[The New Silver Mines, Sacramento Union, November 9 and 10, 1859]

 

THE NEW SILVER MINES.

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[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

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Virginia City, Utah, Oct. 31st.

            Late this afternoon I reached this center and source of the marvelous tales we have recently been hearing on the western side of the mountains. The great degree of interest with which these reports have been received, and the doubt and suspense of our good people in relation to the discoveries have prompted me to undertake a letter by the mail which leaves to-morrow morning, though I have scarcely as yet brushed the dust of the long journey from my garments. I have passed through the "diggings " and laid my hand upon the vein of silver whose almost incredible richness has been attested by the samples you have seen. I have conversed with the most intelligent gentlemen in this vicinity regarding the prospect of its continuance, both in the lode where it has been struck and beyond its superficial extent into the hills and ravines adjoining. My own faith in what I have already seen, and respect for the statements I have heard, leave me no ground of uneasiness on the score of writing too familiarly on short acquaintance with my subject. At the same time I shall try and keep separate my facts and my presumptions, and avoid mixing theoretical conclusions with practical results.

            The locality from which I am writing has been already described with a good degree of accuracy and clearness by a correspondent of the UNION; though for the sake of a perfectly intelligent understanding, knowing how difficult it is to effectively map a place by words and sentences for the mind's eye, I shall attempt another description before I leave the spot. The name under which the locality is properly known will also be the subject of a little future discussion, your correspondent above mentioned having in this case not quite conveyed a true understanding.      

            Virginia City is the absurd title which the miners have given to the little settlement of thirty or forty houses and tents a hundred yards or so below the excavations in the silver lead, and I have been content to prefix it to the date of this letter. The mines, however, have no part in this name. And now of these mines let me give a short history and a present account.

            As late as July last the locality where I am writing was occupied as a placer claim, from which a party of five men, one a hired laborer, working a horse arastra, could take out one hundred dollars worth of gold every day they chose to labor. But water was scarce, and what was more to the disadvantage of both mines and laborers, the latter were indolent— a complaint common in this vicinity up to the present time—so the diggings were not explored or tested to their utmost capacity. The owners of the claim in which the silver was afterwards found were in the practice of turning out at eight or nine in the morning, hunting up the mules in the neighboring ravines, and working like men who bad plenty and to spare, of both time and money, on their hands, quitting at three or four in the afternoon and  " laying off " in the shade of a couple of trees which were pointed out to me on the hill above the diggings. At Gold Hill, where gold had been discovered earlier in the Spring, and where the yield was richer and the diggings more extensive, the miners united the usual vice and recklessness of mining life with indolence, and used the rocker mainly to pay their gambling debts. This place is situated just over the slope which forms the main divide between Gold cañon and Six Mile cañon, a walk of about a mile and a half to the south. The diggings there are a continuation of the same rotten quartz lead below which the silver vein has been found on this slope. The settlement is a few hundred yards down from the hill in the ravine, which here forms the head of Gold cañon, and is smaller and less enterprising than Virginia City. In July last, James Walsh, of Grass Valley, came over on a second tour of observation. He had been here in the latter part of June, in company with A. Harrison, of Alpha, and ----- Stone, of Truckee Meadows. At that time he was shown by the proprietors of the claim which he subsequently purchased, some small blue pebbles which they frequently found among their quartz tailings, and which he caused to be subjected to examination by skillful essayists in our State, who found them to be very rich in silver. He now came with the intention of buying, but it was weeks before he could make up his mind to purchase, owing to the fact that no certain indications of a silver vein existed on the premises. The diggings in which the ore was found was owned by H. Comstock, E. Penrod, P. O'Reilly, P. McLaughlin and J. Corey, whose united claims extended a distance of eighteen hundred feet north and south along the lead, with fifty feet on each side. It was being worked for gold in the manner I have described. Of these parties, those who offered their claims and finally sold were as follows : Comstock, a one sixth, for $6,000; Penrod, $5,500; McLaughlin, $5,500. Corey, $7,000 ; O'Reilly refusing to sell at that time, though he has since offered his claim for $75,000, including his share of the ore already taken out and valued (his shore) at $25,000. Comstock and Penrod were the original purchasers (for a " bob-tail horse ") from James Finney, the " Old Virginny " discoverer of the lead. The latter had "occupied"— worked— the spot as a placer claim for two years, having taken it up in connection with a quartz claim which he still holds along a ridge of quartz croppings a few hundred feet above, on the hill. He, however, worked for whisky money on a claim southeast of this. Walsh purchased from Penrod and Comstock, on whose claims the silver development was largest He was allowed to take three thousand pounds of the "blue stuff " (sulphurets) to San Francisco, to be tested before completing the purchase. This sample was assayed at $3,157 per ton in silver and gold. On his return, about the 9th of September, he took immediate steps to work the vein of silver which had been struck, at the same time that the parties who had subsequently purchased the other claims made excavations for the same object. The latter parties were Hearst and Morrison, of Nevada, owners of the McLaughlin interest, and Baird & Co., of the same place, who bought from Corey. The first ton of ore was shipped by Walsh about the 14th of August. Up to this time there existed a doubt among the miners in this vicinity as to its true character, and by some it is still regarded as a "mighty rich quartz lead." Since the 1st of September the sales of interests, for which cash has been paid, have been as follows; One-sixth of fifteen hundred feet, for $22,000; fifty feet of the same fifteen hundred feet, for $23,750 (the latter interest purchased by Dr. Boyle, of San Francisco, and paid for in part); one-twenty-fourth of fifteen hundred feet for $3,500 ; another twenty-fourth, $8,000; and a twelfth for $7,600. The above were actual sales, for cash, and are transactions confined to the original eighteen hundred feet For the remaining interests I am told $40,000 has been offered for a sixth (O'Reilly's), and for fifty feet owned by two Mexicans from Chihuahua $50,000 has been refused. The latter interest was obtained in a manner as singularly illustrative of the high and low fortunes of mining as the purchase for an old horse of this whole original lead. A little stream of water, scarcely an inch and a half in quantity, comes out from a ravine which intersects the original eighteen hundred feet midway, and was conducted by Comstock and Penrod to their diggings in little troughs, and was, of course, a private right. For the use of this privilege the original co-workers allowed the above parties one hundred feet in the original lead, of which fifty feet was sold for $7,000 and the other half for $8,000. This half is now in the hands of the Mexicans spoken of, who have refused the offer of $50,000, as stated above.

