Fort Sumter, near Powder River, twenty miles west from Auburn. The older districts, discovered as early as 1862, and worked with more or less steadiness ever since, are Blue Cañon, Pioneer, Humboldt Basin, and Rye Valley. They are all good yet, containing large areas of placer diggings that will pay from $3 to $16 or $20 per day to the hand. The Auburn camp, in Blue Cañon district, has been more nearly exhausted, perhaps, than any other important one in the county; yet even at Auburn there is ground enough yet unworked to furnish profitable employment to large numbers of miners for several years to come. The great difficulty is the inadequate supply of water. This camp is situated on a tributary of Powder River, and connected by a very fine road with Baker City, in the main valley, at present the most important and thriving town in the county. The gulch at Auburn does not supply water enough for mining, and the principal source is the ditch of the Auburn Canal Company, thirty miles long, completed in 1863, and costing, with reservoirs, &c., more than $200,000. There are now at work in this district about 100 whites and 150 Chinese. Shasta district contains two flourishing towns, Eldorado and Malheur City. Messrs. Carter and Packwood have 200 Chinamen at work, building a ditch forty miles long, by means of which they expect to furnish a large supply of water for the season of 1870. Reeves & Co. have also a small ditch. The little work hitherto done in the district indicates that, with sufficient water, 2,000 men could find claims that would yield handsomely. Easton district has one town, Amelia City. The prospects in this camp are good; the gold is very fine, worth $17 50 per ounce. Fort Sumter district contains a large number of placer claims, and some promising quartz lodes, which the owners are too poor to develop at present. Bull's Run, Oro Grande, and Webfoot Basin are new districts, which promise well. Pioneer, Humboldt Basin, and Rye Valley are, as already remarked, among the oldest districts in the county, and still remain among the best. They contain large areas of good placer ground. During the summer of 1866 a nugget of 40 ounces, worth $640, was found in Humboldt Basin. The gold from these camps varies in value from $14 to $18 50 per ounce. Mining is carried on with iron and canvas hydraulic pipes, or with ground-sluices. Rocking pays well in Humboldt Basin, where men have realized as much as $70 to $90 per day of eight hours, by this rude method. There is no ground unlocated in this camp; but in all the others there are many good chances yet open. Quartz ledges are discovered every season; but, as a rule, placer-mining continues to pay too well to allow much attention to be turned to this more permanent, but more difficult, branch. A "pocket-vein," the Niagara, in Humboldt Basin, furnished in 1863 some remarkable specimens of quartz, studded with gold. Rye Valley district has been successfully worked for four years past, but the gold is of low standard-about .740. The amount of silver mixed with it led to the belief that silver-bearing veins might be found in the district. Since my return from Oregon, I have received information of the discovery of five or six ledges of silver ore, reported to be of extraordinary richness. Some of the croppings, smelted out upon a blacksmith's forge, yielded at the rate of $7,000 to $9,000 per ton. One of the lodes, the Green Discovery, is 18 inches to 2 feet wide at the outcrop. These claims have been eagerly taken up, and owners are very sanguine over the expected results of next year's operations. The snow prevents active working in the winter. There are hill, gulch, and placer mines all the way up Burnt River from Express Ranch. Coarse gold, worth $18 per ounce, is found on the steep, high points from 20 to 50 feet above the river, and the whole country is full of quartz lodes, which have furnished the gold of the alluvial deposits, but which are as yet, except in a very few localities, unknown and unheeded. In August, 1869, a rich placer field was discovered, (reported to yield "$2 per shovelful of dirt,") on a small stream entering Snake River, a few miles below the mouth of Burnt River, fifty miles southeast of Baker City. During the excessively dry season, 30 or 40 men have "made wages" on the bars of the Snake itself, where there is ordinarily too much water to permit bar-mining. Union district contains nothing of importance except the somewhat celebrated gold mine of Colonel Ruckel. This is situated eight miles east of Baker City, on the eastern slope of a range of hills, overlooking a large interior basin, across which for many miles may be seen the gleaming, white, dusty line of the old emigrant road. The hills are usually covered with bunch-grass; but this, at the time of my visit, had been devastated by creeping fires, giving to the whole landscape an inexpressibly desolate appearance. The little gulch which crosses the vein or veins of this mine, and debouches into the plain below, is possessed, however, of a good spring, and presents, even in a dry season, some touches of greenness. I believe the quartz lodes were discovered by teamsters, tracing up the float-quartz found in the gulch, which was successfully worked as a placer for some years. There are a few other locations, but nothing developed. The workings are on two veins, or two parts of the same vein, called respectively the Union and the Rocky Fellow, the principal mine, shown in the diagram, being on the Rocky Fellow. The course of the latter, which appears to be the main lode, is northwest and southeast, along the east face of the mountain; and its dip generally northeast, but varying from 450 to 80°. The Union workings on the northwest show that vein to course some 20° nearer east and west; and this course would inevitably bring the two together. I think the vein exposed in the principal mine includes both branches united into one vein. The workings have not been connected so as to show the point of junction. This vein varies in width from six inches to twelve feet, averaging three feet. The outcrop is perhaps 600 feet or more above the great valley, and a little more than 300 feet above the