by the Sierra Nevadas. Not a wide, unbroken plain, however, is this vast basin desert of the West. Through it, north and south, run subsidiary ranges of mountains, averaging at least one to every fifty miles, and the intervening valleys or plains all dip, though almost imperceptibly, to the center, which gratefully suggests that they were once not altogether so tearless as now. Mountain and plain are alike above dew point ; rain is a rarity,—near neighbor to absolute stranger; and only an occasional range of the hills mounts so high as to hold its winter snows into the summer suns, and yield the summer streams that give, at rare intervals, sweet lines of green, affording forage for cattle and refreshment and rest for traveler. Springs are even more infrequent, but not altogether unknown, and water may sometimes, though very hardly, be got, when all else fails, by digging deep wells. Such streams as rise from springs or snow-banks in the mountains, begin to shrink as they reach the Plains, and end in salt lakes, or sink quietly into the fam-

THE RIVERS OF THE GREAT BASIN.       133

ishing earth. Humboldt River, the largest and longest of the basin, runs west and south from three hundred to five hundred miles, and then finds ignominious end in a " sink," or, in a very natural big disgust at the impossibility of the job it has undertaken, quietly "peters out." So of the Carson River, which comes from the Sierra Nevadas on the west, and finds its home in a lagoon within sight of its parent peaks. Reese River, now so famous as localizing the new and extensive silver mining operations about Austin, is but a sluggish brook that the shortest-legged man could step across at its widest, and yields itself up to the hot sands without greening but a narrow line in the broad plain in which it runs. And yet it is the largest and almost only stream that we met in traveling westward from the Jordan which waters the valley of Salt Lake; and the two are four hundred miles apart!

            Through this wide stretch of treeless mountain and plain, at its center,—fifty to one hundred miles below the old and more fortunately watered emigrant route along the valley of the Humboldt,—on a nearly straight line west, we have made the most rapid stage ride yet achieved on the great overland line, and the equal perhaps of any ever made of like distance on the Continent. Mr. Holladay's ownership ceases at Salt Lake ; from there hither, the stages are run by the Overland Mail Company, whose stockholders are New Yorkers, and mainly the same as those of the great express company of Wells, Fargo & Co., which monopolizes the express

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business in all these western States and Territories, having its offices in every town and village, and extending its routes as fast and as far as the most enterprising prospectors successfully push their hunt for the precious metals. At Salt Lake City, therefore, we parted with our protector  and companion, thus far, Mr. Otis,—with many a rare memory of his good fellowship,—and found new friends and careful protection on our farther journey in the officers and drivers of the Overland Company. Their part of the line has been happily exempt, for now two years, from the inroads of the Indians ; it is all nearer to good markets than most of Mr. Holladay's ; and so we naturally found it in better condition, and able to run more promptly and regularly. Ambitious to see how fast they could send Mr. Colfax and his friends over their route, they took us up at Salt Lake on Monday morning week, and set us down at Austin, four hundred miles distant, in fifty hours, or two-thirds the time usually taken. Awaiting our examination of the mining region about Austin, we were again put over the road on the double quick, and landed in Virginia, two hundred miles farther off, in twenty-two hours more, or fourteen less that the schedule time ; and so came into this town at six o'clock Sunday morning, while all the elements of a magnificent popular reception, that had been arranged for the night before, were fast asleep in bed, and totally undreaming of the march that we were stealing upon them. Here, we are near the foot of the Sierra Nevadas, on the borders of California, and will be transferred,

A FAST STAGE RIDE.          135

for our farther progress, to still another line of coaches.

            But our fast ride by the Overland Mail stages from Salt Lake will always be a chief feature in the history and memory of our grand journey across the Continent. The stations of the company are ten to fifteen miles apart ; at every station fresh horses, ready harnessed, took the places of the old, with a delay of from two to four minutes only ; every fifty miles a new driver took his place on the box; wherever meals were to be eaten, they were ready to serve on arrival ; and so, with horses ever fresh and fat, and gamey,—horses that would shine in Central Park and Fifth Avenue equipages,—with drivers, gentlemanly, intelligent and better dressed than their passengers, and a division superintendent, who had planned the ride and came along to see it executed, for each two hundred miles,—we were whirled over the rough mountains and through the dry and dusty plains of this uninhabited and uninhabitable region, rarely passing a house except the stage stations, never seeing wild bird or beast, for there were none to see, as rapidly and as regularly as we could have been over macadamized roads amid a complete civilization. The speed rarely fell below eight miles an hour, and often ran up to twelve. But so wisely was all arranged, and so well executed, that not an animal suffered ; to horses and men the ride seemed to be the work of every day, as indeed it was in everything but our higher rate of speed.

            But the passengers are content that it should be

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a single experience for them ; they are glad to have had it, but will spare their friends a repetition,—at present. The alkali dust, dry with a season's sun, fine with the grinding of a season's stages and freight trains, was thick and constant and penetrating beyond experience and comparison. It filled the air,—it was the air; it covered our bodies,—it penetrated them ; it soared to Almighty attributes, and became omnipresent, and finding its way into bags and trunks, begrimed all our clean clothes and reduced everything and everybody to a common plane of dirt, with a soda, soapy flavor to all.

            This alkali element in the soil of all this region, as of much of the country on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, I have heard no explanation of. In some spots it prevails to such a degree as to clean the ground of all, even the most barren vegetation; and wide, smooth, bare alkali plains stretch out before the eye sometimes for miles, and white in the distance like a snow-bank. In some places so strong is it that the earth when wet rises like bread under yeast. It taints the water everywhere, and sometimes so strongly that bread mixed with it needs no other "rising." Yet I find no evidence of any general unhealthy effect from its presence ; animals eat the grass and drink the water flavored with it ; and though the dust chokes all pores and makes the nose and lips sore, the inconvenience and annoyance seem to be but temporary from even large doses of it.

            Then the jolts of the rocks and the "chuck holes" of the road, to which the drivers in their rapid prog-

MR. GREELEY AND HANK MONK, THE DRIVER. 137

ress could give no heed, kept us in a somewhat perpetual and not altogether graceful motion. There was certainly small sleep to be enjoyed during this memorable ride of three days and nights ; and though we made the best of it with joke and felicitation at each other's discomfort, there was none not glad when it was over. The drivers all had the same consolation to administer to us for the rough riding, and that was the story, memorable all along this route, of Mr. Greeley's experience upon it some six years ago. He had met rather a dull driver, was behind time, and became impatient, as he had a lecture engagement just over the mountains in California. So when he struck the mountain road, and a noted driver then and still,—for stage driving is a trade that men follow through their lives,—by name Hank Monk, Mr. Greeley suggested that he would like to get over the road a trifle faster. "Yes," said Hank, as he gathered up the reins of six half-wild mustangs, then in common use on the road,—" keep your seat Mr. Greeley, and I will get you through in time." Crack went his whip; the mustangs dashed into a fearful pace, up hill and down, along precipices frightful to look at, over rocks that kept the noted passenger passing frantically between seat and ceiling of the coach ;—the philosopher soon was getting more than he bargained for ; and at the first soft place on the road, he mildly suggested to the driver that a half an hour more or less would not make much difference. But Monk was in for his drive and his joke, and replied again, with a twinkle in his left eye, after a fresh cut at his mus-

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tangs, "Just keep your seat, Mr. Greeley, and you shall be through in time." Mr. Greeley kept his seat so well as he could, got through on time, and better, unharmed, though greatly to his surprise, in view of the dangers and roughness of the drive, and rewarded the driver, who had served him the rough joke, with a new suit of clothes. The story is now classic with all the drivers and all travelers on the road ; and Monk wears a watch with his reply to Mr. Greeley engraved on the case,—the present of some other passengers, whom he had driven both rapidly and safely over his perilous route. The road is better now ; and the horses tamer; but the driving is hardly less fearful.

            It is an interesting problem whether these unpromising valleys, gray and brown with an unnatural sunshine, can ever be subdued to the service of the population that the mineral wealth of their hills invites and will inevitably draw into them. Save a sandy desert of sixty miles wide, which comes after the fertile strip of eastern Utah is passed, there is nothing in the soil itself that forbids valuable uses. It is made up of the wash and waste of the Rocky Mountains, and wherever even moderately watered is very productive. Some theorists contend that with the occupation and use of the country, rains will multiply ; and the observations of the Mormons give a faint encouragement to this idea. Another theory is, that by plowing during the later rains of spring, and sowing during the long, dry summer rest, the smaller and hardy grains will sprout with the fall rains, strengthen in

THE BEAUTY OF THE HILLS.        r39

the winter, and quickly ripen in the early spring. Such treatment involves a year's fallow, as the harvest would be too late for another plowing the same spring. This culture is doubtless practicable, as it has been proven, in the high sage brush plains in California; but it would seem as if these alkaline valleys of the great interior basin were too cold, and go dry too long, for like successful treatment. It is worthy intelligent and persistent experiment, however ; for I observe that wherever the sage bush can grow, other things can and will with the addition of water.

            Do not think such a country is altogether without beauty or interest for a traveler. Mountains are always beautiful ; and here they are ever in sight, wearing every variety of shape; and even in their hard and bare surfaces presenting many a fascination of form,—running up into sharp peaks ; rising up and rounding out into innumerable fat mammillas, exquisitely shapen, and inviting possibly to auriferous feasts ; sloping down into faint foot-hills, and mingling with the plain to which they are all destined ; and now and then offering the silvery streak of snow, that is the sign of water for man and the promise of grass for ox. Add to the mountains the clear, pure, rare atmosphere, bringing remote objects close, giving new size and distinctness to moon and stars, offering sunsets and sunrises of indescribable richness and reach of color, and accompanied with cloudless skies and a south wind, refreshing at all times, and cool and exhilarating ever in the afternoon and evening; and you have

140      ACROSS THE CONTINENT.

large compensations even for the lack of vegetation and color in the landscape. There is a rich exhilaration, especially, in the fresh evening air, dry, clear and strengthening, that no eastern mountain or ocean breeze can rival. In looking out through it at sunset on the starry heavens, and in taking in its subtle inspiration, one almost forgets alkali, and for the nonce does not remember flowers and grass and trees.

LETTER XV.

THE SILVER MINES OF NEVADA—AUSTIN AND VIRGINIA CITY.

VIRGINIA, Nevada, June 27.

            CALIFORNIA, mature at eleven, plants a colony in 1859-60, which ripens into a new State in 1864. Nevada is the first child- of California. As bachelor uncles and fond friends sometimes think children are born in order to wheedle them out of silver cups ; so Nevada sprang into being under like metallic influence. And if she promised to give, rather than to get, she fails yet to keep full faith ; for though in her six years of life, she has yielded sixty millions of material for pure coin of the realm, she has absorbed much more than that amount of California capital and labor. Coming west out of the barren plains of the great interior basin,—even in their midst,—we strike the first wave of Pacific coast life at Austin. Five hundred miles from San Francisco, two hundred miles from the Sierra Nevadas, in middle Nevada, huddled and incoherent along the steep hill-sides of a close canyon, running sharply up from the Reese River valley, lies the easternmost and freshest mining town of the State and the section.