            The present state of the original claims of Comstock, Penrod, and others, is as follows: Two associations have been formed— one called the Ophir Mining Company created (hardly organized as yet) about the middle of August ; the other-~the Central Silver Mining Company —formed in September. The first consists of eleven persons, and there are six in the other — the first company's claims embracing 1,400 feet on the vein, and the Central occupying 250 feet south and adjoining. The remaining 150 feet are owned by one of the partners of the Ophir Company jointly with a third Silver Mining Association, called the California Mining Company, still south of the Central, of whose (the California's) history it will be proper to say a word or two presently. The Ophir mines are opened in two places by shafts forty feet apart, into which surface cuts have been made from the lower side of the hill, for the purpose of wheeling off the quartz crushings and the silver ore. The depth of the soil where the shafts are sunk varies from two to five feet, below which they strike the lode of quartz, a broken and seamy ledge twenty feet in width, and .tending down as deep as excavations have been made. Almost in the center of this twenty feet ledge, running downward with a dip of forty-eight degrees westward, is the vein of blue sulphurets, of which the first well defined traces are found about five feet below the surface of the soil; and its regular " cropping " about eight feet The course of the vein, which is from four to fifteen inches wide, is a little west of magnetic north. The Central Silver Mining Company have opened but one shaft, about the same depth as the Ophir Company, viz: thirty feet, and are working an excavation along the ledge about twenty feet in length for its whole width, which is the same as has been stated. Thirty feet is the extreme depth to which excavations have been made. The Ophir Company's diggings are about the same in extent as those of the Central Company. The two have taken out, up to this time, fifty-five tons of sulphurets, and about one thousand tons of quartz rock, which is ready for the stampers, of which the Central Company will have eight at work in a few weeks. The Ophir Company have ten laborers employed at from three to four dollars per day, and are taking out about one ton per day of the sulphurets, and about eight tons of the quartz. The other company work the same number of hands, and take out about a similar amount. About fifty tons of the sulphurets have been shipped to San Francisco. Of the balance of this ore you are already informed. But since my arrival I have been shown selected pieces of sulphurets, which are pronounced, by careful judges, worth ten thousand dollars to the ton. The general richness of the vein may be said to vary from $1,500 to $10,000 per ton, and its average value to be $3,000. The proportions of the precious metals in this vein are as five of silver to one of gold. An analysis has shown the separate value of its mineral proportions to vary as follows: Silver, from one to ten thousand dollars per ton ; gold, from five to eight hundred dollars per ton; copper, about thirty-two dollars, and lead, from three to five dollars. The per centage of antimony is not known.

