in pronouncing them the authors of the local rules and customs. He does not, however, criticise the even more positive language of Chief Justice Sanderson in the decision of the case of Morton vs. Solambo Copper Mining Company. He calls attention to the similarity between these rules and regulations and certain features of the Mexican ordinances, of the Spanish Code, of the regulations of the Stannary Convocations among the tin bounders of Devon and Cornwall, and of the High Peak Regulations for the lead mines of Derby. He says in the earlier days of placer digging in California the large influx of miners from the western coast of Mexico and from South America dictated the system of work to Americans; that the latter, with few exceptions from the gold mines of North Carolina and Georgia, and from the lead mines of Illinois and Wisconsin, were almost entirely inexperienced in this branch of industry; that the Cornish miners soon spread themselves through the State, and added largely by their experience, practical sense, and industrious habits, in bringing the code into something like shape. With all deference due to any opinion expressed by Mr. Yale, it appears to me that he has in this chapter failed sometimes to distinguish between the practical work in mining taught the pioneers by their Mexican, Chilenian and Cornish associates and their comrades from the southern gold, and western lead states, and the framing of rules and regulations. The hints and suggestions on the pan and rocker and long tom and sluice do not necessarily include instructions on a code of mining in a situation absolutely as novel to the persons from whom they learned how to mine as it was to the pioneers themselves. The mining land in North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois and Wisconsin is all held under principles founded on the common law of England. Nor is it necessary to hold with Mr. Yale and General Halleck that the Mexican system was the foundation for the rules and customs adopted, for in the matter of lode claims that system is the direct antithesis of the California system, the former recognizing vertical planes through the exterior boundaries and the latter recognizing the extra-lateral right. The mere fact that the Mexi

can system recognized discovery as the source of title and development as the condition of holding it, need not cause us to jump to the conclusion that in these respects the rules and customs of Californians were a conscious imitation of the Mexican system, especially when the two systems are so radically dissimilar in other points. In a region where the only title could be possessory, and possibly temporary, under the law, what other arrangement in these respects than the one adopted could have suggested itself to the pioneers? May it not be simply another illustration of the fact that, with the same problem and the same environment, the human mind has in different ages often arrived at the same practical solution. Even the idea of the story of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras need not necessarily be deemed a conscious imitation of its Boeotian prototype.

The California pioneers who were Americans did not have to learn the science of organization from their foreign associates. The instinct of organization was a part of their heredity. Professor Macy, of Johns Hopkins University, once wrote: "It has been said that if three Americans meet to talk over an item of business, the first thing they do is to organize." This trait is as characteristic as the one of periodically saving the country by assembling in mass meeting and passing resolutions. Californians were not the first American early settlers upon the public domain of the United States who were left for a time without statutory law, federal or local. The institutional beginnings of more than one western state, notably of Wisconsin and Iowa, furnish a most interesting parallel, and the groundwork of their rules and regulations, except with regard to the extra-lateral right in mining, are in many respects absolutely identical. The lead miners of Dubuque who on the 17th of June, 1830, assembled around an old cottonwood log, stranded on an island, and appointed a committee of five miners to draw up regulations for their government, would have been surprised to be told in after years that the rules they framed had any other source for their inspiration than the courage, the necessities and the resourcefulness of intelligent frontiersmen.

EARLY RULES AND REGULATIONS.

"In the early days of placer mining," says Mr. Hittell, in his 'History of California,' Vol. 3, Page 252, "it was not uncommon to fix the size of a claim at ten feet square; but it was only in very rich ground that this quantity was found to be sufficient. In poorer localities or where ground had been once partially worked, the size was usually one hundred feet square, though there were many variations according to circumstances the idea in each case being to afford every man a fair chance to accumulate wealth, and with this object in view to give him as much ground as he could possibly use. The next provision—and a remarkable and important one-was that the claim could only be held while it was being reasonably worked. It was usual to provide

