The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-27 00:00:00

THE SILVER MINES OT NEVADA.

(From a Correspondent of the New York Times.)
The Comstock Lode, on which the Silver Mines
of Virginia City and Gold Hill are situated, is pro-
bably the most productive mineral vein in the
world. it is only a strip of land three miles long
by 600 yards wide, yet it yields $12,000,000 an-
nually. Five thousand men are employed on it
during the year, and the produce for each work-
man is about $2,000 per annum—an average of
production probably equalled on no other mineral
vein in the world. In 1865 there were 46 com-
panies working it, who owned 22,258 feet, and had
excavated about 28 miles of tunnels and drifts, and
51 miles of shafts, wings, and inclines, with some
33 miles more of chimneys, &c. The longest tun-
nel made is the Latrobe —3,200 feet ; the greatest
depth penetrated is by the Gould and Curry, 821
feet. These companies have 44 hoisting and pump-
ing engines, aggregating more than 1,500 horse
power; 76 mills are employed in reducing th 3 ore,
with an aggregate capacity for crushing 1,800 tons
daily. They consume annually about 22,265 cords
of wood, at a cost of about $l6 per cord. Their
wood and timber together are estimated to cost
annually about $1,000,000.
Mount Davidson, in which this famous vein
occurs, is a barren mountain (in Story County,
Nevada), mainly of granite, though serpentine,
quartz, syenite, gneiss and talcose, and calcareous
rocks enter into its composition. Its summit is
7,827 feet above the sea level, while the vein itself
and Virginia City are about 6,200 feet. The lode
is a regular fissure vein, and subject to the usual
displacements and faults of mineral veins, which
show such an uncertainty over all mining opera-
tions. At one place it may be entirely interrupted
by trap-dykes or other rocks, or the wall rock may
be imbedded in it or other matter destitute of ore.
The ore, too, is often deposited in " chimneys,"
which run lengthways with the vein, and thus carry
the rich deposits out of one property into another ;
so that the unfortunate company which had been
gathering their hundreds of thousands one month
may be entirely without income the next ; and yet
after penetrating deeper they again strike on even
a richer deposit, or they may labour for years with-
out meeting with any.
I visited, during my stay in Virginia City, the
Savage mine, as being one of the safest and best
conducted, and also went over the works of the
Gould and Curry, Hale and Norcross, and Empire.
In the Savage we were placed on a platform in a
shaft, and with a warning from my conductor we
disappeared as if by magic from the cheerful sur-
face of the world, and descended with frightful
rapidity some 600 feet into the bowels of the moun-
tain, getting wild glimpses as we passed of what
seemed dark caverns, with lights gleaming and
mysterious-looking forms wielding the pick-axe—
which were the various levels with their workmen
—until we lauded quickly near the bottom.
These steam-worked shafts and platforms, how-
ever, seem very dangerous things, and I hear of
constant horrible accidents in them. It was re-
markable how dry and commodious the various
wings and levels and galleries were in this mine.
My guide took fragments from each rock as we
groped around the mine, and gave estimates of its
value with perfect confidence. " This will.pay $4O
a ton, this $l5, this $BO, this $5OO, and this $2,000!"
while all I could discern was a more or less dark
shade of the sulphurets. He says (what I hear
everywhere) that the companies now are careful
not to commit the error of the Gould and Curry,'
and bring all their beat ores at once to the mills
but they mix them and so average their product.
They all are welting with far greater economy