coast range, a sandstone formation, with interpositions of leptinite, clays, trachyte, talcose slate, and trap rocks; while the recent sedimentary deposits of the Sacramento Valley rest upon beds of conglomerate sandstone and clay, and the western declivities of the Sierra Nevada consist mainly of talcose and other slates, through which are extruded trappean rocks, leptinite, granite, and serpentine. A similar section across the State from San Francisco Bay, bearing north 70° east, exhibits sandstones, with some fossil deposits east of the bay; on the west slope, conglomerate sandstone, and slates, with trap, volcanic tufa, and porphyry.

MINERALS AND MINING.-It is almost superfluous to say that California is one of the most important mineral regions in the world, particularly in its deposits of gold. The great gold diggings lie on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, principally between 37° and 40° north latitude; but the precious mineral has also been found in other quarters in considerable quantities, particularly in Klamath County, in the north-west, and in Shasta County. The gold first discovered was evidently not in place, but the washings from the upper regions; and when that shall have been exhausted, there are large bodies of auriferous quartz, which, (with greater labor and expense) will probably afford large supplies of this metal for generations to come. In addition to the precious metal just noticed, there has been found in Butte County an abundance of quicksilver, platina, iron, lead, and some silver; copper and silver, quicksilver, platina, asphaltum, marble, and granite occur in Marin County; black marble in Shasta; a fine-grained white marble and freestone in Calaveras; a splendid ledge of pure white marble on the middle fork of Feather River; quicksilver in Napa; rich silver-mines and coal in San Luis Obispo; quicksilver in Santa Clara; copious salt springs (sufficient, report says, to supply the State) in Shasta; bituminous springs in many places along the coast, and hot sulphur springs in Santa Barbara; warm soda springs near Benicia, in Solano; bituminous and sulphur springs in San Luis Obispo; and hot, asphaltum, and salt springs in Los Angeles County. According to Professor Trask, "platina is widely distributed; scarcely a section of country where gold has been found, but that this metal has been discovered." Silver has been found in several mines in the southern district, copper is widely distributed, and chromium occurs in large quantities in serpentine rocks.

In 1865 a new gold-mining district was opened in the extreme western part of Nevada County, among the high hills of the Sierras, and near the Pacific Railroad. The ores promised to be very rich. It is said that the poorer portions of the ores sold on the spot at forty dollars a ton. The richer ones were taken to a distance to be worked. A single chunk of ore from this mine is reported to have yielded over $3,900 to the ton.

GOLD MINING.-The western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the original gold region, yield no silver ore, but gold only. The gold-mining is of two kinds that which obtains the metal from the solid rock of quartz, and that which separates it from sand, gravel, or soil. The former pro

cess usually follows in the wake of the latter, and succeeds when the "Diggings," as they are familiarly called, become exhausted, or fail in their first attractions. In these "Diggings," deposits of gold are found in sand, gravel or soil, supposed to have been ground out of the rock of the hills by the action of the elements, and worked down into the beds of rivers or mountain caverns. These deposits of gold are obtained by one general process-that of washing with water. But the mode of operation is various-from the hand-pan, pick, and shovel of the original miner to large combinations of capital and costly machinery, for changing the course of a river and get at its bed, for running down shafts hundreds of feet to bring up an old river-bed, or for bringing water ten or twenty miles through ditches and pipes, to wash down a whole hill-side at once, to get at the golden dust.

The search for gold deposits in the beds of old streams, by means of shafts and tunnels, is called "Deep Diggings," or "Bed-rock Diggings." The rocky-bed, along which a river originally ran, is said to yield the richest deposits. These old beds are often followed for miles, the miners digging down many feet below the surface. But a greater amount of capital and labor is required in what is called "hydraulic mining." By this process water is brought from lakes and rivers, and by means of powerful engines, thrown in streams upon or against a bank of earth or a whole hill-side, tearing it into fragments, which are separated into narrow sluices, where the particles of gold are deposited. These mining operations of course lay waste the country. Streams of water are turned out of their natural courses, and others, naturally pure, are made thick with mud. Immense masses of soil are washed down from the diggings above upon the banks of the rivers below. But mining rights are considered superior to all others in California, and it is of little use to complain of the wholesale destruction of property by mining operations. The expense of hydraulic mining is very heavy, yet it often yields a large profit. A company carrying on its operations near Dutch Flat, bring water-power from mountain lakes, twenty miles distant, and turning rivers out of their courses, expended eighty thousand dollars one year in making a new ditch, yet in the same year liquidated that amount, and divided among its stockholders an additional profit of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. But in these, as in other mining operations, where some meet with splendid success, others signally fail. The gold-washings, however, in their various modifications, are, probably, in proportion to the labor and capital expended, as profitable and yield as fine returns as any other department of mining. Some cases are mentioned where single companies often wash out, each, a thousand dollars a day, and others are spoken of whose washings for weeks average fifty to one hundred dollars a day to the hand. A "clearing up," after a successful run, often produces fifty thousand and sometimes a hundred thousand dollars.