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            Two years old, Austin has already had a population of six or eight thousand, cast one thousand nine hundred votes at the presidential election, and, now, experiencing its first reaction, falls back, to four thousand inhabitants. It bears family likeness to Central City and Black Hawk in Colorado ; houses are built anywhere and everywhere, and streets are then made to reach them ; one side of a house will be four stories and the other but two,—such is the lay of the land ; not a tree, nor a flower, nor a grass plot does the whole town boast,—not one ; but it has the best French restaurant I have met since New York, a daily newspaper, and the boot-blacks and barbers and baths are luxurious and aristocratic to the continental degree ;—while one of the finest specimens of feminine physical beauty and grace presides over a lager beer saloon ; gambling riots openly in the large area of every drinking shop,—miners risking to this chance at night the proceeds of the scarcely less doubtful chance of the day ; and weak-minded and curious strangers are tempted by such advertisements as this :—

Mammoth Lager Beer Saloon, in the basement, corner Main and Virginia streets, Austin, Nevada. Choice liquors, wines, lager beer and cigars, served by pretty girls. who understand their business and attend to it. Votaries of Bacchus, Gambrinus, Venus or Cupid can spend an evening agreeably at the Mammoth Saloon.

            Both inquisitive and classical, we went in search of this bower of the senses ; and we found a cellar, whitewashed and sawdusted ; two fiddles and a clarionet in one corner ; a bar of liquors glaring in an-

MYTHOLOGY AND MINES AT AUSTIN. 143

other; and a fat, coarse Jew girl proved the sole embodiment and representative of all these proclaimed gods and goddesses. We blushingly apologized, and retired with our faces to Mistress Venus, Cupid, etc., as guests retire from mortal monarchs,— lest our pockets should be picked ; and we shall take our mythology out of the dictionaries hereafter.

            All up the Austin hill-sides, among the houses, and beyond them, are the big ant-hills that denote mines or the hopes of such. Down in the valley are the mills for crushing and separating the ore. Back and around the corners, and over the mountains for many miles, are similar though less frequent signs. The main Austin belt, however, has been successfully traced for but five miles, and one in width. The veins of ore lie thick in the rotten granite of the hills, like the spread fingers of some mineral giant. They are also comparatively small, sometimes as inches, rarely widening to more than three or four feet. But to compensate for this disadvantage, they are exceeding rich and generally reliable. But then again, the metal is so compounded with sulphuretts of other metals, with antimony and arsenic, that it is hard to extract, and requires a roasting, burning, or smelting process, like the gold ores of Colorado, in addition and intermediate to those of crushing and amalgamating, to successful operation. About fifty veins are now being worked successfully, and as many more have been satisfactorily prospected, and are being put in condition for operating, or are awaiting the coming of capital and its machinery. Water flows into all

144      ACROSS THE CONTINENT.         

the veins freely, and much labor is required to pump it out. The first necessity of every mine, indeed, is a steam engine and hoisting apparatus, to draw up water and ore from the bottom of the shaft or tunnel. But few of the mines have mills connected with them ; several of the older and strong companies only combine both operations, and make the two profits. The mills are located with regard to wood and water, rather than to the ore, and the latter is carted sometimes for miles to be worked. Half a dozen mills, working some seventy-five stamps in all, are already put up in the Austin and neighboring canyons ; but only about fifty stamps are now at work. The number will speedily be doubled by mills going up or undergoing repair. The ore yields from one hundred to four hundred dollars in silver and gold per ton ; but at present prices, it costs nearly or quite one hundred dollars to mine and work it, so that which yields only one hundred dollars cannot be profitably worked. Consequently miners, who have no mills, separate their ores, and hire worked out only the most valuable, saving the rest up until competition brings down the price of milling, or they erect mills of their own. The charge for working the ores at the mills is eighty dollars a ton, about half of which is profit. The same description of work can be hired done here at Virginia for thirty to forty dollars per ton. The ore of one mine near Austin has averaged one hundred and eighty dollars a ton for many months, and yields a net profit of at least eighty dollars a ton to its owners. Another company,

CASES OF SUCCESSFUL MINING.            145

owning both mill and mines, finds its ores yielding one hundred and fifty dollars a ton without assorting, and the cost of getting out and working is but fifty dollars ; so that, working six tons a day, their steady profits are six hundred dollars daily, on an expenditure, in investments, of less than two hundred thousand dollars, and the employment of about thirty men.

            New York companies are now coming in here and putting up fine new establishments. One hundred thousand dollars will pay for a fine large mill with fifteen to twenty stamps. Promising, prospected mines can be bought for from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars, depending upon the extent of their claims on the surface, and the notoriety they have attained, as well as upon the gullibility of the purchasers. It is not advisable for new enterprises to erect mills, first because there will probably soon be enough in the region to supply present wants at a fair price, and second, because so soon as a cheaper and more speedy communication can be obtained, the ores will be transferred to other places, where fuel and water are more abundant, for milling. Even now, with freight ten to twelve cents a pound from Austin to San Francisco, all the ore from one mine in Austin is sent to England to be worked. It is so valuable and yet so refractory that it pays to send it this long distance in order to give it a cheap but complete manipulation.

            New discoveries of valuable ore are constantly making both in the immediate neighborhood of

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Austin, and far south and north on the same range of mountains. In both directions veins equally rich and much larger have been found ; and many parties are busy prospecting. Scattered mills are also in operation in these more remote localities ; and many a mining village is struggling for notoriety among the Humboldt mountains to the northwest. But Austin is the chief point of mining population and development in central Nevada, as Virginia is in western ; and the two are by far the most conspicuous and representative points of the silver mining interest on the Pacific Coast.

            But Virginia presents many contrasts to Austin. It is three or four years older; it puts its gambling behind an extra door ; it is beginning to recognize the Sabbath, has many churches open, and closes part of its stores on that day ; is exceedingly well built, in large proportion with solid brick stores and warehouses ; and though the fast and fascinating times of 1862-63 are over, when it held from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand people, and Broadway and Wall street were not more crowded than its streets, it has a thrifty and enterprising air, and contains a population of ten thousand, besides the adjoining town or extension of Gold Hill, which has about three thousand more.

            The situation of Virginia is very picturesque ; above the canyon or ravine, it is spread along the mountain side, like the roof of a house, about half way to the top. Right above rises a noble peak, fifteen hundred feet higher than the town, itself about six thousand feet high ; below stretches the

THE COMSTOCK LEDGE AT VIRGINIA. 147

foot-hill, bisected by the ravine ; around on all sides, sister hills rise in varying hights, rich in roundness and other forms of beauty, but brown in barrenness, as if shorn for prize fight, and fading out into distant plain, with a sweet green spot to mark the rare presence of water and verdure.

            Different, too, in its mines is Virginia from Austin. Instead of numerous little veins, the wealth of Virginia lies in one grand ledge of ore, running along the mountain side, just within the upper line of the town, for three miles ; of width, from fifty to one hundred feet, and of depth incalculable. This is the famous Comstock Ledge ; and no silver mines worth working have yet been found off from it, in the neighborhood of Virginia ; though thousands of dollars and years of labor have been spent in the search. Nor has the working of this ledge at its various points been attended with uniform success. At least as many companies have failed upon it as have succeeded. Only fourteen out of about thirty companies formed and still at work upon the Corn-stock Ledge have paid dividends. One company has spent over a million dollars in the vain pursuit of "pay ore ;" the vein it has, the ore it finds, but the latter is not rich enough to pay for milling. But it still goes on, seduced by the hope of finding the valuable streak which its neighbor had yesterday, but may have lost to-day. Other companies have spent hundreds of thousands for vain expectations ; but still hold on, some of them at least, in the belief that a lower point in the lode will develop sure and recompensing wealth. The success of other

ACROSS THE CONTINENT.          148

companies has been more marked even than these failures, though they be fewer in number.

            The Gould & Curry is the largest and most famous enterprise here. It has twelve hundred feet in length on the surface of the ledge, has dug down six hundred to eight hundred feet in depth, and back and forth on its line twenty or thirty times ; its whole excavations foot up five millions of cubic feet, and afford some two miles of underground travel, and it has consumed more lumber to brace up the walls of its tunnels than the entire city of Virginia above ground has used for all its buildings. This company own the largest and finest mill probably in the world, costing nearly a million of dollars, and running eighty stamps. This mammoth enterprise has only drawn one hundred and eighty thousand dollars from its stockholders, and has paid them back four millions in dividends. Altogether, it has produced twelve millions of bullion, and but for extravagance in management and the necessity for many a blind and expensive experiment, its profit share of this sum would have been at least fifty, instead of thirty-three, per cent. In one year the yield of this mine was four and a half millions, and its profits one million , but with a railroad to San Francisco, the latter would have been swollen to three millions !

            This immense development was secured under the energetic superintendence of Mr. Charles L. Strong, a native of Easthampton in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, brother of the brave General Strong who fell in leading the black troops

THE GOULD AND CURRY MINE. 149

upon the forts of Charleston, and the nephew and adopted son of Mr. A. L. Strong of that village. Mr. Strong took charge of the Gould & Curry mine in its infancy, and carried it on to its perfection and triumph, when, about a year and a half ago, his constitution gave way under its great responsibility and work, and he was forced to retire. At one time, the mine sold at the rate of six thousand dollars a foot, but now it is down to about eighteen hundred ; for, though it is producing bullion at the rate of two millions a year, and pays handsome monthly dividends uninterruptedly, it has about exhausted all the valuable ore in its mine at the present depth, and is working up mainly the poorer ore that it rejected in its first progress through the vein. The company is now making an important experiment to find richer ore at a lower depth ; and by means of a tunnel, started half a mile off down the hill, and a shaft one thousand feet deep, will soon open the mine that distance down. The future fortunes of the company hang mainly upon the result of this enterprise. Not only, indeed, that of the Gould & Curry, but of most of the enterprises upon the Comstock Ledge. Many of them have reached, or seem to be reaching, a like point of exhaustion with the Gould & Curry, and are either making a similar experiment, or are awaiting the results of this. The promises of a successful finding are certainly quite encouraging, and they are strengthened by the recent success of some small experiments in the same direction on distant parts of the ledge, which seem to indicate improved ore at the greater depths.

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            The Ophir Company is another of the mammoth enterprises. That, too, has taken out twelve millions of bullion, but the stockholders have not got much as their share, in consequence of extravagant and fickle management, and experiments that proved expensive failures. The Savage Company, owning another large and successful mine, has taken out six millions bullion.

            That part of the Comstock Ledge lying on Gold Hill is divided up into smaller properties, such as one hundred and two hundred feet, and one as low as ten feet, measuring on the surface ; and these have been worked generally to better advantage than the sections in Virginia. The Empire Company's claim has sold as high as eighteen thousand dollars per foot, the highest price ever obtained for any mine here ; but it has grown less profitable and interrupted its dividends since, and has fallen to from three thousand to four thousand dollars a foot. This company never took any money from its stockholders, and in only one month through its operations of some years has it failed to pay expenses. Another successful and now popular company in Gold Hill is the Yellow Jacket, which has taken out about two millions of bullion, and paid its stockholders three hundred and thirty thousand dollars, or thirty-five thousand dollars more than all their assessments. But among its heavy expenditures, which suggests one cause of the ruin of many of these mining companies, is an item of two hundred and seventy thousand dollars for "legal services and quieting title."

