The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1870-11-22
From Brooklyn, n. Y. Time
Mr.. Stearns on California.
NOTES ON HIS TRIP TO THE PACIFIC

FRIEND TIMES Since my return from
California / have often been asked what
are its advantages or inconvenience as a
home To these inquiries now propose
to reply.
To young men of energy,n in good health
few of our new States afford better
promise of success. The Placer treasures
that were formerly supposed to be had
for the taking, are, however, no longer
there Mining settled down to system
attic business, operated by capital, and
having fixed locations and vested trihes.
Gold and silver are produced from quartz
to be lifted through shafts and tunnels,
from many hundred feet below the sur
face of the earth, and when reduced in
stamping mills TO powder, to be separated
by means of the chemical affinitics OF
quicksilver with the metals, and their sub
sequent separation therefrom, by means Of
mechanical processes and the application
Of heat. In some mines, as near White
Pine in Nevada, gold, silver, and lead
subsist together as in natural amalgam,
which requires only the process of smelt-
ing, and the drawing off of n natural Aux
produced by msibls stone element in
composition with the ORE The product
of the furnace bearing the appearance OF
pigs of lead is usually freighted to New
York or Europe, or San Francisco to be
subjected to such refining processes as
will save each of the metals embraced il
the amalgam in its separate state. The
lead is worth 500 ton in San Francisco
and more in New York, while severa
hundred dollars in silver and gold are
separated from each ton Of the the com
bined metal.
Gold is still gathered from washing ou
the entire earth hills, under which the for
mer miners dug tunnels following wha
they esteemed the richer leads of tn,
gold paying dirt. By means of a larg'
stream of water concentrated in a sluic,
the entire earth of these hills is washed
into sluice some forty or fifty rods il
length, thirty inches wide with a descend
ing current Of water a foot deep; tn,
gold sinking to the bottom and being ga
thered in succession of mercurial bath
in the bottom of the sluice, over which
ripples are placed to arrest the gold in tn,
water current. Three or four times
year, the sluice is cleaned up of the gol'
and the mercury and the miner ascer
tains the success or failure of his bust
ness. This process, called hydraulic min
ing, is not likely to be pursued very man,
years before its favored places will be ex
hausted. and the real California minin
will be reduced to the quartz rock an
its processes of reduction. The minin
interest of Califarnia, in the aggregate
has not diminished, but successful minin
is confined to fewer hands, while the pc
pulatiou has largely increased, there bein
about six hundred thousand in the State
and agriculture and other industries hav
come to take the lead of mining in tn
material prosperity Of the State is yet t
be relieved from extraordinar
nary chances and risks, to which it
now subjected by the pursuits of the pee
, pie being limited to SO few department.
: The miner now scarcely runs a create
) risk in his luck of finding paying ore, ,tha
(the ranch mem farmers who confine thei
whole attention and occupy all their land
with wheat or barley. By the failure G
r. rains in the winter their crops are cut o
or greatly diminished while a fru
farm, especially with irrigation will, pr,
haps, mature crop better in a dry Sc,
son than in wet one. Variety of croI
and products are essential to the ind
pendent success of the farmer in Califo
MIA as elsewhere. There are some milliol
Of acres of land along the borders of Il
rivers, subject to be overhowed by Il
tides from the ocean or foods in Il
streams. These lands are granted
swamp lands to the State by act of Co
gress, and the State has surveyed and so
them to different persons, subject to d
] sessments for the construction of leye
along the streams, sufficient to prote
their crops against floods. Some Of the
lands are already leveed and reduced
= cultivation, and present a vegetation
deep dark green, in marked contrast wi
the stubble and strawcolored desolati
covering all the upland praires during t
10 summer and autumn. On these botto
lands, so protected and cultivated, ,
kinds Of vegetables can be abundant
OF produced, as we'll as grains and fruits.
I'd is in the development of these bottoms
ID Tule lands-that California 10 to find
protection against the uncertainty of u