Mohave County miner., 1883-04-29
Prospecting for Gold and
 Silver.

' OP14A5 III CHO S1AAHO OA OAS N> i Coast the prospectors are hitting out
 for the discovery and occupation ot
 new ground. At first the limit was
 Nevada, Sierra, Plumas, Butte and
 Placer counties in California. With
 another year Siskiyou was reached.
 and all the long line of hills from
 Mount Shasta to Mariposa. It was
 then so many colors to the pan, so
 many dollars or ounces to the day
 with rockers. After awhile the long
 tom was invented and 1t was conn
 dently told that with it man could
 double his work. Later a year or
 two the first great deal began in Mar
 iposa, and still later an English com
 pany built a costly but crude quartz
 mill above Marysville, at Brown Val
 lev. Sir Henry Huntly was ir charge.
 and though he knew very little about
 quartz or how to save gold from it,
 he rode a magnificent blood horse
 and looked as though he might be
 familiar with all the chemistry of the rocks. Those were the days of wild sprees, fandangoes, of pack trains.
 and when in some little building a theatrical play was advertised, and 
 when on the little 12x14 stage a girl in spangles appeared to sing or to execute a fancy dance great hearty shouts greeted her and the stage was showered with geld pieces. Those were the days of generous hearts and quick, sharp quarrels. The fashion of honoring murderers and hanging horse thieves was inaugur
 ated then on this coast. With every year new mines were found and new improvements in working them were made. Those were the days when rivers were turned aside at great cost, and when, not unfrequently, just as the day for commencing to reap a reward corresponding with the outlay arrived, the rains came and all the labor and money expended were hopelessly lost.
 In Calaveras, Amador, Nevada, Sierra and Plumas counties, quartz mining and milling grew to be bus mess. but it was uncertain; 1t was something of which men knew noth- ing Of, but the thought that ii from the ore the precious metal could be obtained, it meant quick fortunes, such as Astor and Girard gathered through long years of tell, stimulated men to keep trying. Who ever thinks of Astor and Girard as rich men now? Those were the days ot steamers, those were the days when letters from home were kissed and cried over as never letters were be fore. Then hydraulic mining was invented, and the hills with their shaggy pines began to bow before the new destroyer. Every Autumn the immigrants came in from the plains with the crowd, and as the settlements in the deep hills grew permanent, toll roads were intro duced and the stages and big teams; year after year the volume of gold with increasing millions rose and foated away to the East and became an infusion of new blood to the ar teries of trade.
 Those were tue days of clipper ships, and every time man went down to San Francisco from the hills, his story on his return never failed to include descriptions of fsome new ship which had come into port and which was more beautiful than any ship had been before. And gradually at the point of the Penin sula the sand hills melted away and a regal city took form inside the Golden Gate. But the placers be gan to fail: the boards of the early miners began to grow grizzled, and they commenced to grow garrulOus when they talked of the winter of '49 and the spring of '50. 4 few of them tried farming, and when tue river bottoms were tested the result was astounding. There was better wheat and more to the acre than the richest lands of the East could pro duce. Still, as yet, all the upper lands of the valley were flower crowned, and old miners did not take kindly to farming. Something new was wanted. So in 1857, when it was told that iu British Columbia there were rich placers a new exodus began. The steamship companies famed the flame and the exodus grew to be stampede. It was short I;vad hut if was fatal tO many a