Year: 1860

J y
of over hundred thousand dollars. 1t was
supposed when the quartz discoveries were
made, aud the earliest mills erected, that
the fortune of every man who had mode
rate interest in one was secured, and that
gold would he ground out about as plenti-
/ fully as meal. A year or two pretty efec-
tually dispelled this dream. Not one in ten
of the mills erected in the season of wild
speculation paid expenses; most of them
used up all the gold, and more too, which
the stockholders put into them. The folly
with which many of them were worked, is
lndcrous enough. In the case OF this
Bunker Hill MILL" in Nevada, man who
pretended to be an assayer and chemist in-
duced the company TO build huge furnaces
out of brick, at dollar and talf each.
What for? To melt the quartz, and find
the gold in one solid layer, at the bottom
of the molten mass, when it had cooled
This was actually tried. The furnaces
were kept in full blast week, aud then
they looked for a surprising sediment of
wealth at the bottom Of their artificial vol
cano. Result, Of course, zero, plus heap
of Stag. The same chemist, they say, used
to receive specimens of quartz, every day,
to be tested. lie threw them into fox
hole back of his Office in the night, furnish
ed his analysis in due shape the next morn
ing, and took heavy fees. The mill is now
furnished with new machinery; another
company has bought it of the original pro-
prietors, who lost everything and it pays
moderate profits in crushing rock that
yields at the outside thirty dollars in gold
to ton. A man might have bis ''pocket
full of rocks" of this description. and not
be very "heavy" man of State st. 1t
rather reduces the poetry Of gold bearing
quartz in our Imagination to think of the
rock as yielding, under very expensive and
cunning machinery, not over cent and
half pound When it pays two cents a
pound it is accounted quite rich. Scores of
mills have proved failures, and very disas-
trous to the pockets of the projectors, be-
cause the quartz veins would not yield
cent pound.


Yet some mills pay enormous profits, and
are likely to for years to come. There are
a few, like the Eureka mine in Amador
county. which turn out clear gain of thir-
teen thousand dollars. OF the celebrated
Fremont estate, shall have something to
say in another letter. A vein near Sonora
is proved to be worth at least four millions.
But the most wonderful of all the quartz
leads is that on the Allison Ranch, a few
miles from Nevada. 1t is the richest gold
mine in California, and probably in the
world. Six persons own it-most of them,
| believe, Irish laborers originally. 1t was
opened by them in 1855. They owned no
mill, but sent the rock, as they took it out,
20 mill in the neghborhood, and the first
sixty tons yielded at the rate of $3.50 per
ton, paying over twenty thousand dollars.
In 1856 they erected small mill Of their
own, capable of crushing twenty tons of
ore day, and the six partners now grind
out clear cash, which they hardly know
what to do with, at the rate of nearly
hundred thousand dollars month. Miners
work half STOPPING in the dark, wet, mar
row shaft, hundreds Of feet under ground,
picking the soft, rich stone to be sent mp by
wndlass but no person, not skilled as
mineralogist, would believe that the rock
was of any value if he should see long
road macadamised with it. For not speck
of free fiaky gold is visible in any specimen
stones where the ledge pays three hundred
dollars ton.


In fact stranger is much disappointed,
who goes into one of these cash-factories,
that he doesn't see the production of dust or
nuggets fair and clean in some portion Of
the establishment. When first heard the
roar of the stampers of the quartz-mill 10
Nevada, and saw men shoveliDg the rock,
in pieces like eggs, under the crushing-irOns
that pounded them speedily to powder,
supposed that l could be taken at once to
the point in the mill where the dust was
steadily falling or settling, so that, each
hour, the yellow profit could be seen.
imagined that it was something like the
Yankees machine which took in the live
pig at one end, and turned out sausages
and scrubbing- brushes at the other. But
one may search whole day through mill
that is crushing fifty tons Of very rich ore,
and scarcely detect anywhere the color of
gold. When the stampers crush the rock
the powder is mixed with water, and the
milky fluid is dashed against the sieve.like
screen, through which it passes into box
outside that connects with long slnice ways
leading at last out of the mill. Traps are
set for the gold that is contained 10 the
white fluid as soon as it passes from the
stampers through the first screen. These
traps are quicksilver and blankets. In
some mills quicksilver is placed plentifully
under the huge pestlcs themselves, or in
the first box through which the dissolved
rock passes. and most of the gold is caught


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