COST AND PROFIT OF THE VIRGINIA ORES. 151

            The Comstock Ledge ore is, with small exceptions, much more simple in its combinations than that at Austin, and requires only to be crushed and amalgamated to extract the bullion. These two processes will produce from sixty to eighty per cent. of all the precious metal. It is also less rich than the Austin ore ; fifty dollars is a good average per ton, and is about what the Gould & Curry claims for what it works of its own ore. But the average of all the mines is even less than that ; one mine reports an average yield for the year of but $30.26 per ton ; and the product of the whole ledge for the first three months of the present year is given to me as about one hundred thousand tons, yielding nearly four millions dollars, and averaging a fraction less than forty dollars. To meet this lower yield per ton, however, is a greatly decreased cost of working the ore, which does not need the roasting or smelting process, and the whole expense of mining and reducing does not exceed twenty-five dollars a ton, and is even brought as low as eighteen and twenty dollars by the Gould & Curry company. The probability is that even this cost may be much reduced, and that ore which will yield but ten and fifteen dollars to the ton can soon be worked with profit. A choice selection of the Gould & Curry ore, such as promises one thousand dollars a ton or over,—for there are streaks of such in all the mines,—is sent to Swanzey, Wales, for working ;—this amounts to say fifty tons a year; a next lower quality, which will yield two hundred or three hundred dollars a ton, and amounts to some

152      ACROSS THE CONTINENT.

fifty or sixty tons a month, is sent over into the neighboring valley of Washoe to be treated by the Frieburg process, which includes the roasting, and is the same as is necessary for all the Reese River ores. The balance or bulk of the product is treated at their own mill, which disposes of about one hundred tons a day, or, if there is an excess, as there often is, it is worked at some neighboring custom mills.

            There are, in all, seventy-seven quartz mills working on ore from the Comstock Ledge, twenty-two of which are connected with mines, and fifty-five are custom mills. They are located in four different counties, only about half being in the same county with the mines whose ores they crush. Fifty-four of them are run by steam, twelve by water, and eleven by water and steam combined. They have in all one thousand and nineteen stamps, and their capacity is one thousand eight hundred and forty-two tons daily, which is only about two-thirds employed now. The mines have been running down in daily production, from one thousand six hundred And forty tons last October to one thousand in June, but they are now increasing again ; and if the present search for paying ore at lower depths in the leading mines is realized, it will speedily go up to a higher point than it ever before reached. The present product of the whole State is probably nearly twenty millions dollars a year, of which Austin is sending forward a million and a quarter, and Virginia and Gold Hill fifteen to sixteen millions. Though the bullion, as perfected

CALIFORNIA'S ACCOUNT WITH NEVADA. 153

here, looks like pure silver, nearly or quite one-third of it in value is really gold ; and this is extracted after it gets to market, in England, or by the United States mints at San Francisco and in the East.

            During the great excitement of 1862, when the Austin mines were first discovered, and the Comstock Ledge was doing its best, there was a wild speculation in mining properties, and many bogus or wildcat claims were bought and sold, and numerous companies organized that never did any business. Some statistics before me give seven hundred as the number of companies incorporated to operate on the Comstock Ledge alone ; yet of these but one hundred had prospected mines, and only fourteen have operated so successfully as to pay dividends.

            Most of the capital invested in the Nevada mines so far has been Californian ; as most of the men engaged upon the mines, either in managing or working them, are from that State. The leading companies are owned and controlled in San Francisco, and have been to a considerable extent the victims of vicious stock gambling, which the real uncertainties of mining and the ease with which bogus uncertainties can be plausibly manufactured have tended to facilitate. As yet, though many great fortunes have been made, both from the mines and the commerce they have developed, California has not got the money back which she has sent over the Sierras into Nevada ; some say she has invested many times as much as she has received, and that not one-twentieth, not one-fiftieth, indeed, of all the mining enterprises in the silver State have

154      ACROSS THE CONTINENT.         

succeeded ; but a probably wiser judgment is that, taking the conceded values of the newly created property in Nevada, she pays a fair profit to-day ; and that while one hundred millions have been invested in mills and mines, and only sixty millions taken out in bullion, the mills and mines are worth much more than the balance. Then California has taught herself and the country how to mine intelligently and economically by her Nevada experience ; mining here has been carried to greater perfection than ever before on this Continent ; and the wisdom thus acquired is already going back to profit California's own gold mines, and remains and extends over all the mining region as a sure and safe basis for all future operations.

            Eastern capital and eastern men are now coming hither in force, and promise soon to start up anew the rather dormant life of the State, and give rapid and profitable development to its great mining wealth. One small circle of New York capitalists have already invested about two millions dollars in mills and mines here and in Austin, and by the help of a liberal faith and the employment of first-class agents, are doing well in all their enterprises. In view of this fact and example, and the wide interest manifest throughout the East, as to this mining wealth and the chances for realizing from it, let me organize some conclusions from my various observations and statistics :-

            1. The eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas in both California and Nevada, and the mountain ranges of Nevada, are undoubtedly rich in copper,

CONCLUSIONS AS TO NEVADA MINES. 155

silver and gold, silver being the predominating and most available metal.

            2. In spite of the scarcity of wood and water, and the high cost of labor and food, consequent upon the great distance from supplies, and the lack of railroad communication, the extraction of these metals will pay generously for the wise, careful, honest and persevering employment of capital and labor.

            3. The Comstock Ledge in Virginia and its neighborhood is being fully developed, and offers no opportunities for new enterprises ; though as Pacific capital is not satisfied with less than fifty or seventy-five per cent. per annum, and eastern is happy with twenty-five, purchases of some of its mines, or of interests in them, might be favorably effected from the latter quarter without the risk of new enterprises. But those who undertake such purchases, or indeed any investments in this quarter, must not think to find these people out here wanting in sharpness at a bargain. Wall street is easily out-managed by Montgomery street, and an old miner, who is generally a traditional Yankee with large improvements, will fool a dozen spectacled professors from your colleges in a single day. The latter sort of people are, indeed, at a great discount in this region, as all the rules of science with which they come equipped, are outraged and defied by the location and combination of ores, rocks, oils and soils on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

            4. The mines of the Reese River district (Austin, &c.,) though of narrow veins, offer a very promising field for new enterprises. They are richer,

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and seem to be more certain to hold out than those of the Comstock Ledge ; though in the matter of continuance they need yet further testing. But no such enterprise should be entered upon without first sending an intelligent agent out to examine the condition of things, the location of the mines, their improvements and promises ; and, if not himself a miner, he should call to his aid here one of that class upon whom he can rely for experience and integrity.

            5. Beginners in the business should not be in haste to buy or erect mills. There is a superabundance to-day of that sort of property on the Pacific Coast. Those at Virginia and its neighborhood are not worth what they cost (six millions) by at least twenty-five or thirty per cent. ; and stamps and engines can probably be bought cheaper on this Coast than they can be bought in New York and shipped around or across the mountains. The first business is to work the mine and get out the ore, which can be crushed at the custom mills, already or soon to be plenty, in the neighborhood of all the mining centers ; and then measuring the profits thus realized, and finding them sure and reliable, the managers can decide whether it is best to extend operations with them, by buying and working more mines or by running their own mills.

            6. Everything depends upon an intelligent and faithful superintendent. I meet many such here, experienced Californians, Englishmen from the Mexican mines, Germans of both practice and theory at home, New York and Boston merchants. Fore-

HINTS TO CAPITALISTS.    157

men of mills and mines, first promoted from pick and shovel, are good material for such positions, and are gaining them. The miners as a class are of a higher grade than eastern laborers, and they offer many individuals fit for the upper places in the business. I was impressed with the wisdom of an organization which a party of Rhode Island capitalists had made in Colorado. They combined four or five different mines and mills, each distinct in its affairs, under the general management or overseership of an experienced scientific miner from California, and sent along with him from home a common treasurer and accountant. In this way they got the benefit of the best talent and experience, and the most reliable guardianship over the expenditures, without making the cost thereof too heavy.

            7. Do not make the capital of your mining company out of all proportion to the cost of the enterprise. Avoid putting up a property, that has cost one hundred thousand dollars and needs a working capital of as much more, to two millions, because you may hope sometime to pay a ten per cent. dividend on such a sum. And then, again, do not insist on having a dividend at the end of the first thirty days, unless you are ready to pay an assessment at the beginning thereof to meet it.

            8. When somebody offers you a mine, whose ore assays one thousand or ten thousand dollars a ton, you need not necessarily disbelieve him, but do not necessarily conclude that all its ore, for an indefinite distance into the earth, is of equal value. The Comstock Ledge was opened with a chunk that

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yielded twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars per ton, or at that rate ; but as I have told you, the mines on that ledge that are paying at all, do not average forty dollars from their ore. Every day new discoveries are being made, south and north, in the State, of lodes whose surface ore pays, according to report, any amount this side of one hundred thousand dollars a ton ! yet it does not follow that the mine below it will even pay for working. For these are among the doubtful things that are very uncertain in their progress. Even the poorest mines have their streaks and chunks of rich ore ; do not, therefore, judge by a single fist-full nor by an assay; but invest your money only after you have ascertained how much your mine will practically work out, cart-load by cart-load, without culling.

            9. And if you have neither time nor money enough, nor disposition, perhaps, to go largely into these mining enterprises, and follow their management intelligently, but still would like to make some small ventures to fortune in this direction, seek out some company that are in or going into the business, on these principles, and that have got a reasonably sure thing of it, and make your investment with them ; and then be content with twenty-five per cent. return for your money. If it yields more, give it away in charity,—if less, or even nothing, don't swear nor mention it to your wife.

            10. And finally,—though the subject, like the veins, is inexhaustible,—if you read so far as this, and make profitable use of these suggestions, "remember the printer," when the dividends come in.

LETTER XVI.

THE CONTINENT ACROSS : THE RIDE OVER THE SIERRAS.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 4.

            ACROSS the Continent ! The Great Ride is finished. Fifteen hundred miles of railroad, two thousand of staging, again sixty miles of railway, and then one hundred and fifty miles by steamboat down the Sacramento River, and the goal is reached, the Continent is spanned. Seven weeks of steady journeying, within hail of a single parallel line from east to west, and still the Republic ! Still the old flag,— the town is gay with its. beauty to-day,—still the same Fourth of July ;—better than all, still the same people, with hearts aglow with the same loyalty and pride in the American Union, and the same purpose and the same faith for its future.

            Greater the wonder grows at the extent of the Republic ; but larger still our wonder at the mysterious but unmistakable homogeneity of its people. San Francisco, looking westward to the Orient for greatness, cooling its summer heats with Pacific breezes, thinks the same thoughts, breathes the same patriotism, burns with the same desires that

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inspire New York and Boston, whose outlook is eastward, and which seem to borrow their civilization with their commerce from Europe. Sacramento talks as you do in Springfield ; Nevada, over the mountains, almost out of the world, anticipates New England in her judgments, and makes up her verdict, while those close to the "Hub of the Universe" are looking over the testimony.

