of the miners thereon. The diggers, of all nations, occupied the land as if it were their own. They made such rules and regulations as suited themselves, a new set for each new district; and when they disagreed they fought it out, with a good deal of help from the lawyers, and occasional appeal to the revolver or the Henry rifle as the least expensive and most satisfactory way of getting judgment. When, however, the placer diggings began to be pretty much exhausted, portions of the river-beds having been worked over as much, in some instances, as a dozen times, and at each time with diminishing profit; when quartz and hydraulic mining, requiring perseverance and a good deal of skilfully invested capital, came to be the chief methods of mining; and, especially, when it began to be found desirable to dispose of mines of doubtful value to foreign capitalists; then it gradually became apparent to mining men that it would be convenient to have a title, and that a position from which one could not be ousted by force, nor by the changing whims of a new body of occupants of the adjacent soil, might be a desirable thing, even if a small sum had to be paid to the United States in return for these advantages. Thus, at last, after years of discussion, pro and con, and when the discovery of the silver-bearing veins of Nevada had quite thrown the gold of California into the shade, making permanency of occupation of the highest importance, Congress took up the matter of the sale of the public mineral lands in the Pacific States; and, in 1866, almost twenty years after the first discovery of gold in California and the consequent rush of emigration thither, an Act was passed entitled "An Act granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands, and for other purposes," the "other purposes" being much the most important ones, and including, among other things, provisions for the sale of the mineral lands. This Act was somewhat amended in 1870; and, in 1872, another one was passed, entitled "An Act to promote the development of the mining resources of the United States," modifying and repealing a part of former laws on this subject, and leaving the matter nearly in this form: "All valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United States, both surveyed and unsurveyed," are declared to be free and open to exploration and

purchase by citizens of the United States and those who have declared their intention to become such, "under regulations prescribed by law, and according to the local customs or rules of miners, in the several mining districts, so far as the same are applicable and not inconsistent with the laws of the United States." Mining claims, "upon veins or lodes of quartz or other rock in place bearing gold, silver, cinnabar, lead, tin, copper, or other valuable deposits heretofore located," shall be governed as to length along the vein or lode "by the customs, regulations, and laws in force at the date of their location." But any claim made after the passage of this Act must not exceed 1,500 feet in length on the lode, or 300 feet in width, neither shall it be less than 25 feet in width on each side of the middle of the vein. All persons already holding claims are confirmed in possession of them; but their sides are limited by vertical planes; that is, the idea of "square claims" is maintained, and not the old Spanish custom of regulating the inclinations of the sides of the location to correspond with the dip of the lode. This is a most beneficial provision, and its enforcement by law years ago would have saved millions squandered in litigation; the "honest miner" having been very much inclined, if he had lost his vein, to endeavor to get hold of another, under the pretence that it was one of the "spurs, dips, or angles" of his own, to use the jargon in which the notices of mining claims have always been written, excepting in the very few districts where "square claims" have been adopted by the miners. Provision is also made for enabling any miner to purchase and procure a patent for his claim, on paying for its survey, and at the rate of five dollars an acre for the land. In case of adverse claimants to the same piece of ground, the question of right has to be settled "by a court of competent jurisdiction." The miner, however, need not purchase, unless he sees fit to do so. The United States will not in any case molest him in his occupancy of the ground. This is not the place to go into any discussion of the crudities of the law in question, which bears all the marks of having been drawn up by lawyers with an eye to their own business, rather than to the good of the miner or of the country in general: certainly no competent mining-engineers could have been

consulted in its preparation. By a subsequent Act, passed in 1873, "vacant coal-lands are allowed to be entered at the price of ten dollars per acre, "if more than fifteen miles from a railroad, and twenty dollars if within that distance." The amount which may be so entered is limited to 160 acres for each person applying, or 320 in case of an "association of persons." Those actually in possession of coal-mines which they have opened and worked have the preference in making the entry, and may purchase an amount of land not exceeding 640 acres, provided as much as $5,000 has been expended on the development of the property.

