Something like a Nugget.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 21, 6 April 1870, Page 3

Something like a Nugget.

A correspondent, writing from San Francisco lately, says : —“ Several days since quite a little excitement was created among our quartz miners by the discovery of a ‘pocket’ of unusual richness in a new quartz mining claim in Sierra Country, California, near Sierra Buttes. Such pockets are not unfrequently found near the surface in partially decomposed quartz, but are seldom so rich as this has opened. Many have been found near Grass Valley, Nevada Country, and one was diicovered a few years since on the summit of a hill near the Catholic school in the city of Grass Valley, from which the owner took a wheelbarrow load in a few days His ‘ streak of luck’ was against him,' however, for he went mad, and I belie,ve died in an insane asylum. Subsequently, a pocket from whence over 18,000 dels, was quickly taken was discovered in the Dromedary Mine of Wolf Creek, in the city of Grass Valley, and another from which 500 dols. was realised was found g near the surface, on the opposithe side of the creek, where the quarry mine, now known as the Garden City Mine, is located. This last pocket, however, eclipses them all. A few years ago a placer mine was located below the Sierra Buttes Quartz Mine, in Sierra Country, from the surface dirt of which 5000 dols. was washed. When the ‘ bed rock’ was reached the claim was supposed to have been worked out, and was abandoned. Ilecently the ground was ‘ located’ as a quartz claim by a party of four men, who proceeded to run an incline do vn on the vein. At the depth of 30 feet they came upon an immense deposit of porous gold, like a lava in its formation. The first mass or nugget that was got out weighed 1401b. avoirdupois; but in prying it up with crowbars 341b. were detached, and the ‘ chispa’ now weighs only 1061b. It is of course granulated gold, 925.1000 fine, and worth as it now stands, $24,000 in coin. I saw it a few minutes since, and can fairly say I never saw its equal, and never expect to see it again. The nugget is about 20 inches long, 10 inches in thickness, and about 6 to 10 inches broad. It was lying in a tub of dilated sulphuric acid to clean it, and make it bright. There is hardly a pound of foreign matter in the ‘ chispa,’ and it is literally a back-load of gold in a single lump. The men have taken out no less than 70,000 dollars already, and have not yet ‘ touched bottom.’ Forty thousand of this was the result of two men’s work in two days. The owners of the claim are William A. Farish and Co.”

An Anglo-Asiatic volocipedestrian, to avoid the mid-day heat, has been exercising near Bombay at night, carrying a lantern ; the result of which performance is that the Hindoo population take the phenomenon as a physical manifestation of their god Vishnu on a fiery celestial wheel, and prostrate themselves in the dust whenever he is seen approaching.