            It is this that is the greatest thing about our country ; that makes it the wonder of nations, the marvel of history,—the unity of its people in ideas and purpose ; their quick assimilation of all emigration,—come it so far or so various ; their simultaneous and similar currents of thought, their spontaneous, concurrent formation and utterance of a united Public Opinion. This is more than extent of territory, more than wealth of resource, more than beauty of landscape, more than variety of climate and productions, more than marvelous material development, more than cosmopolitan populations, because it exists in spite of them, and conquers them all by its subtle electricity.

            It is very interesting, indeed, to stand amid this civilization of half a generation ; to see towns that were not in 1850, now wearing an old and almost decaying air ; to walk up and down the close built streets of this metropolis, and doubt whether they look most like Paris or New York, Brussels or Turin ; to count the ocean steamers in the bay, or passing out through the narrow crack in the coast hills beautifully called the Golden Gate, and wonder as you finish your fingers where they all came from

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 161

and are going to; to find an agriculture richer and more various than that of Illinois ; to feast the senses on a horticulture that marries the temperate and torrid zones, and makes of every yard and garden and orchard one immense eastern green-house ; to observe a commerce and an industry that supply every comfort, minister to every taste and fill the shops with every article of convenience and luxury that New York or Paris can boast of, and at prices as cheap as those of the former city to-day ; to find homes more luxurious than are often seen in the eastern States, and to be challenged unsuccessfully to name the city whose ladies dress more magnificently than those of San Francisco.

            None of this surprises me. I had large ideas of the Pacific Coast and its development ; and I long ago gave up being surprised at any victories of the American mind and hand over raw American matter. Still, Nevada and California, with towns and cities of two to fifteen years' growth, yet to-day all full-armed in the elements of civilization, wanton with the luxuries of the senses, rich in the social amenities, supplied with churches and schools and libraries; even affecting high art, are wonderful illustrations of the rapidity and ease with which our people organize society and State, and surround themselves with all the comforts and luxuries of metropolitan life. The history of the world elsewhere offers no parallels to these.

            At present, and in comparison with the flush times of their first creative years, the States and towns of the Pacific Coast are but slowly grow-

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ing, and business is dull. Many mining towns are indeed falling back, if not approaching desertion. Founded on temporary interests,—the sands of their streams all washed out, they are deserted for fresher fields. But new interests, as agriculture and manufactures, and new and closer modes of extracting their mineral wealth will sooner or later restore most of these ; in some instances are already beginning to do so. The general comparative dullness is but a natural and temporary reaction from a hot and stimulated development. Our great war and its interests have occupied the Nation's life and thought, and centered it in the East, absorbing its capital and offering rare opportunities, also, for new industries and speculations. California was too far away to share in this stimulus ; and by rejecting the national currency that was one of its elements, she has even denied herself the benefits of its overflow. But by drouth in her agriculture, by losses in many of her mining operations, by the cessation of the heavy tide of emigration, and by the narrow policy of her bankers and capitalists, she has been gathering valuable lessons of experience ; she has learned both how to farm and mine ; she has come to appreciate her great wants of capital and labor ; and she is in fine condition to receive and accept the new stimulus, that is already drawing out of her own trials a more economical and intelligent prosperity, and bringing in a new tide of means and men from the East. Farmers may be poor; country merchants may be bankrupt ; gambling may be at a low ebb in the mining towns ; labor comparatively low,

THE NEVADA SIDE OF THE SIERRAS. 163

and pan washings unremunerative ; San Francisco brokers and bankers may, as is charged, have sucked the life out of the interior ;—here, indeed, may rents be falling and houses unoccupied : but the real industries of the Pacific coast were never more productive and promising than now,—never so much, in any previous year, of hay and grain ; of vegetables and fruit, of gold and silver brought out of the ground, as is and will be in this year of 1865. This is the test and promise of prosperity ; and this year will date a renewal of life and growth to California and its adjacent States,—not so hot and feverish and rabid as that of '49 and '50 and '59 and '60, but strong enough to satisfy a just ambition, and sure enough to encourage permanent investments and permanent citizenship,—the real foundations and security of a State.

            But to go back on the record of our journey: Our last day in Nevada was passed among its pleasantest and richest valleys, under the shadows of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and rejoicing in the fertilizing streams from their springs and snows. Here, in the valleys of the Truckee, the Washoe, and the Carson, is the garden of the State ; here were a few agricultural settlers, fifteen and twenty years ago, colonists from Utah, to which all this region was originally attached. Now, the Mormons are displaced by a more vigorous and varied population, prosperous with farming, with lumbering among the rich pines of the Sierras, and with quartz mills, seeking proximity here to wood and water, and fed by the mines over the hills in Virginia and Gold Hill.

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            Skirting the hill-sides from Virginia at early morning, on a capital toll road, that runs from mountain to mountain on a common level, we breakfasted at Steamboat Springs, where the phenomenon of an immense natural tea-kettle is in operation. For a mile or more along a little stream, underneath a thin crust of earth, water immeasurable is seething and boiling, and occasionally breaking through in columns of steam and in bubbling spouts and streams,—too hot to bear the hand in ; —the waste drawn off to a neighboring bath-house where chronic rheumatisms and blood affections are successfully treated, or tempering the cool river below. The 'boiling springs are flavored with sulphur and soda, and are similar to the more celebrated Geysers in California. In the winter the vapor fills the valley, and from this and the rumbling, bubbling noise of the seething waters, comes the name of Steamboat Springs. Down the valleys we drove to Washoe Village and Lake,—here speeches and lunch,—and then farther on to Carson City, the capital of the young State, where the inevitable brass band, a militia company of twelve privates, "and nary two alike," more speeches and a dinner from Governor Blaisdell were the programme.

            Here we confronted the long-looked-for, the even long-seen Sierra Nevadas, the Andes of North America, the distinctive range of our Pacific States, fountain of their streams, source and bearer of their mineral wealth, chief element and parent of their beauty of landscape, and replenisher of their fertility of soil, To us, too, long on the desert plain

THE RIDE OVER THE SIERRAS.    165

and the barren mountain,—sad-eyed with weeks away from forests and sparkling waters, and the verdure of grass and vines and flowers,—they offered indeed the golden pathway to the Golden Gate of the Pacific.

            The ride over the mountains, down their western valleys, on to the ocean, was a succession of delights and surprises. The surging and soughing oft the wind among the tall pines of the Sierras came like sweetest music, laden with memories of home and friends and youth. Brass bands begone, operas avaunt ! in such presence as we found ourselves on the mountain top of a moonlight night, by the banks of Lake Tahoe, among forests to which the largest of New England are but pigmies, lying and listening by the water to the coming of the Pacific breeze and its delicate play upon the high tree-tops. All human music was but sound and fury signifying nothing, before such harmonies of high nature. The pines of these mountains are indeed monsters,—three, four, five feet through, and running up to heaven for light, straight and clear as an arrow by the hundred feet,—suggestive forerunners of the "big trees" of Calaveras and Mariposa, that we are yet to see. Rich green-yellow mosses cling to many a trunk; and firs and balsams fill up the vacant spots between the kingly pines ; while laughing waters sport lustily before our unaccustomed eyes, among the rocks in the deep ravines, along and far below the road on which our horses gallop up hill and down at a fearful pace.

            The initial trip of a little steamer upon Lake

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Tahoe (formerly Lake Bigler) was among the novelties of our mountain experience. This is one of the beautiful lakes of the world, richly ranking with those of Scotland and Swiss-Italy, and destined to arouse as wide enthusiasm. It is located up among the mountains, itself six thousand five hundred feet high, overlooked by snow-capped peaks, bordered by luscious forests ; stretches wide for eight to fourteen miles in extent, with waters clear and rate almost as air,—so rare, indeed, that not even a sheet of paper can float, but quickly sinks, and swimming is nearly impossible ; and abounds in trout :—where, indeed, are more elements of lake beauty and attraction ? Already, though far from heavy populations, it has its mountain and lake hotel, and draws many summer visitors from California and Nevada.

            From Lake Tahoe to Placerville, the first considerable town in California, is seventy-five miles of well-graded road, up to the mountain summits, and down on the western side ; and the drive over it, made in less than seven hours, even surpassed any that had gone before in rapidity and brilliancy of execution. With six horses, fresh and fast, we swept up the hill at a trot, and rolled down again at their sharpest gallop, turning abrupt corners without a pull-up, twisting among and by the loaded teams of freight toiling over into Nevada, and' running along the edge of high precipices, all as deftly as the skater flies or the steam car runs ; though for many a moment we held our fainting breath at what seemed great risks or dare-devil performances. The road is excellent, hard and macadamized, con-

THE SCENERY OF THE SIERRAS. 167

structed by private enterprise and imposing heavy tolls, and therefore far different from that, whose rough remains and steep passages are occasionally met on the mountain side, over which Mr. Greeley made his famous ride six years ago.

            But there is no stage-riding, no stage-driving, left in the States,—I doubt if there ever was any,—at all comparable to this in perfection of discipline, in celerity and comfort, and in manipulation of the reins. Mr. Colfax well said, in one of his speeches, that as it was said to require more talent to cross Broadway than to be a justice of the peace in the country, so he was sure much more was necessary to drive a stage down the Sierras as we were driven, than to be a member of Congress. For a week, at least, we worshiped our knights of the whip. Think, too, of a stage-road one hundred miles long, from Carson to Placerville, watered as city streets are watered, to lay the dust for the traveler! Yet this luxury is performed through nearly the entire route, day by day, all the summer season.

            All over the Sierras in our road, the scenery is full of various beauty ; some of its features I have mentioned ; but another chief one was the high walls of rock, rising abruptly and perpendicularly from the valley for many hundreds of feet. Many a rich boulder, anon a hill, and a frequent mountain peak of pure rock, thousands of feet high, like pyramids of Egypt, are seen along the passage. The whole scenery of the Sierras is more like that of the Alps than any other in America, and has even features of surpassing attraction.

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            At Placerville, among vineyards and orchards and flower gardens, a night ; three speeches from Speaker Colfax, and a grand midnight dinner ;—at Sacramento, sixty miles hence by a railroad, which is seeking the mountains,—a superb breakfast and two speeches and more roses,—and thence by steamboat, large and elegant as the best of Sound and North River boats, and all built in San Francisco, through wide grain fields, yellow with harvest and sun, we came to refreshing halt in the luxurious halls of the Occidental Hotel, of famous Leland creation and supervision, late on the last Saturday night.

            My memory is crowded with observations in California and Nevada, yet to be compacted for your reading ; but the journey cannot wait now for them. My steps move faster than my pen. Next Monday,—after a crowded week of sight-seeing and hospitality in San Francisco and vicinity,—we retrace our steps as far as the mountains on a more northern route, and thence into the most interesting gold-quartz, mining region, and on along the valleys on the eastern slope of the Sierras north to Oregon, and back, through British Columbia, and by the ocean, the first of August.

* * * * *

LETTER XXIV.

THE GREAT THEME : THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

SAN FRANCISCO, August 20.

