MINING IN CALIFORNIA.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 245, 24 February 1860, Page 4

MINING IN CALIFORNIA.

As to quartz-mining —or the reduction to powder of the vein stone wherein gold is contained, and the extraction of the gold from the powder, by means of water, quicksilver, &c, I judge that the time has not even yet arrived for its profitable prosecution. There are conspicuous instances of its success, that of the concern known as " Allison's Kanche," in Grass Valley, for example —but I am confident that fully three out of every quartz-rain-in? enterprises have proved failures, or have at^best achieved no positive success. The current estimates of-tlie yield of gold by quartz vein-stone is less than 20 dollars per ton — barely by 1 cent per pound—and that this yield will not pay the average cost of sinking shafts, running drifts or adits,. pumping out water, raising ore, (and an immense aggregate of dead rock with it), crush it, and extracting the gold, in a country "where common labor costs 2£ to 3 dols. per day. -At 40 Ms. per ton, there are many which yield less than 20 dols. There are some instances of profitable quartz miuing by men on the spot who thoroughly understand the business;' but I have not heard of an inßtance in which* money has |eeg inwste.4 ty ;mjning, tyypeugon'a

out of California, who have not lost every farthing of it. I think the moat popular form of mining is at present that of sinking or drifting into hills which have a stratum of gravel at or Dear their base, directly overlying the bed rock. Many of these hills would seem to have been piled, in some far off antedeluvian period upon a bed or basin of solid granite, which often hollows, or dips towards its oentre like a saucer. If, then, a tunnel can be run in through the "rim-rock" or side of this saucer so happily as to strike the level of the bottom, therlby draining off the water,, and affording the utmost facility for extracting the gold-bearing gravel, the fortune of the operator may be made by one lucky, or better than lucky, operation. In a few instances these subterranean gravel basius would seem to have formed parts of the beds of ancient rivers, and so to-be extrrordiv nariiy rich in the precious dust. In some cases the " pay dirt" is hauled by steam up an inclined plane, or even^ raised perpendicularly by windlass; but it is easier to extract it by a "horizontal drift or tunnel, wherever, possible.1 Many mines of this order are worked night and day oq the "three shift" pan and are paying very handsomely. But the newest, most efficient, most uniformly profitable.; mode of operation is that termed hydraulic mining—that is the washing down and washing away of large deposits of auriferous earth by means of a current of water, so directed as to fall on the right spot, or (better still) projected through a hose and pipe with the force generated with-'a heavy fall. The former of these methods is exhibited in perfection at Nevada, the latter at North San Juan, as, doubtless, at many oilier places. At North San Juan, near the middle fork of the Yuba, streams at least three inches in diameter and probably containing twenty measured inches of water, are directed against the remaining half of a high hill, which they strike with such force that boulders of the size oi cannon balls are started from their beds and hurled five to ten feet into the air. By this process, one man will wash away a bank of earth like a haystack sooner than a hundred men could do it by old-fashioned sluicing. I believe earth yielding a bare cent's worth of gold to the pan may be profitably washed by this process paying a reasonable price for the water. As much as 100 dollars per day it profitably paid for the water thrown through one pipe. The stream thus thrown will knock a man as lifeless as though it were a grape shot. As the bank, over a hundred feet high, is undermined by this battery, it frequently comes from the top downward, reaching and burying the careless operator. Three men have been thus killed at San Juan within the last month, until at length greater caution is exercised, and the operator stands twice as far as he formerly did. Very long sluices as long as may be — conduct the discharged water away; and I am told that it is no matter how thick with earth the water may run provided the sluice be long enough. It is, of course, so arranged as to preseut rifHles, crevice?, &c, to arrest the gold at first borue along by the turbid flood. I believe there are companies operating by this method whose groose receipts from a single sluice have reached a thousand dollars per day. Mining is a necessary art, but it does not tend to beautify the face of Nature. On the contrary, earth distorted into all manner of ungainly heaps and ridges, hills half torn or washed away, and the residue left in as repulsive a shape as can well be conceived, roads intersected and often turned to mire by ditches, watercourses torn up and gouged out, and riveiß, once pure as crystal, now dense and opaque with pulverised rock —such is the spectacle presented throughout the mining regions. Not a stream of any size is allowed to escape the pollution—even the bountiful and naturally pure Sacramento is yellow with it, and flows turbid and uninviting to the Pacific. (The people of this oifcy have to drink it, nevertheless.) Despite the intensa heat and drought always prevalent at this season, the country is full of springs, which are bright as need be; but where 3 or 4 of these have joined to form a little rill, some gold-seeker is sharp on their track, converting them into liquid mud. California, in giving up her hoarded wealth, surrenders much of her beauty also. Worse still is the general devastation of timber. The whole mining region appears to have been excellently timbered so much of it as I have traversed was eminently so. Yellow, pitch, and sugar, (white,) pine, (and what is here called pitch pine ig a large, tall, and graceful tree), white, black, and live oak, with stately cedars, ouce overspread the whole country ; not densely, as ;in eastern foresis, but with reasonable spaces Jbetween the noble trunks—the oaks often presenting the general appearance of a thrifty apple orchard, undergrown with grass and .bushes. But timber is wanted for flumes, for sluices, for drifts or tunnels, for dwellings, for running steam-engines, and as the land has no owner, everybody cuts and slashes as if he cared for nobody but himself, and no time but to-day. Patriarchal oaks are cut down merely to convert their limbs into fuel, leaving the trunks to rot; noble pines are pitched this way and that, merely to take a log or two from the butt for sawing or splitting, leaving the residu* a cumberer of the ground; trees fit for the noblest uses are made to subserve the paltriest merely because they are handy,^and it is nobody's business .to preserve them. There was timber enough here ten- days ago to satisfy every legitimate need for a century; yet ten years more will jiot elapse before the miners ■-will.be sending far up into the mountains at a \\ heavy cost for fogs that might still have been : abundant at, their doors had the timber at the Region been husbanded as it ought. Item on • istarice were idle, but I must be permitted to deplore. I devote the coming week to a visit ;to Colonel Fi'emont and .his works' in Bear Valley, and to a trip to the famous:- cascade in the Yosemite-Valley, with a look at the Big ■Trees of Mariposa (not. the biggest of all, which are in Cai.averas) by the way.. I leave the San Francisco and vicinity for the last;— Horace Greely's Lettersfrom California. . ■ ..

If men could find the fabled fountain th'a.fc i 3 said to restore youth, and health, and beauty, with what eagerness they would rush to drink ,its;waters! Yet with scarcely less eagerness do •they now rush to drink of waters that bring' upon them premature-old age and disease, ■and loathsome ugliness !•■• An American waa boasting of his country, land, amongst the rest, he; said—"There ate 'springs in our country where the most spark■ling soda-water can be had. ready,. prepared." I", Tut," said Paddy, " what's that ? : Jastgo to 'the Lake of Kitlarney, ray fine fellow-r-there you can procure champagne ready .bottled,;.and imountains of . sponge-cake tbera to. give it. a ?#." , '/■■'■•• '■ - ■ ■■'■■■;•■; ;; :