            I have not time now to mention other particulars of the richness of this vein. Of the shipments of the ore, as I have said, they are made by both companies to San Francisco to D. Davidson. The freight from here to Sacramento is five cents per pound. The teams go the Placerville route altogether, although exertions are now making to obtain from the company shipments by the Downieville route, through Truckee and Sierra Meadows to Marysville. Teams are now over here waiting for loads that way, but freights have been taken up ten days ahead by the other route.

            I almost forgot to mention the arastras of the two companies. There are ten arastras run by the two companies, in which the dirt and small quartz, adjacent to the blue vein, is crushed, yielding from $150 to $200 per ton. The worth of the quartz ready for the stamper is estimated at from one hundred to one thousand dollars per ton. This value remains to be proven, however. I have spoken of the claim owned by two Mexicans, being apart of the eighteen hundred feet originally taken. It is situated in the center of the Ophir mines, being one hundred feet taken out of the ledge in the manner I have already described. The owners are at work on it and have just struck the blue vein, which promises, as in other shafts, almost fabulously rich.

            This finishes the story of the "Comstock lead," as it is called. Now, of the adjoining claims and the operations carried on in them, I can only add to this already long letter a few hasty words at present. The California Company, formed about the same time with the Ophir and Central associations, own two hundred and fifty feet south and adjoining the Central Mining Company. They are running a tunnel into the side-hill, have struck the quartz and are supposed to be within ten or fifteen feet of the blue vein. These excavations are about one hundred and fifty feet south of the last in the Central Company's vein. They are in turn the last and only company or persons energetically carrying on operations in this ledge with a near prospect of success. The ground has been taken up in claims of 300 and 200 feet almost continuously for a distance of one mile and a half north of the Comstock lead, in a line with the ledge in which these mines are situated, and south, on or near the same ledge, for three or four miles. The miners' laws, which originally allowed 300 feet to the man, have been lately changed to 200 feet. "Improvements " or work to the month of about fifteen dollars are required to be put on each claim within two weeks, to enable the claimant to hold. These claims are held at prices varying from $25 to $600, and of course are largely speculated in. Of their probable worth I judge from the reports of others, that while some are ridiculously over-estimated— worth, in fact, to every reasonable appearance, nothing at all—others promise to be worth all and much more than is asked for them. There are quartz croppings all over the country. About five hundred persons outside of the "settlements" at this place and Gold Hill are scattered throughout a region whose area is estimated at from forty to fifty miles, prospecting for gold and silver, and driving their stakes wherever the faintest indication of either are discernible. On these claims but a few feeble excavations have been made. Near this place none of average fair prospects have been made, of sufficient extent, as yet, to prove any thing, except those I have named. This may be stated to be the actual condition of the prospects along the ledge in which the silver mine is being worked. All is therefore uncertain as to the continuance of this vein. The gold quartz at Gold Hill is no doubt a continuation of the same ledge, and it is found still on the same line, and of corresponding character, four miles south of the hill, on a claim worked by four or five of this year's emigrants. These men take out one hundred dollars per day. The Gold Hill miners get from fifteen dollars to fifty and seventy-five dollars per day, working rockers and arastras. They have made no sufficient excavations for silver. Other parties are finding gold in smaller quantities on this and parallel ledges at greater distances from Virginia City though I hear of few making what are called wages, north or south of the places I have named.