Most persons are familiar with the general excitement caused by the discovery of gold in California in the spring of 1848. For years subsequent to that event, a great tide of emigration continued to flow steadily into this new gold region. The scene of operations in mining

for the precious metal lay along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, reaching into the mountains but to a very limited extent. The district known as the gold regions of California is about 250 miles long, extending from Siskiyou on the north to Mariposa County on the south. In it are those great placers that still continue to furnish annually about forty million dollars in gold.

But in addition to the placer mining, quartz mining has been gradually developed, and a large amount of capital is now invested in its operations. The principal quartz mining is carried on in Mariposa County, Tuolumne, in the vicinity of Sonora, in Amador, Jackson, Sierra, and Plumas Counties. In Nevada County are the celebrated Grass Valley mines. They yield regularly from $250,000 to $300,000 per month, and are said to be the richest quartz mines now worked in this country, or in the world. There were, in 1865, from seventy-five to one hundred quartz-mills in California, yielding about $8,000,000 worth of gold yearly. The veins that furnish the quartz for the mills, are generally in the immediate neighborhood of rich placers, varying in width from a few inches to thirty or forty feet, and encased in either slate, granite, or greenstone. The Princeton Mine, on the Mariposa estate, is in slate, and had reached, in 1865, a depth of over six hundred feet, having then yielded some three million dollars' worth of gold, without being exhausted, though it yielded less than in former years. This mine, which had been for some time affording rock, gradually increasing in value till it reached forty dollars a ton, suddenly, and without giving any sign of what was to happen, refused, in December, 1864, to yield rock worth over six dollars a ton. This was said to be the principal cause of the failure of the Mariposa Company, formed in Wall-street, New York, a year or two before, with a capital of ten million dollars.

But

The mine of Hayward & Co., near Jackson, in Amador County, has been worked for some ten or twelve years with varying success. with the increasing depth, the rock is said to become richer. In 1865 it had reached a depth of 960 feet. Two of the most famous mines in the Grass Valley district are the Massachusetts Hill and the Allison Ranch. The former, with a vein from a foot to fourteen inches wide, has produced over seven million dollars' worth of gold, and the Allison Ranch, from a vein averaging ten inches in width, yielded, between 1857 and 1865, some two million dollars. In Plumas County, in the more northern part of the State, are some very successful quartz mines.

It is difficult to estimate the profits of quartz mining in a general way, as so much depends upon the absolute yield of the rock, and upon the cost of its extraction from the mine. This latter item sometimes runs up as high as twenty-five dollars a ton. But the expense of milling the quartz, after it is extracted from the vein, seldom exceeds three dollars a ton in a steam-mill, and in water-mills the cost of extracting the ore is but seventy-five cents per ton. Under ordinarily favorable circumstances, quartz yielding ten dollars a ton may be worked with profit.

THE QUICKSILVER MINES.-The famous quicksilver mines of New Almaden are situated in Santa Clara County, twelve miles from the

Pueblo of San Jose, and about sixty miles south from San Francisco Since quicksilver is universally used, and in large quantities, in the separation of gold and silver from the dross with which they are usually combined, the discovery and successful working of the quicksilver mines in California have exerted a great and favorable influence upon the mining interests of the country. The only other parts of the world from which mercury is obtained are Peru, Spain, and Austria. The New Almaden mine of cinnabar, was opened and first worked in 1845, by a Mexican. Owing to the disordered state of the country, it was not worked in 1846. In 1850 a company of Mexicans and English worked the mine, but in 1858 were enjoined by the United States Court from continuing their operations till the title to the property should be determined. The product up to that time, as shown by the papers presented in Court, had amounted to $8,000,000, and the annual produce was estimated at $1,000,000. The case involving the title to the property was carried from the District Court of the United States, in California, to the Supreme Court at the city of Washington, where, in April, 1863, after long years of expensive litigation, it was brought to a close by a final decision. By compromise and purchase, all the mines and mining property previously in litigation, embracing 4,438 acres, eventually passed into the hands of the present New Quicksilver Mining Company. It is estimated that more than one-third of this large domain is traversed by rich veins of cinnabar.

