The live stock in the State consists of 8,600 horses, 1,000 mules, 26,700 cattle, and 12,800 sheep.

The mineral wealth of Nevada is not surpassed by the richest parts of the great mineral region of the Pacific coast. The annual yield of the precious metals has been about $15,000,000; at the present period it is $25,000,000 per annum. This is the present annual yield of the California mines. Rich discoveries of the precious metals are being daily made in this region, so lately appearing upon the maps of America as "unexplored;" and it would seem that nature had deposited her richest treasures in the mountains and rugged hills of this remote section, and that through toil, privations, dangers, and poverty, the pioneer and hardy miner should open the vast gold and silver vaults of Nevada to meet the growing wants of the new civilization pushing westward toward the direction of the setting sun, and the exigencies of complicated internal disorders of commerce.

As early as 1850, gold had been discovered in Nevada, but until the discovery of the famous Comstock lode at Virginia City, in 1859, but little mining had been done in this region; and the country, a wild and uninhabited desert, was regarded as the most worthless and desolate portion of the American continent. In 1859, and succeeding years, the discoveries of great deposits of gold and silver in the mountains produced a panic throughout the whole Pacific coast, almost depopulating many sections of California, from which latter State Nevada has received almost her entire population.

Previous to the year 1859, but about $400,000 in gold had been obtained in Nevada; since that period

to the present, the yield of gold and silver has exceeded $135,000,000.

Marked industry and perseverance are leading traits among the population of Nevada, and the vast amount of labor being expended upon the mines of the State may be partially understood by the fact that there are 156 quartz-mills, with an aggregate of 2,200 stamps, employed in reducing ores. But the wealth of Nevada does not consist alone of her agriculture, and gold and silver mines, but also in her rich and boundless deposits of other minerals: iron, copper, carbonate of soda, sulphur, alum, and other minerals of superior quality, and in great abundance, exist throughout the State. Salt, so important an article, and so much employed in the working of ores, is found in such vast quantities that it is supposed that there is salt enough in Nevada to supply the markets of the whole United States. Salt is found in almost every county in the State: it is found upon the surface, and in vast beds in the earth, where it can be shovelled up white and pure, and of the best quality. Doubtless at one time large salt lakes, or perhaps the ocean, covered vast areas of the surface of what is now the State of Nevada, and doubtless to this fact may be attributed the presence of such extensive salt-beds as are found in this State. In one section of the southern part of Nevada, a single salt-bed of great depth and of superior quality covers an area of fifty square miles. Salt springs and deposits of salt are things which exist all over the globe, at least in most countries; but it seems to have been left to this section (Nevada) to rear a mountain of this useful mineral. In Lincoln county stands a solitary mountain

of pure salt, transparent as crystal and of superior quality.

Mining, agriculture, lumbering, cattle and sheep raising, and many other branches of industry, are carried on most successfully in Nevada. The great overland railroad connecting San Francisco and New York passes through the whole width of the State, giving a stimulus to business, and inducing investments in mining interests; and various other roads, projected and building, indicate the speedy development of this section. Already there are six hundred miles of railroad built in Nevada.

The State is divided into fourteen counties, and in the mining districts there are several growing towns. Carson City, at the eastern base of the Sierras, is the capital of the State. It is built on a low flat, where the skirts of the Sierras reach a fertile valley. The population of the city is 3,042; of whom more than half are foreigners, there being 1,606 of the latter, and but 1,436 native Americans. Virginia City, the largest city in the State, a few miles east of Carson, and built upon the high ridge and over the great Comstock lode-the richest and most extensive quartz-mine in the world— has a population of 7,048, almost equally divided between native and foreign born, there being 3,592 of the former, and 3,456 of the latter. White Pine, in the centre of a newly discovered and rich mining district, although scarcely a hut had been built in it two years before, had, at the beginning of 1871, a population of 7,200. Austin, Belmont, and several other growing towns in the mining districts indicate considerable activity and signs of general progress. The State has

in operation 156 quartz-mills, seven flour-mills, and twenty-two saw-mills. Schools, churches, theatres, and elegant dwellings in all the towns and villages exhibit the industry and intelligence of the people, who maintain in their State thirteen newspapers, and an aggregate of 160,000 books in its libraries.

Notwithstanding the wide areas of barren, alkaline, and sandy deserts of Nevada, enough of good soil, wide pasture-ranges, forests, lakes, rivers, and mines of gold, silver, and other minerals exist to warrant the permanent wealth and future greatness of this young and sparsely populated interior State.