Arizona weekly citizen., 1895-07-27

feet of ground stoped out will testify,
 but there is none today except in pillars,
 and one might descend stone steps cut
 On the slant of the footwall ziyzsg fash
 ion to depth of 360 feet without being
 able to strike a ton of quartz which go
 more than a few dollars higher. Thus
 carefully was it mined.
 Standing on these same stone steps at the bottom O; the mine and throwing a
 light upwards past galleries where once echoed the ring of miners tools, the
 most skeptical will realize that this has
 been 10 ordinary mine. In no other th at the writer knows of has a gold ledge
 been worked in Sonora solely under
 Mexican supervision to so great depth
 as this one. When it is taken into con- siderstion the style of working universal
 to that people, now the peOns are con-
 pelled to climb fer hundreds of feet up
 no.ched poles, stone steps and nitches
 in the footwall with theIr load of quartz
 contained Tn the leathern sacks on their
 shoulders, mining at any depth over 300
 feet must have been costly undertak-
 ing, and the mine itself more than un-
 usually rich to warrant such an ex- pense. This La Nina Yaqui was. It IS |
 were taken out winch averaged over
 half an ounce of gold to the "carga," or
 roughly speaking, little over S60 per
 ton. But thIs valuable ore was not all | the mine produced. The richest of ! the quartz pockets were discovered in 8
 grayI3h tale different from anything found elsewhere in Sonora. The gold
 was perfectly free from quartz, in the form of nuggets that even the most ex- per epced could not tell from placer gold, water worn and smooth as it was The pockets varied in value from few hundred dollars up to SS0,C00, and it is as pocket mine that La Nina Yaaui was most highly regarded by the Mexi- cans. or course such gold there was DO need to treat in any manner, 1t came to l the miners hands all but refined and | coined. The high grade quartz, though, | was packed on burros fifteen miles to | Cienega, where the owner of the mine | lived. and there crushed in arrastras in | view of hIs house.
 That the ore brought out of the mine | was all high grade is evidenced by this | fact: neither around the opening to the | old works nor anywhere on top is 8 piece | Of quartz to be seen, proving st once that EOne was sorted and that all ores coming from the mlne were crushed. Nothing speaks so highly of Mexican mine as the absence Of sorted quartz on top, and nothing 80 impresses the miner who examines the magnitude of it's un- dergrOund workings Gs to see when he emerges into the fresh air again no sign Of rejected quartz.
 In the brief account which has been given of the mine up to 1S49, no refer ence has been made of changes of own- ershlp, or of the several interup- tlOls in It's working due to revolutions. At the time of the California gold ex- cItement of that year it had about reach ed depth beyond which it could not be worked in the crude manner general to Mexican mining, and for a while it was shut down. In the early sixties General SerDa determined to reopen it but not by means of the old workings. For this purpose be employed a good ! Americen mining superintendent and proce eded to sink shaft with the inten- ton of getting below them, and after draining out the water which had enter ed, operating the mine with improved machinery and by modern methods.
 
 shaft to distance of two hundced and | eighty feet and reaching the ledge by a ne was compelled to stop work, one ot the periodical Sonora revolutions having broken out in which he was com- Oelled to take an active part. Since that time the mine has never been oper- ited, at least not in the way we might expect of such property. It is now lsed as a reservoir. In the rainy sf ason ,he water IS conducted into the old works and thence into the shaft from . which It is baled out in lethern buckets hauled to the surface by means of long 'aw hIde rope for the YaquI Indians employed on the day washers.
 At certain times of the year the shaft Y 'uns dry. Then men are sent down with !. instructions to go into the old works md bale up the water into the shaft. Not long ago an Indian employed for his purpose brought up with him z piece of quartz literally covered with . coarse gold. It was broken in a mortar , ,ver at the store and yielded seventy i Every dry season the , bottom of the shaft is cleaned out and !, , lebris sent up to the top. This debris . which has been brought down by the water coursing over the old drifts and topes through the crosscut into the haft, carries frequently much rich v Iuartz ana free gold that IS carefully [ on top and everything of value T aken out. On one occasion $Sc0 was obtained from thIs source.
 Such is the old Nina Yaqui. If any, me desires to explore It's innermost re- T esses he can do so in the dry season by .oing down the shaft which IS now in !lmost as good condition as on the day vhen it was abandoned. He will see a nine we'll worth visiting. One of those ' yhcse real wealth has furnished stories 'ften applied to other mines. A vein which has increased from three feet near !, he surface to nearly seven at the bottom n a granite and porphyry formation ' arrying with it every sign of permsnen- y and holding forth promise of becom- . ng as the sulphurets are reached if possible richer than 1t was in it's palmy 1 {. lays hslt a century ago. Walking over he surface the croppings of this ledge :, nay be traced for fully mile and a half :. O the village of San Bias, another little V ettlement on this great Llanos and Iienega concession. In this district q here are numberless veins to be taken /. ID. Some were worked ages back long before the dawn of the present century, thers have never been touched. On ' he vein of the Nina Yaqui but small V ,ortion is now held. Much of it can ! consequently be located Whether the Thole of the vein is equally rich can uly be proved by development. Possi- v, ly the Nina Yaqui was located on a r hute of msrvellously rich ore, which !, 7lll not again be repeated on the ledge, nd possibly, it IS quite within the U ,ounds of reason to think so, there are ther chutes of like nature on the vein. U { so some one will reap reward in ime, but when and how much that is e f course a question. It is a mining hance that is all. Of the Nina Yaqui c tself, it IS only fair to presume that one F ay it will be opened up again, and that iI