that when a claim was taken up, stakes should be driven at the corners or written notices of appropriation posted up or an entry made in a record book open to the public; and sometimes several of these modes or others equally efficacious in giving information were required; but in all cases the fee of the land was regarded as belonging to the government, and no person could acquire any ownership beyond the mere use for mining purposes, and that only while being so used. A very common condition was that a certain amount of work should be done within a specified time, sometimes a certain amount every week during the mining season; or otherwise that the claim should be liable to be taken up by anybody else. So, also, if a person went away from his claim without leaving his tools or some other understood evidence of an intention of returning and resuming work. Here, again, it was the same principle of the equality of every man and his right to an equal chance with his fellows; on the one hand securing him in his possession and the fruits of his labor, but on the other hand offering to each of his fellows the same privilege, if he failed to make use of them. The condition under which claims could be held and the circumstances under which they could be forfeited, together with the size of the claims and the manner of settling disputes, constituted the chief points embraced in what

were known as the mining laws or mining customs. There were, of course, variations in different localities. In most cases the first discoverer or locator of a mining region was entitled to more ground than any other miner, generally to twice as much; and in many cases, special provisions were made about sales and purchase of claims and the authentication of bills of sale, which were the usual instruments by which claims were conveyed.

"Obviously no customs or laws could be adopted without some kind of consensus or assent on the part of the mining community. This was at first generally merely the agreement of the particular company or camp, which might have its own separate and distinct rules and regulations different from all its neighbors; but by degrees meetings of the miners of different camps and at length of whole neighborhoods were held, until finally it became common to form what are known as mining districts, embracing large tracts of territory and to adopt laws applicable to and effective throughout the whole territory so included. * * * And there were a great many hundreds of them. Nearly every bar, flat and gulch had its separate rules. Their jurisdictions were ferequently changed, some consolidating into large districts and others dividing into smaller ones-the changes being dependent chiefly upon the character as to homogeneousness or otherwise of the mining region embraced and the convenience for the miners of access to a common place of meeting."

DESCRIPTION OF RULES AND REGULATIONS.

Mr. Ross Browne, in his preliminary report on the Mineral Resources of the West, made in 1867 (p. 226), in describing the nature of these regulations, says:

"It is impossible to obtain, within the brief time allowed for this preliminary report, a complete collection of the mining regulations, and they are so numerous that they would fill a volume of a thousand pages. There are not less than five hundred mining districts in California, two hundred in Nevada, and one hundred each in Arizona, Idaho and Ore

gon, each with its set of written regulations. The main objects of the regulations are to fix the boundaries of the district, the size of the claims, the manner in which claims shall be marked and recorded, the amount of work which must be done to secure the title, and the circumstances under which the claim is considered abandoned and open to occupation by new claimants. The districts usually do not contain more than a hundred square miles, frequently not more than ten, and there are in places a dozen within a radius of ten miles. In lode mining, the claims are usually two hundred feet long on the lode; in placers the size depends on the character of the diggings and the amount of labor necessary to open them. In hill diggings, where the pay dirt is reached by long tunnels, the claim is usually a hundred feet wide, and reaches to the middle of the hill. Neglect to work a placer claim for ten days in the season when it can be worked is ordinarily considered as an abandonment. The regulations in the different districts are so various, however, that it is impossible to reduce them to a few classes comprehending all their provisions."

The most succinct and accurate description of the rules. and regulations of the California miners, and especially of the manner of marking the boundaries of the claims, both placer and lode, is from the pen of Chief Justice Beatty (Report Public Land Commission, p. 396):

"When placer mining began in California there was no law regulating the size of claims or the manner of holding and working them, and local regulations by the miners themselves became a necessity. They were adopted, not because the subject was too complicated or difficult for general regulation, but because they were needed at once as the sole refuge from anarchy. The first and most important matter to be regulated was the size of claims, and the earliest miners' rules contained little else than a limitation of the maximum amount of mining ground that one miner might hold. That being determined, he was left to take possession of his claim and work it as he pleased. It thus