CALIFORNIA.

Grey River Argus, Volume III, Issue 167, 7 February 1867, Page 3

CALIFORNIA.

GOLD BY TUB HUNDRED WEIGHT. A telegram from a friend at Placerville assures us that gold worth L 50,000 was taken from the Woodside quartz mine, near Georgetown, and that yesterday the miners were "blocking out nearly a pure, solid mass of gold three'feet in length." If such a statement had come from a stranger we should have received it with incredulty, but we can vouch for the sincerity and intelligence of the author of the message. The finding of gold in such large masses in a lode is without a parallel in the history of mining. The metal in veins of the auriferous "quartz is usually in small particles, and pieces are very seldom obtained weighing more than a few ounces. Probably the largest .piece of gold heretofore taken from any lode in this State did not weigh more than a pound. But onr telegram mentions one lump, obtained in the Woodside mine, weighing 100 pounds, and it is implied that the piece three feet long will weigh very much more. ■.-•-..,. The large nuggets, however, which have been found in the placers, must have come from quartz veins. Australia produced one nugget weighing about 225 pounds ; and in 1854 a lump of 160 pounds was obtained in Calaveras county ; and this State has produced a multitude : of nuggets weighing ten or twenty pounds. All these must have come from quartz veins, and surprise has been expressed by several writers that the particles of the precious metal found in our lode mines are so small. If the accounts from the Wbodside mine should be verified, our largest mass of gold must hereafter be credited, not to placer deposits, but to quartz. It is worthy, of note that the Sonora Democrat, of the 3rd instant, asserted that, in the previous week, some Italians had found a streak of gold four inches thick, in a quartz mine at Deer Flat, Tuolumne county, and had to cut out the metal with cold-chisels. This report was considered so improbable that it scarcely deserved repetition, but it may be true for all that. A number of the quartz mines of the State are yielding better now, at great depths, than ever before, and the confirmation of these statements from Georgetown and Deer Flat would assist to give a new impulse to the branch of mining which must bs the chief reliance of our gold miners in the future. THE COLORADO. Innes of steamers have been established, which make regular trips up and down the river, and sailing packets ply regularly between this, port and its mouth at the head of the Gulf of California. Some of the latter class of vessels are returning with rich freights of copper and silver ore. So important is 'the commerce in ores becoming that shipments, after a short time, arc likely to be made • regularly from the mouth of the Colorada direct to ports in Europe. Two hundred mining companies are already organised in what may properly be termed the Colorado Valley, which extends into the State, of Nevada and Utah Territory. The river is found to. be navigable to Colville, a. distance ranging between three hundred and four hundred miles, with a prospect that the present head of navigation will yet be pushed much further up the stream. In the valley of the Colorado, are large tracts bf agricultural land, forests of oak and pine, known to be of great value for naval purposes, rock, .salt, lead, iron, gold, copper, quicksilver, and a long list of minerals how rated as of minor commercial importance. The importance of the territory watered, by the Colorado loses nothing in view of the fact that it is known to have once been the. seat of a great Aztec empire, the ruins of which remain to excite the curiosity of the world. Here were the great cities of legend and story with vast wealth and population. UTAH. The Cliicago Bepublican professes to have -trustworthy information from Utah that Brigham Young is about to retire temporarily to a plantation some sixty miles from Salt Lake City, leaving the charge of public affairs in the hands, of his son. This movement, it is said, is occasioned by the increasing age of Brigham Young, and the object is to te3t the ability of the young Brigham to wield the sceptre before the death of his father shaH; render final any step which may be adopted in regard to the succession. If he manifest the ability to manage the affairs of Government that his father and the elders hope, then Brigham 's abdication will be permanent. Brigham has just had "sealed" to him his forty-fifth wife, a beautiful young Danish girl of seventeen summers, and is off spending the fortyfifth " honeymoon" with her. His twentyfourth wife died a short tune ago, but it does not appear to have been much of a sorrow to him to lose her. How could it when he has so many wives !