The New Almaden Mine, which yielded under its former ownership, 24,000 pounds of quicksilver, is but a single development of this vast mineral deposit. Exclusive of the time it was closed by injunction, the total value of the products from this mine, and the other branches of this great cinnabar deposit, during the twelve years prior to 1865, amounted to about fifteen millions of dollars in gold. The company had, in 1865, erected 405 buildings, consisting of dwelling-houses, workshops, and stores, six furnaces, and a railway from the mines to the furnaces. In the employ of the Company there were at that time 1,943 persons, about five-eighths of whom were Mexicans, or native Califor

nians.

The average annual product of the mines for eleven years, from July, 1850, to August, 1863-deducting a period of two years between November, 1858, and January, 1861, during which the mines were closed by injunction-were about 28,000 flasks, or a little over 2,333 flasks per month, the flask containing about 75 pounds, worth 65 cents a pound. The average monthly product for ten months, from September, 1863, to June, 1864, was 2,774 flasks; and for six months, from July to December, 1864, 4,118 flasks. The cinnabar is a red, brick-looking earth, or ore, dug from its veins like any other ore, fashioned into small squares, or bricks, built up into a kiln, and fire set under and among them. The quicksilver exudes in a liquid stream, or vapor, and is caught and bottled up. The New Almaden, and the other quicksilver mines in their vicinity, are considered inexhaustible. Other veins of great promise, in other parts of California, have been discovered.

COPPER MINES.-California is not only rich in gold and quicksilver

mines, but the magnitude of the copper deposits, and the richness of the ore, have led to the extensive and profitable development of copper mines. There are two large beds of the ore at remote points; one at Copperopolis and its vicinity, near the center of the State, and on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada; the other in Del Norte County, in the extreme north-west corner of the State, west of the Coast Range, and eighteen miles from the port of Crescent City. The Calaveras County mines are said to yield over sixty dollars' worth of copper ore to the ton, and the lodes in Del Norte County, from 25 to 80 per cent. of pure copper.

THE GOLD PRODUCT. The produce of gold from the entire region west of the Rocky Mountains, was estimated for 1864 at sixty million dollars, and for 1865 at sixty-five or seventy millions. Of this amount, California was estimated to yield about one-third. Other estimates put the produce of gold in California in 1864 at $42,000,000, and in 1865 at $50,000,000.

BAYS, RIVERS, LAKES, ETC.-San Francisco Bay, the best and most capacious harbor on the Pacific coast, (including the two arms, San Pablo and San Francisco Bay proper,) perhaps 70 miles in length, and in the widest part 14 miles broad, with a Coast line of 275 miles. A strait, about 2 miles wide, and from 5 to 7 miles long, breaking through a range of low mountains, connects it with the ocean. This strait has been termed, not inappropriately, the Golden Gate, as it is the passage through which the multitude from every region of the world are constantly hastening, in order to gather the wealth of this new and richer El Dorado. Within the barrier of hills already alluded to, the bay divides into two parts, the one stretching to the south about 40 miles, and the other to the north for about 30. On the north-west shore of the southern arm stands the city of San Francisco. The northern arm (San Pablo) is united by a second strait, Carquinez, with Suisun Bay directly east of it, which is 15 or 20 miles long. The Golden Gate is the only channel of communication between the Pacific and the interior of California. Pelican, Humboldt, Bodega, Sir Francis Drake's, Monterey, De los Esteras, Santa Barbara, San Pedro, and San Diego are the other bays, all opening into the Pacific. The Sacramento and San Joaquin are the principal rivers of California, and, running in opposite directions, the former from the north and the latter from the south, they drain almost the entire valley between the two great ranges, Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range, and unite about 15 miles above Suisun Bay, into which they discharge their mingled waters. Each of these rivers has a course of from 250 to 300 miles. All their tributaries of importance descend the Sierra Nevada slope. The principal of these, commencing at the north, are Pitt, the Feather, Yuba, and American, and of the San Joaquin, the Calaveras, the Stanislaus, the Toulumne, and Merced Rivers. The Moquelumne meets the Sacramento and San Joaquin near their junction. The Sacramento has been ascended by small steamers as far as Marysville, the San Joaquin as far as Fort Miller, and the Merced for 20 miles. The Klamath River from Oregon runs through the north-west part of the State, and the Buenaventura