            TO feel the importance of the Pacific Railroad, to measure the urgency of its early completion, to become impatient with government and contractor at every delay in the work, you must come across the Plains and the Mountains to the Pacific Coast. Then you will see half a Continent waiting for its vivifying influences. You will witness a boundless agriculture, fickle and hesitating for lack of the regular markets this would give. You will find mineral wealth, immeasurable, locked up, wastefully worked, or gambled away, until this shall open to it abundant labor, cheap capital, wood, water, science, ready oversight, steadiness of production,—everything that shall make mining a certainty and not a chance. You will find the world's commerce with India and China eagerly awaiting its opportunities. You will see an illimitable field for manufactures unimproved for want of its stimulus and its advantages. You will feel hearts breaking, see morals struggling slowly upward against odds, know that religion languishes ; feel, see and know that all the

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sweetest and finest influences and elements of society and Christian civilization hunger and suffer for the lack of this quick contact with the Parent and Fountain of all our national life.

            It is touching to remember that between Plains and Pacific, in country and on coast, on the Columbia, on the Colorado, through all our long journey, the first question asked of us by every man and woman we have met,—whether rich or poor, high or humble,—has been, " When do you think the Pacific Railroad will be done ?" or, " Why don't or won't the government, now the war is over, put the soldiers to building this road ?"—and their parting appeal and injunction, as well, "Do build this Pacific Road for us as soon as possible,—we wait, everything waits for that." Tender-eyed women, hard-fisted men,—pioneers, or missionaries, the martyrs and the successful,—all alike feel and speak this sentiment. It is the hunger, the prayer, the hope of all these people. Hunger and prayer and hope for " Home," and what home can bring them, in cheap and ready passage to and from, of reunion with parent and brother and sister and friend, of sight of old valley and mountain and wood, of social influence, of esthetic elevation, of worldly stimulus and prosperity. " Home," they all here call the East. It is a touching and pathetic, though almost unconscious, tribute. Such an one "is going home next spring;" " I hope to go home another year;" "When I was home last ;" " I have never been home since I came out ;" "I am afraid I shall never go home again ;"—these and kindred phrases are

THE NATION'S NEED.        257

the current forms of speech. Home is not here, but there. The thought of home is ever rolled, like a sweet morsel, under the tongues of their souls.

            Here is large appeal both to the sympathy and foresight of the eastern States. Here is present bond of union and means for perpetuating it. To build the railroad, and freshen recollection and renew association of the original emigrants, and to bind by travel and contact the children here with the homes and lives and loves of their parents there: this is the cheapest, surest and sweetest way to preserve our nationality, and continue the Republic a unit from ocean to ocean. A sad and severe trial will ensue to the Union if a generation grows up here that " knows not Joseph." The centrifugal forces will ever be in hot action between the far-separated eastern and western sections of the Nation. First among the centripetal powers is the Pacific Railroad, and every year of its delay increases tenfold its burden ; every year's postponement weakens in equal degree the influences here by which it shall operate.

            What is doing to supply this great want of Pacific progress and civilization and national unity? What are the possibilities and probabilities of the great continental railway ? are what you will wish to know from me. Our journey has lain along its most natural commercial route ; we started from its eastern terminus on the Missouri border ; we kept in the main line of population and travel, which it is desirable for it to follow ; we finished our ride

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upon its beginnings at this end ; and we have everywhere had the subject forced upon our thought, and made it constant study. Many of the obstacles to the great work grew feeble in travel over its line. Want of timber, of water, of coal for fuel ; the steep grades and high ascents of the two great continental ranges of mountains to be crossed, the Rocky and the Sierras ; and the snows they will accumulate upon the track in the winter months,—these are the suggested and apparent difficulties to the building and operating of the Pacific Railroad. There is plenty of good timber in the mountains ; and the soft cotton-wood of the Plains can be kyanized (hardened by a chemical process), so as to make sound sleepers and ties. There are sections of many miles, even perhaps of two hundred, over which the- timber will have to be hauled ; but the road itself can do this as it progresses,—taking along over the track built to-day the timber and rails for that to be built to-morrow. As to water, artesian wells are sure to find it in the vacant desert stretches, which are neither so long nor so barren of possible water as has been supposed.

            The fuel question is perhaps more difficult to solve as yet. The Sierras will furnish wood in abundance, and cheaply, for all the western end ; we know there is coal in the Rocky Mountains ; and we were told almost everywhere over the entire line that it had been, or could undoubtedly be found,—in Kansas, on the Plains, among the hills of the deserts. But suppose the supplies of food for steam have to be carried over a few hundred

ROUTES OVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 259

miles of the road, east and west from the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains ; that is not so hard a matter,—certainly nothing to daunt or hesitate the enterprise. We shall soon learn, too, to make steam from petroleum ; and that is easily transported for long distances ; besides which, prospectors are finding it everywhere from Missouri to Pacific. Build the road, and the intermediate country will speedily find the means for running it.

            Now as to difficulties of construction, heavy grades and high mountains, and the winter snows as obstacles to continuous use.

            The first third of the line, from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, is mere baby-work. Three hundred men will grade it as fast as the iron can be laid. It is a level, natural roadway, with very little bridging, and no want of water. It is a shame all this section is not finished and running already. The first of January, 1867, ought now to be the limit for its completion. From here to Salt Lake, over the Rocky Mountains, there are apparently no greater obstacles to be overcome than your Western Road from Springfield to Albany, the Erie and the Pennsylvania Central have triumphantly and profitably surmounted. There are various contesting routes ; northerly by the North Platte and the South Pass ; by the South Platte and Bridger's Pass, which is the route we traveled in the stage ;-- or more direct still, from Denver through the present gold mining region of Colorado by Clear Creek and over the Berthoud Pass ; or again by a kindred route to the last, up Boulder Creek and over Boul-

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der Pass, both these last two entering the "Middle Park" of the Mountains, and through that to the head waters of the Salt Lake Basin. The Berthoud and Boulder Pass routes would probably involve higher grades and more rock cutting, and in winter deeper snows ; but they would pass through a richer country, avoid the deserts of the north, and save at least one hundred miles of distance. A new road for the overland stages is this very season being cut through the Berthoud Pass route by the help of United States soldiers from Utah ; and the stage line is expected to be transferred to it next spring. But by the Bridger or South Pass routes, the railroad can surmount the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains with the greatest ease. Our stage teams trotted up the hardly perceptible grades by the Bridger route without any effort. Coming down into Salt Lake Valley, there would be rougher work ; but there are several considerable streams along whose banks the track could be brought, I am sure, with no greater labor or expense than has been incurred in a dozen cases by our eastern railroads.

From Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevadas are two routes ; southerly through the center of Nevada, and striking Austin and Virginia City, the centers of the silver mining region,—which is the present stage and telegraph route,—and northerly by the Humboldt River. The former would pass more directly through the chief present and prospective populations ; but it would encounter a dozen or fifteen ranges of hills to be crossed, and find little

OVER THE SIERRAS.           261

wood and scant water. The Humboldt route would be more cheaply built, and goes through a naturally better country as to wood, water and fertility of soil. It is generally conceded to be the true natural roadway across the Continent. The emigration has always taken it. If the railroad is built through it, Virginia City and Austin will be reached by branches dropping down to them through their neighboring valleys.

            Now we reach the California border, and the toughest part of the work of the railroad,—the high-reaching, far-spreading, rock-fastened, and snow-covered Sierra Nevadas. But the difficulties here are mitigated by plenty of water and timber, and by the near presence of an energetic population, and are already being practically overcome by the energy and perseverance of the California Pacific Railroad organization. I only wish the East would get to Salt Lake with their rail so soon as the West can and will with theirs. It is not gratifying to eastern pride, indeed, to see how much more California, with its scant capital, its scarce labor, and its depressed industry and interests, is doing to solve this great practical problem of the continental railway, than your abounding wealth and teeming populations of the East, with a great network of railroads from the Atlantic, all needing and professing to seek an outlet west to the Pacific Coast.

            Let me state the condition of the work on each end the line.

            Congress has given princely bounties to the en-

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terprise, all that could be expected, everything that was asked. Government bonds are loaned to it to the amount of sixteen thousand dollars a mile -through the plains and forty-eight thousand dollars

mile in the mountains ; besides which half of all the land each side of the road for twenty miles deep is donated outright to the companies doing the work. The Union Pacific Railroad company is recognized at the East, and the Central Pacific Railroad company here, as entitled to this bounty, and are respectively authorized to construct the road from their starting points until they meet. The companies are further authorized to issue their own bonds to an equal amount to those granted by the government, and secure them by a first mortgage; the government loan taking the second place in security.

            The business of supplying the populations of Colorado, Utah and Montana,—at least one hundred and fifty thousand persons,—invites the speedy construction of the road from the East. This business for 1864 is estimated at forty million pounds, and for 1865 at two hundred millions, and employed last year nine thousand wagons, fifty thousand cattle, sixteen thousand horses and mules and ten thousand men as drivers, laborers and guards ; and the sum paid for freight in the former year is estimated by one authority at enough to build the railroad the entire distance at a cost of forty-eight thousand dollars the mile ! And during the months of May and June, this year, counting both the emigration and the freight trains, there passed west over the

THE ROAD OVER THE PLAINS.    263

Plains full ten thousand teams and fifty thousand to sixty thousand head of stock, according to data furnished from Fort Laramie and the junction of the overland routes on the Platte River. The shipment of supplies for the United States troops on the Plains and in the Mountains this season is alone over eleven million pounds.

            All these statistics may not be perfectly accurate ; but they have a substantial basis of fact, and with such generous gifts as the government makes, and with such large railway interests behind to be benefited by farther extension of railway lines to the west, they would seem to justify and to demand a rapid construction of the road out from the Missouri River, especially when for the first five hundred to six hundred miles of that road, there is scarcely more required than to scrape a place in the soft soil for sleepers and ties and iron. And yet, though three to four years have passed since the company accepted the bargain of the government and assumed its responsibilities, not a mile of the main road is running from the Missouri west. The lower branch from Kansas City is open to Lawrence, forty miles, and graded to Topeka, sixty miles ; but from Atchison and Omaha there is no iron down, and only small sections graded or half graded.

            Is it said that by the government flooding the markets with better classes of its securities, there was no sale for the bonds allotted for this work, and so no means for its construction ? The reply is that no set of men should step forward to accept this

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largess and undertake this enterprise, holding such sure profits in its future, that have not at least a million or two of their own to make a beginning with. Has the war absorbed all labor and capital during these years ? Other railroads have been built meantime, and labor was cheaper on the Plains than in California. Beside, here are six months since the war ended, and the end witnesses no marked progress, no larger activity, than the beginning.

            I know nothing of the men who form the Pacific Railroad Company of the East; I suspect their names are more familiar to Wall street than to the West or the railroad world ; but I do know that all I could see or hear of them and their work, along the route of the continental railway, did not indicate either the earnestness or the power that should accompany their position, their responsibilities and their opportunities. After leaving the Missouri River, indeed, they offered no sign of life except in a single small party of engineers in Salt Lake City, who were on a straggling hunt for the best route through the Rocky Mountains, but who seemed to have no proper leadership, and no clear purpose, and in fact confessed that the company had no chief engineer worthy the name or position.