            My letter must come to a close. As you will observe, I have stuck pretty closely and dryly to facts and bare details. I may be permitted, for this rigid adherence to things that I have seen and facts well supported, to venture a word of private opinion. Of the continued richness of the vein already opened at this place I have no doubt. There are no signs of its giving out in richness or downward extent. I am also of the opinion it will be struck at other places, if it has not already been touched, reports having come to us of a silver lead said to be found on the other side of Carson valley, in the foothills of the Walker divide, corresponding in range, course, and the character of the specimens with the Ophir mines. Parties are out in that region now and other explorers have crossed to different localities in the same range of hills. Of course there is over much importance attached by the finders to these discoveries, but I cannot help regarding them as certain indications of a highly valuable silver mining region existing along the eastern range of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The geological signs and symptoms do certainly point that way. An unhealthy excitement and fever of speculation reigns about here, and gives rise to various rumors of new discoveries, &c. Of one thing I am assured, only those who have capital can hope for a sure thing from the discoveries so far reported. The miners generally are doing nothing out of the diggings I have spoken of. Everybody appears to be on the alert for fresh strikes.  The gamblers are doing pretty well, considering that a scarcity of money exists.  Lumber is worth from $60 to $75 per thousand at this place ; flour is worth $14 and barley ten and twelve cents.  And these scraps of matters, picked up within a few hours march, close my first letter from Virginia City.                                                                           K.

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THE NEW SILVER MINES.

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[FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

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Virginia City, U. T., Nov. 2d.

            Before I had finished my first letter from this place, the town experienced one of those modern visitations peculiar to a volcanic and mining region. I do not mean to say that the town was thrown down by an earthquake, or overflowed by an eruption, but for all the immediate practical purposes of a human settlement it might as well have been. The breaking out was among the population, and it was caused by reports which had reached them the day before of an incredibly rich vein (all new discoveries in this region are incredible, yet somehow everybody credits them) said to have been found about eighteen miles northeast of this place, in a range of hills near the Sixteen Mile desert. The news was first received at Chinatown, which, as you are aware, is at the mouth of Gold cañon. It was secretly spread among the mining " chums " of this locality the morning of my arrival. All day there was a quiet dropping off of parties who had got the secret, and during the night the stampede commenced. By yesterday noon the town was nearly depopulated. Every animal that could walk on three legs and carry burden was packed or bestrode for the new diggings. Towards evening it was said some of the ore had arrived in town, but I could not hear of it in the possession of any responsible man. The new discoveries are reported to be in gold, and of course very rich, "pieces as big as the end of your thumb " having been seen. When I am able to put either thumb or finger on one of these lumps I shall believe. This morning I still observe parties on the tramp for the new diggings.

            Those that remain here, like your correspondent, can't get away, being either detained by business or the impossibility of getting animals. I am now waiting for the return of some of the first who started out for particulars of the new discoveries, as also for the chance of procuring one of their horses.

            About the same time that the reports of gold diggings eastward of Virginia City began to be circulated among our miners, pieces of curious looking stuff were shown, which were said to have been found west of the ridge on which the silver mines lie. The rumor soon spread of extensive diggings in that direction, and for a time the trampers were regularly nonplussed, being caught as it were in a cross sea. The gold, however, out-drew the silver, as the new specimens were called, and this morning I hear that the curious streak of mineral in them is plumbago. Nevertheless, parties are leaving for over the ridge to-day, and perhaps we shall have a stampede towards that when the gold prospectors come back.