point in the foot-hills, where the company's house is situated, near the spring. The ore is quartz, carrying free gold, with a very small proportion of sulphurets of iron and copper. Much of the quartz has a milky appearance, and shows green spots and stains, (not copper,) like that of the mother lode in Mariposa, California. The best quartz is banded, and full of dark spots and seams. It is said to be pretty hard to crush, but to have yielded for months more than $20 per ton. The position of the mine facilitates opening by cross-tunnels, two of which have been run; the first or upper one 292 feet vertically above the house, cutting the lode at 105 feet from its mouth; and the lower one, 122 feet above the house, cutting the lode at 424 feet, and 190 feet vertically below the outcrop. The ground laid open by these tunnels and the drifts shown in the diagram has been nearly exhausted. To the southeast the vein grows harder and poorer, and I believe there is little encouragement to extend the drifts in that direction. To the northwest it apparently divides, and possibly the Union takes the best part of it. The most promising direction for open The portions stoped out are shaded. a horse set in; at D, the quartz is poor. RUCKEL'S OR UNION MINE, NEAR BAKER CITY.-Scale 100 feet to the inch. At A, the vein was good, and measured three to four feet; at B, there was a rich chimney in a 12-foot vein; at C, ing new ground is therefore in depth, and a shaft has been sunk for a new level below that of the long tunnel. The timbering throughout the works is good, and the tunnels and shafts give excellent ventilation and perfect drainage. The new workings below the tunnel level are not much troubled with water, as there seems to be for the small quantity of water in the hills a subterranean outlet to the spring at the base. On the Union vein a shaft has been sunk 90 feet, and much quartz extracted from drifts and stopes said to have yielded in the aggregate $30,000. No machinery has been required in the main workings hitherto, except the cars which transport on to the mouth of the long tunnel, where it is dumped into wagons and hauled to the 12-stamp mill at Baker City. Under these favorable conditions, the cost of extraction being only $4 per ton, and the cost of hauling $4, the mine has yielded large profits; but outside operations are said to have embarrassed the proprietor, and the property is now, I am told, involved in litigation. Only a few men were at the spot when I visited it, and the mill was standing idle. This mine has every appearance of extraordinary value; but it has been pushed hard for immediate revenues, and the result is, that new ground must be opened before the former flourishing production can be renewed. Its well-defined, persistent, and productive character, and the fact that it is the only development of the kind, to my knowledge, in a county which, I am convinced, will hereafter take a high rank in quartz-mining, led me to give it a careful examination. I trust it will soon be worked again with vigor and success. SECTION IV.-IDAHO. CHAPTER XXXV. GENERAL REMARKS. The boundaries of this Territory have been changed so often that a description of the present lines may not be amiss. Idaho adjoins on the north the British possessions; its western boundary is formed in its northern part by a line running along longitude 400 west, which separates it from Washington Territory, to a point near latitude 460 north; from here it follows the course of the Snake River to the neighborhood of latitude 43° 45', when it follows again the line along longitude 40° west, to the intersection of the northern line of the State of Nevada in latitude 420 north. Its southern boundary line follows that latitude eastward to about longitude 34° west, where it meets the western boundary line of Wyoming. From this point northward the eastern line separates the Territory from Wyoming to near latitude 44° west, and from here on it takes a northwesterly course along the summit of the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains to a point in about latitude 47° 40′ north and longitude 39° west, and then runs along longitude 39° to where it crosses the national boundary line on the north. The Territory adjoins on the east Wyoming, a small part of Dakota, and Montana. Its area is at present 86,294 square miles. The Territory is drained by the tributaries of the Columbia River, the principal ones of which are Clark's Fork in the north and the Snake River with its affluents, the Clear Water, Salmon River, Payette, Boise, and many smaller ones in the south. It is copiously watered and very mountainous. The principal quartz mines are situated in the southwestern part of Idaho, in Owyhee, Idaho, Boise, and Alturas Counties, the former taking the lead. Placer diggings, more or less extensive and important, are found in almost all parts of the Territory; the best known and most prosperous ones are those of the Boise basin, those along the head-waters of the Salmon River, the Clear Water, and the Kootenay diggings. Idaho, like most of the Pacific mining districts which depend mainly upon placers for their production of gold, has suffered severely from the extraordinary lack of water during the present season. Indeed, it may almost be said that there has been no season this year at all, so early did the streams upon which the miners rely fail to supply water sufficient for the ditches and sluices. There has been a little bar mining rendered possible by the low water in the Snake, Boise, and other rivers; but I have heard of nothing remarkable in the way of profits from this source. Probably it has merely paid small wages to a few men who were willing to adopt this method of occupying the time until either fall rains or spring thaws should enable them to return to their more remunerative claims. This state of things is always favorable to new discoveries. The active and enterprising pioneers in the mining regions, when they are forced to leave their regular employment, generally start out on prospecting tours. It is actual economy to take a horse, a pair of blankets, and a few supplies, and travel in the mountains for a few weeks, rather |