            Here in California, however, there is more life and progress. Energy and capital are not perhaps the best directed possible ; there has been and still is somewhat of controversy and waste of power as to the true route ; but there is earnestness and movement of the right sort, and the track is fast

THE ROAD OUT FROM CALIFORNIA.   265

ascending the Sierras on its progress eastward. It has no immediate way business to tempt it but the trade of Nevada with thirty thousand population,—much less, therefore, than that which invites the laying of the rails across the prairies to the Rocky Mountains,—but this business has constructed and amply paid for two fine toll-roads over the Sierras, and was, until a few days ago, building two railroads in their tracks. There being free water carriage from San Francisco to Sacramento, these rival roads (both carriage and rail), have their base at the latter point, and branch off right and left into the mountains, and cross the summit of the latter some thirty or forty miles apart, coming together again at a common point in Nevada on the other side, namely, Virginia City. The distance between Sacramento and Virginia City is about the same, one hundred and sixty miles, by each road ; and their rivalry has given excellent accommodations for travel and traffic, and helped to push forward the railroad tracks on both lines.

            The original and heretofore most popular wagon road was that by Placerville and Lake Tahoe, over which we came into the State, as already described. The railway track on its line is now laid about forty miles from Sacramento or nearly to Placerville, which is among the foot-hills of the mountains. During the "flush" times of Nevada, 1862 and 1863, the business done over this line was immense ; in the latter year about twelve millions dollars were paid for freights alone,—the cost of transportation being from five to ten cents a

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pound,—and the tolls on teams, received by the constructors of the wagon road, amounted to six -hundred thousand dollars. The charge for a single team is about thirty dollars; and in 1864, when the business was much less than before, no less than seven thousand teams passed over this Placerville route ; carrying all kinds of food and merchandise and machinery over into Nevada, but coming back nearly empty.

            As showing how great and wasteful was and still is the cost of doing business in Nevada under such circumstances, it has been carefully estimated that the famous Gould & Curry silver mine at Virginia City would have saved two millions dollars in expenses in a single year, had a railroad been built and running over the mountains. The production of the mine that year was four millions and a half of dollars, but its expenses absorbed three millions and a half, leaving only one million profit to stockholders, against three millions, probably, had there been ready and cheap communication with the San Francisco markets.

            The staging and freighting over these mountain toll roads are performed in the most perfect style, however. The freight wagons are bigger and stronger than anything ever seen in the East ; generally a smaller one is attached as a tender to the main wagon ; ten to twelve large and strong mules or horses, in fine condition, constitute the usual team ; and the load ranges from five to ten tons. To each mule in the best teams a large bell is attached, and they are trained to keep step to their

TRAVEL AND TRAFFIC OVER THE SIERRAS. 267

music, and so pull and move uniformly. Frequently the road will be filled with these teams for a quarter and a half mile, and the turning out for them is the only interruption to the steady trot or the grand gallop of the six-horse stage teams that, attached to the best of Concord coaches, usually loaded with passengers, go half-flying over these well-graded mountain roads, three to four each way daily. The stage horses are sleek and fat, gay as larks, changed every ten miles, and do their work as if they really loved it. The Placerville road is watered through-out nearly its whole line by sprinkling carts, in the same way as the streets of a city are wet in the dry summer season ; and luxurious as this seems and is, —for the dust is otherwise most fearful,—it is found to be the cheapest way of keeping the road itself in good repair. When dry, the heavy teams cut up the track most terribly.

            But these horses are running away with the locomotive, which is my main theme to-day. The rival of the Placerville route, though opened since, has won the title and the government bounty of the Pacific Railroad, and has this season pushed its iron track ahead of the former, and so henceforth must have every advantage for both traffic and travel. Indeed, within a few days, its friends have bought a controlling interest in the railway section of the Placerville route, and will probably put a veto upon the construction of the latter beyond that town. It is called the Dutch Flat and Donner Lake route, as well as the Central Pacific Railroad, and lies to the north of the other. Its line was selected by the late

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Mr. T. D. Judah, who has left a very enviable reputation in California both for personal integrity and professional ability as an engineer, after a thorough examination of other lines and passes over the mountains ; and having gained, mainly by his indorsement, the approval of Congress, and the support and bounty, also, of San Francisco and Sacramento, it has readily achieved these decided advantages over its rival, which has been sustained only by private capital and the profits of its toll-road. Mr. Judah, who died after having established the general route of the Pacific Road and secured its indorsement by Congress, was an assistant engineer in the construction of your Connecticut River Railroad in Massachusetts, and married a Greenfield lady. His reputation is one of the main bulwarks of the friends of his road, in the bitter controversy that has raged between them and the advocates of the Placerville route ; and, though this contest now seems nearly over under the triumph of the upper route, many of the most intelligent citizens of the State still contend that the Placerville line is the easiest and safest for the railroad track. Our own superficial examination of the two routes tended to this conclusion, also ; but it is too late, now, to argue that question. The Judah or Dutch Flat Route has got the name and the means, and is being pushed over the mountains with commendable vigor and rapidity; and it is wise for California and the country alike to sustain it, and secure its completion as early as possible. This accomplished, the other may and probably will be extended over into Nevada, and

TRACK ON THE SUMMIT OF THE SIERRAS. 269

already there is agitation to secure government bounty in its behalf.

            Our party made a very profitable and interesting excursion over the route of the Central Pacific Road from Sacramento to Donner Lake, on the eastern slope of the mountains, by special train and coaches, and along the working sections on horseback. The track is graded and laid, and trains are running to the new town of Colfax (named for the Speaker), which is fifty-six miles from Sacramento. Grading is now in active progress on the next two sections, to Dutch Flat, twelve miles, and the Crystal Lake, thirteen miles farther, with a force of about four thousand laborers, mostly Chinese. Though these sections are through a very rough and rocky country, the work will certainly be done to Dutch Flat by spring, and Crystal Lake early next fall. Then the rails are within fifteen miles of the summit of the Sierras. The toughest job of the whole line lies in these fifteen miles up, and the three or four miles down to Donner Lake, on the other side. This must hang on for two or three years, it seems to me ; there will be some tunneling, probably, and much heavy rock-cutting ; for several miles along the summit, which is seven thousand feet above the sea level, the road must apparently be cut into a wall of solid rock, and then be covered by a roof to keep off the snows ;—but the later surveys soften the anticipated severity of the work, and the company and its contractors are sanguine of mastering all the difficulties of the summit sections in two years.

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            The wagon-road goes down from the summit to Donner Lake at the rate of about four hundred feet to the mile, and the railway track will have to be wound in and out on the mountain sides for ten or more miles in order to get ahead two or three, and reach the level of the lake, whence it can be run readily down by the Truckee River into the valleys and plains of Nevada. The road ascends the mountains on this side by a very regular and nearly uniform grade, never exceeding one hundred and five feet to the mile, which is less than the highest grades of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, to which the act of Congress limits this road. In going down the other side, no grade will exceed one hundred and five feet, and after reaching Donner Lake the grade will be reduced to forty feet. But the company does not purpose to wait for the full construction of the track over the summit before pushing the work on the line beyond. While that is advanced as fast as possible, they will commence next spring at Donner Lake and proceed down the mountains and out into and through Nevada as rapidly as may be, eager to absorb as much of the whole enterprise, and meet the road coming west at a point as far east as they can.

            So far the company have used none of the United States bonds or lands granted by Congress in aid of the work. Some two and a half millions in these bonds are now due. The company can issue an equal amount of their own bonds guaranteed by a preceding or first mortgage ; but none of these, also, have yet been used. They also have available

THE FINANCIAL STRENGTH OF THE ROAD. 271

a million and a half of other bonds on which the State of California pays seven per cent. interest in gold for twenty years. Here are six minions and a half of good securities now on hand for prosecuting the work, besides what is earned as the road progresses, and the power to anticipate the issue of their own first mortgage bonds at the rate of forty-eight thousand dollars for a mile of mountains and sixteen thousand dollars for a mile of plain, for one hundred miles in advance of construction. The work so far has been done out of about a million of paid-up stock, and subscriptions of the county of Sacramento of three hundred thousand dollars, the county of Placer of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and of San Francisco of four hundred thousand dollars, and the profits of that part of the road in running order. Of these sums, nearly half a million is still left, and as the road has gone so far as to substantially secure a monopoly of all the business over the mountains, the profits on its completed section will be constantly increasing. Then, besides all this, there are between eighteen and nineteen millions of the twenty millions capital stock of the road, yet unsubscribed for. Sometime, though not at present, this will be paying property; and it may suffice even now for the profits of the contractors. The company thus feel strong financially, and though much of their securities are not just now marketable except at a discount, they are confident there need be no further delay for the lack of means, and are increasing their working force upon the road as fast as laborers can be had.

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All the Chinese that offer, or that can be encouraged to emigrate from home, are employed, and it is expected that five thousand will be at work on the road before the present season closes.

            These details are very long, but I trust are not altogether tedious or uninteresting. The theme presses itself upon us mire deeply, more solemnly, than any one other offered by our journey and its observations. It is pathetic and painful, as I said in the beginning, in the solicitude and anxiety it awakens here among the people, and which we cannot help but share. There is really nothing unreasonable in demanding that rails should be laid and trains running over half the line between the Pacific Ocean and the Missouri River in two years and a half, over two-thirds of it another year, and the entire distance, unbroken, in five years. There are short sections in the mountains that may require three, or even five years to work them out ; but the great bulk of the way can be graded and laid with rails in three years. The California Pacific railroad company, led by some of the best men in the State, with Ex-Governor Stanford for president, say, calmly and distinctly, in their annual report just published, that they will take their completed line into Salt Lake City in three years from date. I believe they can and will do it, with anything like an easy money and labor market. And it is just as practicable for the road from the East to reach the Rocky Mountains in twelve or eighteen months, and to span these mountains in two years more.

            Next spring should see as many men at work on

FINAL APPEAL FOR THE RAILROAD. 273

the eastern line as there will be on the western ; the fall, fifteen to twenty thousand along its entire route ; 1867 should count fifty thousand shovels and picks and drills, leveling the paths for this national highway ; and in 1868 the hungry hearts of these people of the Pacific States should dance to the music of a hundred thousand strong,—music sweeter far and holier even than that of all the martial bands of the new Republic.

            Men of the East ! Men at Washington! You have given the toil and even the blood of a million of your brothers and fellows for four years, and spent three thousand million dollars; to rescue one section of the Republic from barbarism and from anarchy ; and your triumph makes the cost cheap. Lend now a few thousand of men, and a hundred millions of money, to create a new Republic ; to marry to the Nation of the Atlantic an equal if not greater Nation of the Pacific. Anticipate a new sectionalism, a new strife, by a triumph of the arts of Peace, that shall be even prouder and more reaching than the victories of your Arms. Here is payment of your great debt ; here is wealth unbounded ; here the commerce of the world ; here the completion of a Republic that is continental; but you must come and take them with the Locomotive!

* * * * *

LETTER XXVII.

MINING IN CALIFORNIA: ITS VARIETIES, RESULTS AND PROSPECTS.