In regard to the collection of mining statistics, something has been attempted to be done by the government, but with little success, since there are no laws requiring owners of mines to keep any record of their operations, or to furnish such, if kept, to a government official. The census mining returns, gathered every ten years, have sometimes been amusing from their absurdities, never of any value as statistics, except perhaps in the case of the census of 1870, with reference to the production of coal and iron.* To illustrate the utter worthlessness of our government mining statistics still further, it may be added that the "commissioner of mining statistics reported, as the gold and silver product of the year 1870, the sum of $61,500,000; the census returns of the same year give as the value of the "gold and silver mining product," $26,452,652. Everybody posted in mining statistics knows that they are of little or no value, unless the sources from which they are obtained are under constant and efficient control by men of honesty and intelligence. In this country estimates of the amounts of the metals produced are simply guesses, which are valuable in proportion as the guesser has skill in weighing against each other and combining a great many facts bearing indirectly on the problem to be solved.

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* The superintendent of the census of 1860 estimated the amount of iron produced in the United States at 98 pounds for each man, woman, and child. To arrive at this result he added the total production of manufactured iron to that of the crude pig from which the manufactured was almost exclusively produced, proceeding exactly similar to what it would be if, to ascertain the weight per head of bread consumed in any town, one were to add the weight of the flour sold to that of the bread produced in order to arrive at the total to be divided by the number of persons.

The establishment of a national mining school, under the control of some one of the departments at Washington, has been repeatedly advocated, and bills have been introduced in Congress with that end in view. As our government does not attempt in any way to interfere with or control the mining interest, it is difficult to see why a mining school should be supported by the nation, any more than a school of law or dentistry. The graduates of such a school would stand no more chance of employment than would those of any other institution. It is extremely desirable that our mines should be worked with skill and economy; but the establishment of a national mining school would not have the slightest effect in bringing about the wished-for result. It is very desirable that Congress should pass laws regulating the sale of the mineral lands in a manner consistent with the well-established principles of political economy, and that a sound knowledge of geology and mining should form the basis of those laws. But if the most accomplished and the most honest mining engineers in the country were to offer their gratuitous services to the authorities at Washington for the purpose of helping to draw up the necessary laws, they would simply be laughed at for their pains.

It must not be supposed, however, that because the general government has wretchedly mismanaged the mineral lands belonging to the public domain, that our mining resources have not been rapidly and extensively developed. Our produce of iron is enormous, second only to that of Great Britain: the increase in the amount of coal mined is rapid, and indicates the steady expansion of our manufacturing interests. The gold of California has been washed from the surface detritus. with feverish haste; and now the silver-mines of Nevada are the scene of the most extensive mining operations the world has ever seen. Nature has been prodigal in her gifts to our people; and we have been and are, perhaps, not more wasteful of our mineral than of our agricultural resources. The future will show how haste has made waste; but there is not the slightest reason to expect any change at present. As the development of the great permanent mineral interests, those of coal and iron, is chiefly in the older States, where the gen

eral government has no claim to interfere, having no ownership in the land, we may expect to see the individual States, at no very distant period, making necessary and desirable regulations for the health and safety of the miners and the people living in the neighborhood of underground workings; and economy, the result of skilful management, will come into fashion when the country has been forced into it, a process which, as some think, has already commenced. A thorough knowledge of the geological structure of the country will form a sound basis on which the economical development of its mineral resources may rest; and of what has been done in this direction by United States and State authority we may now proceed to furnish a sketch.

The first step in geological science in this country dates back as far as 1807, when William Maclure, quite unaided and alone, commenced the exploration of the structure of the Appalachian chain, and the region lying between that range and the Atlantic coast. This was before William Smith's Geological Map of England had been issued; but this pioneer in the science had already, seventeen years before, given to the world his "Tabular View of the British Strata," in which, for the first time, any part of the series of fossiliferous rocks, which make up so large a portion of the visible crust of the earth, had been arranged in the order of their formation. The Geological Society of London had just been founded, and the science of geology had suddenly begun to exist, and to command attention among educated men throughout Europe. Unfortunately the rocks of which the order of superposition was first worked out in England were quite different in geological age from those which largely predominate on the Atlantic slope and in the Valley of the Mississippi. Had this been otherwise, had the Silurian and Devonian formations, which cover so large a part of our own territory, been equally important and well defined in England, the task set before the earlier explorers here would have been much simplified. As it was, they had to wait for thirty years before Sedgwick and Murchison solved the difficulties presented by the Paleozoic system in Wales and on its borders, and gave our geologists the material for comparing their results with