TAILINGS AND THEIR EFFECT.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 68, 20 May 1870, Page 3

TAILINGS AND THEIR EFFECT.

_ The following is the concluding portion of Mr. J. T. Thomson's report on the floods in the Taieri Plains : —lt is a sad pity to see the beautlfal rivers of California.so spoiled by the gold Washings from the Foot Hills. The Sacra mento is yellow with the sand from these works in the mountains, and the Sue salmon which used to fill its streams are being driven away each year. In a short time, unless efficient measures ure taken to preserve the fish, the rivers of the State will be stripped of a most valuable product, as, similar stream? have been in New England. The sea fish of Sun Francisco, however, are abundant, and of many new and remarkably fine varieties. The mining in tae boot Hills is producing another remarkable effect: it is driving out 'the tarmers from the river bottoms to the elevated land. These "flats" were ai.ways subject to periodical overflows, but ..as the floods seldom reached beyond a well known limit, and as thev deposited fertilising sedinent, the'cultivators could adapt tiieiiiseive3 to them. But siuce tae enormous hydraulic wash the Foot Hills, and the Sierras, this n.is. all been cnanged on account of the filling up of the mountain streams with gravel and soil; In many of these streams waole uills have been sluiced away, and have filled up the rivers from twenty to forty leet. When the water floods come they pour down these channels and carry the soil and gravel to the valley streams, filling them up to the brim, causing floods, and thus bury? ing thousands of acres of most valuable land every year uhder this sandy .and pebbly deposit. I heard of one instance in Yuba country of an orchard of 75 acres, worth from 50,000 to 75,000 dols., thus completely destroyed, and of many similar cases of smaller vineyards and farms. The following, from the 'Alfca' newspaper, will illustrate tais destructive action of man on nature " Maresville, once the best-built and neatest inland" town of our State, with a flourishing commerce, has been retrograding for some years past, from changes incident to ...California, The best paying orcnat'd oi the State was Briggs'. This consisted of 90 acres of assorted fruit trees, on rich sandy loam, kept moist by infiltration from the river. The fruit of this orchard - was the earliest to reach the market, and until prices fell to their pres mt level, it paid, well to send it to San Francisco, even at heavy cosi of steam boat freight.' What has become of this celebrated orchard, which was valued at 200,000 dols? It is now a willow copse! Its trees which were so beautiful and so fragrant in full .flower of spring time, and whose rich: shower of fruit,"always heavy laden, was the greatest attraction on the highway, now gladden the eve no more for ever. In its place stands a wilderness of rank willows, overtopping its former wealth, of fruit trees, and blotting out the record of their history." Dr. Tregarden's rich and beautiful orchard of 4*o acres, in nearer proximity to town, has shared the same fate, and Briggs' second orchard of 200 acres is fast following it. Nearly all that exceedingly fine fertile land that lined the banks of the Tuba for miles above, is also for ever blotted out, and the work of devastation still advances along the bottoms of the Feather River, below the confluence of the Yuba. In tinie not distant, the whole of those rich dark soil bottom lands will be one barren waste oi sand. This sad change is but a type of the utter desolation °that has already ruined the bottom lands every where alojig the streams that come from the gold mines. . Every year millions of tons of earth, gravel and sand, are sent down the rivers that go from the mines toward the plains below. Every year there is added so much to the channels of deposition, that the beds of the streams are elevated, snd tneir waters spread more and more over the alluvial bottom lands, and bury them under barren sands beyond redemption. Let it be understood that these rich lands count their acres by thousands upon thousands ; that they are: smothered under from five to twenty feet of barren sand, and the eternity of their extinction from the wealth oi the state will be comprehended. The Sacramento Tiiver, though farther removed aiid broader in its base, is not less notably being uplifted, and

year by year its ever muddy waters are spreading over the flat and marsh v land on its borders. The greater part of this destruction "comes from what are called hydraulic diggings. These are the richest lauds for tillage in the .undulating country of the gold ranges. They have a substratum of gravel which contains grains ot native gold. To get a cheap separation of gold, from the gravel it is necessary-to tear down the low elevations, varying from 590 to 209 feet, with tae whole covering of rich top soil with the gardens and orchards, houses and fences, that are on them. lae dry g; Id is found to be there; the farm is devoured, and in an incredibly short time the pij>ing water-jets, under a pressure of 100 or 200 feet, have torn away the gracefully swelling landscape of 200 or 300 oruate acres, and left in ita place a pond of dirty water, with a broad border of huge boulders of rock, with cobble-stones an 1 barren gravel—a picture oi utter ruin. The devastation could not be more complete if it were the- last day, and the demons of destruction had been let loose to desolate the earth, that not a green tiling snould grow on it thereafter for ever S Tae price of this awful ruin is probably some ten or twelve millions of gold dollars j>er annum, the product of this particular form of mining. It brings, for tne present, a large equivalent for sacrifice of the fin 3 vineyard and orchard land it abstracts from the foodproducing capacity of the State; but, iu the end, it m;iy be regarded as a poor compensation: The gold passes away, while the land, with wealthy homos "it hasTuiiied, would have endured frour generation to generation..—'New West,' by Charles L. Bruce.