MARIPOSA, California, August 28.

            WE have been making our final studies of the mining business of the Pacific States here among the mines and mills of the famous Mariposa estate of Colonel Fremont. Thus the occasion is a proper one to sum up my various notes and observations in California on that subject, and so far as possible represent the state of the business in the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains. The gross production of gold and silver by all these States was probably never greater than now. There are no very exact figures to be had ; those of Wells, Fargo & Company's Express and the San Francisco mint furnish the best data, and are before me in detail. They indicate a total yield for 1864 of about sixty millions of dollars, and for this year at least an equal, probably a greater sum, perhaps sixty-five or seventy millions. California herself produces now but about one-third of this amount ; she has fallen off from forty and fifty millions a year to twenty and twenty-five ; while Nevada now offers from fifteen to twenty millions a year, mainly of

[302]

QUARTZ MINING AND SOIL DIGGINGS. 303

silver ; Idaho and eastern Oregon sent forward nine millions last year, and will probably increase this to twelve or fifteen millions this year ; and the British Provinces and Arizona furnish perhaps five millions. The gold of Montana mainly finds its way east through Colorado ; but this is the first season of any large production there. But the production of all the States and Territories this side of the Rocky Mountains comes to San Francisco ; one-third of it, or about twenty millions, is coined at the United States mint there ; and the rest is exported in bars or dust, mainly in bars, to New York, China and England, but chiefly now to England.

            The western or California slopes of the Sierra Nevada yield no silver ore,—here the mining is of gold alone, and it is divided into two general classes ; that which seeks the metal from the solid rock, or quartz, and that which finds it in sand, gravel, or soil. The former process is the universal and familiar one of all rock mining, following the rich veins into the bowels of the earth with pick and powder, crushing the rock, and seducing the infinitesimal atoms of metal from the dusty, powdered mass.

            The accepted theory is that this is the original form or deposit of the precious_ metals,—that the gold found in gravel, sand or soil,—lying as it does almost universally in the beds of rivers, dead or alive, or under the eaves of 'the mountains,—has been washed and ground out of the hard hills by the action of the elements through long years. Washing with water is the universal means of getting at these deposits of the gold. But the scale

ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 304

on which this work is done, and the instrumentalities of application, vary, from the simple hand-pan and pick and shovel of the individual and original miner, operating along the banks of a little stream, to grand combination enterprises for changing the entire course of a river, running shafts down hundreds of feet to get into the beds of long ago streams, and bringing water through ditches and flumes and great pipes for ten or twenty miles, wherewith to wash down a hill-side of golden gravel, and get at its precious particles. The simple individual pan-washers have mostly "moved on" for the richer sands of Idaho and Montana; what of this sort of gold seeking remains in California is in the hands of patient and plodding " John Chinaman," who works over the neglected sands of his predecessors, and is content to reap as harvest a dollar's worth a day.

            The other means are employed, on greater or less scales of magnitude, by combinations of men and capital. All the forms of gold washing run into each other, indeed ; and companies of two or three, sometimes of Chinamen, with capitals of hundreds of dollars, buy a sluice claim or seize a deserted bed, and with shovel and pick and small stream of water, run the sands over and over through the sluice ways, and at end of day, or week, or month, gather up the deposits of gold on the bottoms and at the ends of their sluices. From this, operations ascend to a magnitude involving hundreds of thousands, and employing hundreds of men as partners or day laborers for the managers. Some-

DEEP DIGGINGS AND HYDRAULIC MINING. 305

times, too, the enterprise is divided, and companies are organized that furnish the water alone, and sell it out to the miners or washers according to their wants. The raising of auriferous sands and gravel from the deeply covered beds of old streams, by running down shafts and out tunnels into and through such beds, and then washing them over, is called "Deep Diggings," or "Bed-rock Diggings," and in their pursuit the bottoms of ancient rivers will be followed through the country for mile after mile, and many feet below the present surface of the earth. The miners in this fashion go down till they reach the bed-rock, along which the water originally ran, and here they find the richest deposits.

            The other sort of heavy gold washing, employing powerful streams of water to tear down and wash out the soil of hill-sides that cover or hold golden deposits, is known as "Hydraulic Mining." This is the most unique and extensive process, involving the largest capital and risk. The water is brought from mountain lakes or rivers through ditches and flumes, sometimes supported by trestle-work fifty to one hundred feet high, to near the theater of operations. Then it is let from flumes into large and stout iron pipes which grow gradually smaller and smaller; out of these it is passed into hose, like that of a fire engine, and through this it is fired with a terrible force into the bank or bed of earth, which is speedily torn down and washed with resistless, separating power, into narrow beds or sluices in the lower valleys, and as it goes along these, hindered and seduced at various points, the more solid

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gold particles deposit themselves. Usually, in large operations of this kind, the main stream of water is divided in the final discharging hose into two or more streams, which spout out into the hill-side as if from several fire engines, only with immensely more force. One of the streams would instantly kill man or animal that should get before it, and frequent fatal or half-fatal accidents occur from this cause. Near Dutch Flat, where extensive hydraulic mining is in progress, a water company taps lakes twelve to twenty miles off in the mountains, and turns whole rivers into its ditches ; and as further illustration of its majestic operations, we learned that it spent eighty thousand dollars in one year in building a new ditch, and yet made and divided one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in additional profits that same year. Up near Yreka, in northern California, a ditch thirty miles long, and costing two hundred thousand dollars, was constructed for this business ; but in this instance, the enterprise did not prove profitable. Near Oroville, also, are supposed rich gold banks and beds that only lack water for development ; but to get this will require ditches costing two hundred thousand dollars. The citizens of the neighborhood are confident it would be a richly-paying investment, however, and say the chief reason why it is not entered upon is the lack of certain laws regulating mining claims, and the conflicts and doubt that are engendered by the neglect of the government to establish the terms of ownership in mining lands.

            As it is now, squatter sovereignty is the substan-

PROFITABLE GOLD WASHINGS. 307

tial law of mining properties ; prospectors and miners have established a few general rules for determining the rights of each other ; and they can occupy and use the properties that they discover or purchase, to a certain limited extent. No one man is allowed to take up more than a certain amount in feet or acres. The government so far has done nothing with these mineral lands, whose fee is still in itself, and gets no revenue from them. Whenever cases of conflict come into court, the regulations of the miners of the district, where the properties are located, have been generally sustained. But the apprehension that the government will yet assume its rights, and establish different rules for the possession and use of these lands, and the uncertainty and controversies growing out of the present loose ways of making and holding claims, are undoubtedly a stumbling-block to large enterprises, and an obstacle to the best sort of mining progress and prosperity all through the mineral country of this Coast.

            The returns obtained in some cases of extensive deep diggings and hydraulic mining are very great. A thousand dollars a day is often washed out by a company holding rich soil and employing a large force ; and a run of several weeks averaging fifty dollars and one hundred dollars a day to the hand is frequently recorded. A single " cleaning up," after a few weeks' washing in a rich place, has produced fifty thousand dollars in gold dust and nuggets ; and in other cases, even one hundred thousand dollars is reported. These are the extreme cases

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of good fortune, however; other enterprises are run with a lass, or with varying result ; but the gold washings, as a general thing, are paying good wages and a fair -return to the capital invested.

            Of course all these operations create a wide waste wherever they are going on, and have been in progress. Tornado, flood, earthquake and volcano combined could hardly make greater havoc, spread wider ruin and wreck, than are to be seen everywhere in the path of the larger gold-washing operations. None of the interior streams of California, though naturally pure as crystal, escape the change to a thick yellow mud, from this cause, early in their progress out of the hills. The Sacramento is worse than the Missouri. Many of the streams are turned out of their original channels, either directly for mining purposes, or in consequence of the great masses of soil and gravel that come down from the gold-washings above. Thousands of acres of fine land along their banks are ruined forever by the deposits of this character. There are no rights which mining respects in California. It is the one supreme interest. A farmer may have his whole estate turned to a barren waste by a flood of sand and gravel from some hydraulic mining up stream ; more, if a fine orchard or garden stands in the way of the working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard and garden must go. Then the torn-down, dug-out, washed to pieces and then washed over side-hills, that have been or are being hydraulic-mined, are the very devil's chaos, indeed. The country is full of them among the mining districts of the Sierra

YUBA DAM-GRASS VALLEY QUARTZ MINES. 309

Nevada foot-hills, and they are truly a terrible blot upon the face of nature. The valley of the Yuba, a branch of the Sacramento, was one of the worst illustrations our journeying has presented ; and when we came to the sign over the "grocery" of a now deserted mining camp, indicating that this was "Yuba Dam," we thought of the famous anecdote connected with this name, from its repetition, without the benefit of spelling, to an inquiring colporteur, and were fain to confess that the profane compound fairly represented the spirit of the lawless miner.

            The gold quartz mines are mostly in the same neighborhoods with present or past gold-washings ; in the hills back and above the rich stream beds and gravel banks. Nevada County in the north, and Mariposa in the south, have been the most famous counties for this interest. The most successful and noteworthy operations of it now are in and around the town of Grass Valley, in Nevada County, which has always been a Profitable mining region. It seemed almost the only mining town of importance in California, that we visited, which did not have vacant stores and houses, and show signs of decrepitude. There are now about twenty quartz mills in successful operation in Grass Valley, and the ore they work yields from ten to fifty dollars a ton ; occasionally as high as one hundred and two hundred dollars. The cost of mining and working is from six to ten dollars a ton, depending on the facilities of mine and mill. Among the successful miners and capitalists here, is Mr. S. D.

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Bosworth, from West Springfield and Springfield, who now occupies the cottage which the notorious Lola Montez built and lived in for several years. She came here to perform for the miners in 1854, and staid to ruin one husband, and change him for another. She led a rollicking life here, and the town is full of scandals concerning her. Intelligent gentlemen who met her confess to her intellectual power and impressive conversation, and to her fascinating manners. Grass Valley also boasts an old horse that goes around alone with a milk-wagon, stopping before the doors of his customers, and nowhere else, and delivering his daily allowances to each with unvarying fidelity. But the really wonderful thing about this story is that Grass Valley should have a population that can be trusted to help themselves to milk, and not take, any of them, more than their allotted share. The mines here are receiving enlarged attention just now, and extensive new investments are being made, both in Grass Valley and the neighboring town of Nevada.