            The above incidents illustrate the state of affairs in this vicinity as well as anything I can relate. The real mining population of Virginia City is very small, perhaps not one-sixth of the number of inhabitants. The remainder are the prospecting gentry, of whom I shall speak presently—speculators, loafers and gamblers. The actual miners hereabouts are chiefly from Nevada, the first piece of silver ore carried over the mountains from here having been taken to that place, and the excellence of the gold diggings getting noised about there first. The excitement on account of these discoveries, so far as our State is concerned, may be therefore said to have begun at Nevada, which is, in fact, the home of two or three of the principal proprietors of the Ophir mine. The prospecting tenants of the caves, dens and cabins around us, are generally the most useless class of inhabitants which a mining country can have. They are the feverish, unsettled, never satisfied and nomadic vagrants of the diggings, always ready to follow and to propagate whatever rumor may lead off on a tramp for new strikes and better luck. They subserve one good purpose, doubtless, since they are the explorers of our mineral regions, and break the trails through the wilderness, but this advantages greatly overcome by the mischief they do in unsettling the habits of a mining locality, and taking up the whole country with their speculative claims, to all of which, of course, they pretend to attach a great degree of importance. The gamblers find these fellows their best friends, and Virginia City may be said to be blessed or cursed with such friendships in an eminent degree. The town is full of gamblers, and their booths are full every evening. At Gold Hill the vice is still more prevalent. Both of these mining hamlets possess the characteristics of new gold diggings to the widest and wildest extent. Most of the tenements are cloth and light board cabins, but there are a few more substantial structures of stone and adobe. It was impossible, except in the cabin of friends (where I had the good fortune to be accommodated), to get anything like decent entertainment in either place. Those who come here from your State must, therefore, bring their blankets and fully equip themselves for camp life. Fresh meat is cheap and abundant, and fresh butter (better than we get in California at this season) made in the valley may be had for five and six bits per pound. Horses and mules are difficult to be had at fair prices just at present, although the cost of keeping, as well as the scarcity of money, I should imagine would keep the market well supplied. There is no grazing, and barley is worth twelve cents per pound. Hay sells at from fifty to sixty dollars, and will go up to seventy-five and perhaps a hundred dollars before Spring. Merchandise is tolerably high, but there does not appear to be much demand for goods. There is but one store in this place where there is anything like a tolerable stock of goods. In Carson City one of our Sacramento firms are about establishing a branch, and others will doubtless follow, it is well situated for trade, and possesses many advantages over Genoa, particularly since the mines at this place were opened. The elevation of Virginia City above the level of the valley has been set down at two thousand feet, and I should judge the estimate to be not far from correct. The place is well situated for sunshine and fresh air, and the locality is healthy, but the water is bad, being strongly impregnated with minerals. The mornings are quite cold, the thermometer standing at forty-five degrees to day, but about the middle of the day the sun is oppressive. Very little rain falls in Winter in any part of Carson valley, and on these hights the snow rarely exceeds two feet in depth. The people hereabouts do not look for snow for two or three weeks yet. There are certainly no signs of an early approach of Winter at present, unless a haziness of the atmosphere may be taken as an indication. The prevailing winds in this valley are from the east, but last evening there was a change to the south.

            In my letter commenced on the night of my arrival and furnished the next day I spoke of the name of this place. Virginia City, considered either in its euphony or appropriateness, is simply absurd. The name originally bestowed on the silver mine was Ophir, but we have Ophirs in California, and I do not recollect that the Ophir of Solomon was distinguished for anything else but its gold. I am glad to hear that a movement is on foot to change the designation of the whole locality. The name proposed as a substitute for the present confused and confusing titles is well worthy adoption. It is one of those beautiful and expressive Indian names which are never heard but to be admired. Win-e-moca, signifying success or good fortune, is the name of the Chief of the Pi-Utes, one of the most intelligent and friendly Indians with whom the white authorities are brought in contact in the whole of this Great Basin. This is the name proposed for the new silver mines and the town adjacent, and I hope it may be adopted. The Pi-Utes are the strong friends of the whites, and have manifested their good will to our people by numerous acts, not the least of which is the timely relief they have often furnished the emigration. There are about five thousand warriors in the tribe, and they are a brave, manly, handsome tribe of red men. They have been shamefully neglected by the agents sent out by the General Government to look after them. Some of the transactions related of Major Dodge, recently appointed Delegate from this Territory, are not creditable to him. I am told that of $250,000 appropriated by Congress for the Indians in this Territory, scarcely $15,000 has been expended. The chief distributing agent in this vicinity I understand to be the noted, if not notorious, "Uncle Billy Rodgers'." The Pi-Utes certainly manifest a disposition to acquire a knowledge of agricultural pursuits, and to put it in practice on their own account. Win-e-moca has frequently expressed his wish to have his people instructed in agriculture and furnished the necessary seeds and tools. They now subsist by hunting and fishing, although the chief and other head men own largely in cattle. I have not seen many Pi-Utes since my arrival in the valley. The Washoes, another friendly tribe occupying the valley just west of this place, over the highest ridge of mountains, visit this locality in parties of two or three almost daily. They are greater beggars than the Pi-Utes, but are not ill disposed, and could be easily managed. Unless some steps be taken by our Government to protect these friendly tribes there is danger that the present peaceful relations between them and our people will not continue long. The recent discoveries in this region will bring across the mountains some of our Digger-killing, squaw-embracing Californians, who will be sure to indulge their sportive propensities by the way, and bring about a serious Indian war.

            This morning I visited the claims north and south of the silver mines, on the same ledge, and along a broken quartz ledge running parallel with this, about three hundred yards west, or above, on the hill. About 1,400 feet north of the Ophir shaft, in the bed of a ravine, a tunnel is being excavated with a view to strike the same silver vein. About fifty feet has been already cut, and the company think they are about half way to the lode. There are certainly no signs of silver thus far, although the surface prospect of gold is good. They are now working against a wall of soft, white, clayey looking material, which exposure to the air appears to decompose. The company own thirty-six hundred feet, and I was offered one-twelfth, or three hundred feet, for $1,000. On the south of the Ophir diggings adjoining the California company, twenty-seven feet were offered a friend yesterday for $400. The above company, you are aware, have but just struck the vein, having taken no ore out as yet It is there, however, for I saw handsome specimens this morning. Their first tunnel was aimed too high, and they are now piercing the hill below, with the success I have mentioned. Beyond this claim to the south all is conjecture as to the continuance of the silver lode, although some of the rock bears a striking resemblance to the croppings of the blue limestone. It is supposed upon the fairest basis to exist at a greater depth than where it has been struck in the Ophir and Central companies' claims, and I cannot divest myself of the belief that these conjectures will prove true. Silver mines are, no doubt, eccentric affairs, and I am told a lode will disappear only a few rods from where it crops abundantly and not be found again for hundreds of miles. But this sudden disappearance, I should suppose, would be accompanied by indications of equally violent geographical changes, which do not exist here, The quartz ledge in which the blue vein is found crosses the slopes and ravines, which here extend from the mountain summits, in an easterly and north of easterly direction, at an angle varying from 85 to 50 degrees, and is found cropping out for miles in a continuous line. Parallel ledges, almost equidistant above and below on the hill, course the same direction and extent. The appearance of this and the adjoining hills or mountain slopes would seem to indicate that at some remote period vast land slides had occurred, by which the intervening space between the highest peaks and the granite foothills to the east had been filled with irregular and confused masses of quartz and granite, without altering or seriously disturbing the range of the broken quartz ledges. Standing upon the first of these ledges, above that in which the silver vein has been found and on the same slope of the mountains, you look down and eastward on an irregular plateau, a few hundred yards below the mines, which plateau probably embraces an area of one mile, is rimmed around with hills on the north side, and shelves off into deep gullies and ravines near the foothills.  South and north of these slopes the mountains and hills rise higher and bolder, and one conical point of granite rising out of the cañon at the end of our plateau seems to " stop the way " in an easterly direction. Now, my theory, which is made with the same recklessness of geological wisdom which men exhibit here in the search for gold, may be worth nothing, but I may perhaps have impressed some of my readers with an idea of the appearance which the locality presents, and therefore have gained a point after all.

            But touching the subject of geological knowledge, it may not be out of place to quote in this letter what a professed geologist has said of the bearing and indications of the silver vein stone of the Ophir diggings. I am permitted to use part of a private letter to the company. The writer is M. Atwood, of San Francisco. He says:

            "I did not make as careful and close an examination of the ground above the vein as I could have wished ; indeed, from the confusion existing, and from one formation passing into another, to work out the geology properly would require time. The course of the vein appears to be a few degrees west of magnetic north, dipping westward at an angle of about forty-eight degrees, but the dip being a false one, you may not sink far before it will change. To the westward of the vein, and at no great distance, is a large 'dike vein,' [the upper, quartz ledge I mentioned in my correspondence] the direction of which is parallel with your vein, but the inclination or dip, contrary, or to the eastward, so that your vein might continue its present dip westward till intersected by the Champion vein. The formation adjacent to the vein is a decomposed felspattric rock ; to the westward is greenstone, passing into syenitic and porphyntic greenstone,, also chloretic and chloretic slate, all favorable, and what is generally met with near silver-bearing veins."

            This information, though of no particular importance to myself or my readers generally, may bear some interest to those versed in the science of which it consists. And now to say a few words of the gold prospects on these hills.