            But here in Mariposa County, the interest has a different look, and affairs are in a desperate condition. There are in all ten quartz mills here, all or nearly all on the Fremont estate, but only two or three are now running, and these with moderate results. The villages are decreasing in population ; the best people are going away ; viciousness of all sorts seems to be increasing ; and highway robberies are of almost nightly occurrence. The great Mariposa mining company, formed in Wall street two years ago with a capital of ten millions, a debt

THE MARIPOSA ESTATE-ITS RUINS.       311

of two millions, and not a cent of ready cash,— succeeding to General Fremont's property and his style of doing business,—has come to grief. Its most worthy superintendent and manager, Mr. Frederic Law Olmsted, who was beguiled out here under a gross misapprehension of the situation of affairs, and the duties he was to perform, is going home disgusted, to resume more congenial occupation in the East ; the sheriff has been brooding over the estate for six months ; and its local creditors are running one or two of its mills and mines, on a close and economical scale,—using up accumulated materials, but laying in no new supplies,—in order to obtain their claims. The ore now being obtained and thus worked returns from seven dollars to ten dollars a ton, which gives a small margin of profit. It is all a sad, vast ruin,—a magnificent gentleman, holding his head high, but wearing his last year's clothes, and dining around with his friends,—a sort of grand land and mine Micawber. There is doubtless life and value, possibly great wealth, in it still, but not of the sort or degree that has been set up for it. Divided up, and conducted by private parties or small companies on a moderate capital, as the Grass Valley mines are, or managed, as a whole even, with an eye to practical results alone, and no such side issues as the presidency, or a grand Wall street stock-jobbing operation, or the control of California politics, depending on it, and drawing its life-blood, the estate may yet have a useful future before it. But the end to it as a grand Principality, as an exhaustless Fountain for political

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and financial jobbing, seems surely to have come. Indeed, its most striking capacity always has been in carrying an immense, a magnificent indebtedness. A few men are rich from it here and in the East ; but their wealth is more from the sale of stock and bonds in New York, than the profits of its mines in Mariposa. The illustration of the whole lies best, perhaps, in the sincere boast attributed to its most gallant but never thrifty original owner. "Why," said General Fremont, "when I came to California, I was worth nothing, and now I owe two millions of dollars !"

            There are no very reliable statistics as to the extent of the quartz-mining interest of California, or of its comparative results by the side of the gold-washings. The estimate of a prominent authority before me places the number of quartz-mills in the State at six hundred, their cost at twelve million dollars, and their product, on an average of ten dollars to the ton of ore, at eighteen millions of dollars a year. But these figures are clearly wide of the fact ; there can hardly be over one hundred quartz-mills, properly so called, in all California ; and they do not divide the State's product with the gold-washers equally. Mining in California, of all kinds, is now much more systematically and intelligently conducted than ever before. It is losing its wasteful, gambling characteristics. In 1862, it apparently had its greatest production ; the returns for 1864 were only about half as much ; and probably this year will show no gain upon the last. The interest is, on the whole, at the ebb tide. But the risks of

THE IDAHO MINES.            313

the business will henceforth be less than heretofore ; the cost of production is cheaper here than in the newer and more remote fields ; new and valuable fields are being discovered and opened among the Sierras ; and I am inclined to the belief that investments in mining in California can be made with better results, at least with more certainty of profit, if less possible gains, than in any of the fresher and more fashionable regions.

            The Idaho mines are perhaps exciting the most interest at present among the people of the Coast ; and they are also beginning to divide enticements with those of Nevada and Colorado, for eastern speculators and capitalists. Some reliable facts about them, which I have from original sources, will not be amiss therefore, and serve to complete my general review of the mining developments of this whole region. The Boise Basin district is still rich in gold-washings, and is perhaps the richest region in that respect yet worked anywhere in the West. It has also rich quartz veins, and there are already eight mills in operation there, with eighty-four stamps. South Boise is less rich in placer diggings; but has an even larger development of the quartz interest. The bullion (gold) here holds a large proportion of silver, and is not worth over fourteen dollars an ounce. The Owyhee district borders on Oregon, and its mining wealth runs over into that State. The ore here is like that in Nevada, having more silver than gold in it. There are six mills now in this district, one of them with thirty stamps. The veins in Boise Basin and South

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Boise are small, like those of Reese River, in Nevada, opening sometimes as low as four inches, but enlarging generally to four or five feet. The " Mammoth Vein " is from three to twelve feet wide ; the ore is generally free and simple, and is worked without roasting. The yield is from forty dollars a ton up ; one vein runs from forty to eighty dollars ; and others have yielded from two hundred to three hundred dollars a ton. It is not probable that the full value of the ore, is obtained by the present means of working, and the tailings are saved.

            The country is very barren, having the same general characteristics as eastern Oregon and Nevada. There are some good valleys, and timber is plenty enough for the present save in the Owyhee district. The price of labor is six dollars a day, and goods and provisions are in proportion. The population is made up mostly of the floating mining elements of California, Oregon and Nevada ; the men who are always moving on for the newest mines ; prosperous to-day, poor to-morrow The winters in Idaho are severe, and the work in the placer diggings is then suspended. The miners float back to the older towns, to The Dalles and Portland in Oregon, and San Francisco, in the fall, and spend there their summer savings, and start out again in the spring for the old diggings, if no newer and more fabulous ones have been since discovered.

            Taking these figures as reliable as statements about mines generally are from those engaged in the business, I do not see that Idaho really offers

CALIFORNIA'S ADVANTAGE FOR MINING. 315

any better inducements for emigration and capital than Nevada and Colorado. It is probable my statements relate to the best veins, that the average will fall below these rates of production, and that the permanent prosperity of the mining interests and the sure progress of the State will await the profitable working of ores yielding from ten dollars to twenty-five dollars a ton, as is already admitted to be true for California, and for Virginia City, Nevada, and will probably soon be proven in Reese River and in Colorado. And this can hardly be done until quicker and cheaper communication is provided. Only the rare veins, only the choice ore in any of these States can be worked to much profit, so long as all machinery, all food, all goods, used in the business and for the people, have to pay a freight tariff of ten to thirty cents a pound, and labor is from four to eight dollars a day. California has the advantage over her rivals in these respects now ; and I repeat that it seems to me mining is likely to be as profitable in this State for the next five years, taking all things into consideration, as in any of the newer regions. The others must wait for the rail road to give real and permanent and steady development and prosperity to greater apparent capacities.

            Do not complain, my reader, that this letter is getting dull with dry fact and statistics ; consider the mass of figures and " disgusting details " that I have before me, and have spared you, and be grateful: and come now with me, and let us have the sensation of a visit into the abyssmal depths of the mines themselves. Our party have done con-

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siderable of this descending into mines in our progress across the country ; for it became occasion of reproach and doubt of our intelligent future judgment, if we failed to go down into every miner's particular pet hole. Over in Austin, we had amusing experience in this regard. We were to stay but three days there. But that is nothing, said the disappointed people ; you can't begin to see our mines in that time ; you better have staid away. Well, come on, was the reply ; show us what you can in three days, and then let us see what is left that is new and strange. So we mounted ; and there was an extensive cavalcade of local officials, practical miners, speculators, and genteel bummers generally. We went over and around hills, down into mines, through mills, everywhere that our guides led us ; finding naturally great similarity of sights and testimony everywhere. By afternoon, our hosts had dwindled one-half. The next morning, instead of a dozen, we had but three or four guides ; at noon, they were reduced to one, and at night we had exhausted not only his strength and patience, but all he had to show us. We had seen Austin and its mines, and had a day to spare !

            The newer mines, whose shafts are but fifty or one hundred feet, are descended by a simple rope and bucket, worked by a common hand windlass ; older and deeper ones, by the same contrivance, with steam power: if, as is often the case, the vein runs at an angle, or is reached below in that way, a little car runs down a steep track, held and drawn by a heavy rope and steam engine ; while other shafts

INTO THE GOULD AND CURRY MINE. 317

are provided with ladders, winding around, or set perpendicularly up and down. The latest, and safest and readiest contrivance for descending a perpendicular shaft is a cage or box, let down by a rope with steam power, but provided with sharp, opening arms that, in case the rope breaks, will catch into the walls with such power as to hold the cage and its load. Its certainty was proven to us by cutting the rope with an ax, when the cage sent out its fingers and clung midway in its passage. We reached the insides of other mines by long tunnels, running into the veins from the surface, far down the hill-sides on which they were located. The deepest worked mine on the Pacific Coast is in Amador County, this State, and is eight hundred feet down ; but some of those over in Nevada are fast approaching this depth ; and the latter have the most extensive chambers below the surface of any in the country. The Gould & Curry mine, for instance, has several miles length of tunnels and shafts, and it is a full half day's journey to travel through it entirely.

            We entered this mine through a long tunnel, that strikes the vein several hundred feet below the surface. There were half a dozen of us in the procession, each with a lighted candle, which would go out under the opt-going draft, and so we soon contented ourselves with grouping along in the dim, cavernous light. It seemed a very long journey, and the nerves had to brace themselves. The most stolid person, stranger to such experience, will hardly fail to find his heart beating a little quicker, as

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he goes into these far-away, narrow recesses in the bowels -of the earth. I never failed to remember the principle that " nature abhors a vacuum," and to wonder if she wouldn't take the present occasion to close up this little one that I was in. At last we reached the scenes of the ore and the work after it ; and among these we clambered and wandered about, down shafts to this or that level, and then out on side tunnels through the vein in both directions ; up again by narrow, pokerish ladders to a higher set of chambers, in and out, up and down, till we were lost in amazing confusion. Here was, indeed, a city of streets and population far under the surface of the earth. Many of the chambers or streets were deserted ; in others we found little coteries of miners, picking away at the hard rock, and loading up cars of the ore, that were sent out by the tunnels and up by the shafts to the surface above. Here, too, was a building in a wide hall under ground, and steam engine to help on the work. Some of the chambers had closed in after being worked out of ore ; others have been filled up to prevent caving in and causing great disaster overhead ; but many of the open passages were stayed or braced open still with huge frame work of timber ; more lumber, indeed, as I have told you, I believe, is used for this purpose in this single mine, than has been put into all the buildings of Virginia City itself, with its ten thousand to fifteen thousand inhabitants. And in many of the passages, such is the outward pressure into the vacuum, that these timbers, as big as a man's body, are bent and splintered almost in two.

COMING OUT OF THE MINE.       319

Great pine sticks, eighteen inches square, were thus bent like a bow, or yawned with gaping splinters ; and the spaces left in some places for us to go through were in this way reduced so small that we almost had to crawl to get along.

            Do you wonder that we began to grow weary, and thought we had seen enough? Besides; the mine was oppressively hot and close ; the mercury was up to one hundred degrees and more, and the sweat poured from us like water. One of our party grew faint and feeble, and we voted to take the nearest way out. This happened to be the most perilous and trying ; but we did not realize that, and our miner guide, unsensitive from experience, did not think of it. So he started us into a long shaft, running straight up and down for several hundreds of feet, dark and damp as night, with no breaks or landing places, and set us going one after another, up a perpendicular ladder fastened to its side. We only took in a sense of the thing after we had got started ; each must carry his lighted candle, hold on, and creep ahead ; a single misstep by any one, the fainting of our invalid, or. of any of us, all weary and unstrung, would not only have plunged that one headlong down the long fatal flight, to become a very Mantilinean cold body at the bottom, but would have swept everybody below him on the ladder, like a row of bricks, to the same destination and destruction. There was, you may well believe, a stern summoning of all remaining strength and nerves, a close, firm grip on the rounds of the ladder, a silent, grave procession, much and rapid

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thought, and a very long breath, and a very fervent if voiceless prayer, when we got to the daylight and the top. Our part of the shaft and the ladder was about one hundred and fifty feet ; it seemed very long ; and we were content to call our day's work done when it was over. Brains won the victory over body ; but both were weary enough at the end.

            But if I prolong this story any further, you will almost wish I had never got out of that shaft!