            As was mentioned in the former letter, but very few persons are steadily engaged in taking out gold in all this range of hills. The prevalent excuse is a want of water ; and water does seem to be the one thing needful in these diggings. Except a few springs, and the water that oozes and trickles through where tunnels have intersected little thread-like courses, these hills are as destitute of the miner's favorite element as are the deserts which can be seen from their summits. That a large number of the claims would pay from $5 to $20 a day per man there can be no doubt, and some of those which are not worked now would pay to transport the rock some distance to water. At Gold Hill, where the chief gold mining in this vicinity is carried on, there are not over half a dozen claims being worked. These, as you have already been informed, are exceedingly rich— lowest pay that has been extracted being $36 per ton. A new claim was opened there yesterday, on the south side of the hill, which prospected in fine gold $3 or $4 to the pan, besides turning out some beautiful specimens of quartz. Four miles south of the hill, near the Devil's Gate, ten buckets of crushings taken out of a newly opened claim yielded two ounces of amalgam, or a little over an ounce of gold. There are said to be other equally as good prospects in the same vicinity. A large number of the miners hereabouts are this year's emigrants, and of course their ideas of mining are exceedingly primitive. Near the mouth of Six Mile cañon, in a small ravine leading up from the flats, about eight miles east from here, a company of twelve men have commenced work within a few days with excellent prospects. A gentleman in whom I have confidence saw some gold taken out by them to-day, the largest pieces of which were worth twenty and twenty-five cents, and resembled California gold more than any taken out as yet in this vicinity. This is the only claim on which work is being carried on in that locality, although the land in the vicinity has all been taken up, and two or three parties are about to commence operations. The gold found in all this region usually contains a large percentage of silver, and is not worth more than $13.

            From what has been stated, and from what I have seen and not considered worth putting down, it may be concluded that but little inducement exists for miners to leave even tolerable claims in California and come to this side of the mountains. Unless they have capital to expend in heavy prospecting enterprises, the trip will not be worth the time, money and fatigue, and certainly not this Fall. But I do not need to caution them, as few appear to be arriving at present. I judge from this indication that the remembrance of Fraser river exerts a salutary influence. This is as it should be, for though there is, to all appearance, an extensive and undeveloped mineral region in these eastern ranges, the excitement and speculation fever begotten and nurtured by the recent discoveries are the merest moonshine. This is my present opinion, but we must wait until returns are received from the new discoveries near the desert before coming to a conclusion on this subject. We are now waiting for these returns.                                                                        K.

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Nov. 2d—5 p. m.

            The tide is beginning to ebb slowly back. Parties of prospectors who went out yesterday and the day before are returning from the new diggings. I should think a dozen or fifteen have returned. I am sorry for the hopes of some of these mines and those who have founded their hopes upon them, but they do not appear to realize the anticipations of their friends. In sober truth, no one seems to have found the exact locality. I have conversed with a reliable person who hunted for them up hill and down dale, a day and a half, and not only lost the scent, but got away from every trace of gold. He says after crossing the hills northeast from Six Mile cañon, he entered upon a rugged country, where there was no quartz, and where none of the other gold-bearing signs existed. He met or saw in all near a hundred persons looking for the new diggings, but could not hear of any who had struck them. There were reports that the real spot lies somewhere across the Carson, in a direction south of east from here, and parties have gone in that direction.

            The general belief appears to be that the new mines are a humbug of the first water. Nevertheless, I have this evening met and conversed with a man who professes to have come direct from the spot. His name is J. Clark, formerly of Placerville, and of late engaged in trading ventures to Ragtown and vicinity. He tells a moderate story, and relates with an air of truthfulness what he professes to have himself seen. Instead of lumps, nuggets and chispas, his discourse is of surface prospects yielding ten cents to the pan ; which is not enough, I fear, to satisfy the restless craving of the excited fortune hunters. Ragtown, as all of your readers may not be aware, is about seventy miles, in a north- easterly direction, from this place, on the edge of the Great Desert, and is the first trading post that is reached by the overland emigration after crossing that " melancholy waste " and arriving on the frontier settlements of our State. This side of Ragtown are still two other deserts which the emigration has to cross before reaching Carson valley proper. It is midway opposite the larger of these, which is known as Twenty-Six Mile desert, and about five miles up in the foot-hills west of Carson river, that the new diggings are situated. The range of mountains is the same that divides Washoe valley from Carson valley, and the spot is called the Big Cañon. Gold was found there in 1854, and there are now from forty to fifty men engaged there in working claims. The Express is about leaving and I must close this letter.             K.