the sulphur deposits; and reports on the tin mines of Temescal, and the coal and iron resources of the Pacific coast.

Section 8. Mining regions, population, altitude, &c.

Section 9. An annotated catalogue of the minerals found west of the Rocky mountains.

Section 10. Mining titles; the laws and customs of foreign governments; the crown right, and peculiar doctrines held under that right; the recent legislation of our own government; recommendations of the Secretary of the Treasury; passage of a law for the sale of mineral lands, and general approval of the policy adopted.

Section 11. Local customs; difficulties arising therefrom; the necessity of some uniform system; importance of congressional legislation for the systematic working of the mines, and the establishment of a permanent policy for the development of the great mineral resources of the country.

Section 12. A list of the most important works published in reference to the geology, mineralogy, and metallurgy of the Pacific coast.

Section 13. Population of the mining regions; agricultural resources; table of distances, &c.

From the above synopsis it will be seen that an earnest attempt, at least, has been made to meet the wishes of the department as expressed in the letter of instructions hereto appended. Want of time for a more systematic arrangement has been the only serious obstacle to more satisfactory results.

One of the most important subjects considered in the report is the discrepances existing between the local rules and customs upon which a material part of the late mineral land law is based and the statutes of the States and Territories. The policy of granting titles to the miners in fee-simple has met with such universal approval, and the time has been so short since the law went into operation, that I have serious doubts as to the expediency of an immediate change. Attention has been called to some of the difficulties arising from the loose interpretations given to local rules and customs, and in many cases the entire impracticability of determining what they are or ascertaining where they are to be found. Some provision requiring official records to be kept might, perhaps, have a benefical effect. Reasons doubtless exist for differences in the size of the claims in different districts. The rules which would apply to the Reese River district, where the ledges are extremely narrow and close to each other, would scarcely be applicable to districts in which the ledges are of great width and far apart. Still, without descending to details in a general law, some regard should be had to uniformity; and especially some fixed principle should be adopted as to the local laws which shall govern in all conflicting cases. The policy of giving every advantage to the practical miner over the mere speculator will at once be conceded. This, I think, can only be carried into effect by national legislation. A general law, based somewhat upon the principles incorporated in the mining law of Mexico, but more liberal in its provisions, will probably be required before long. The holding of claims without working; the seizure of mining property for debt; the abandonment of claims; the destruction of timber; the monopoly of salt-beds; these are subjects worthy of serious consideration.

In the preparation of a preliminary report I have been compelled to depend chiefly upon the labors of other and abler hands. To Mr. Hittell, author of a very excellent work on the resources of California, Professor Whitney, Mr. Ashburner, and Mr. Gabb, of the State geological survey, Professor Blake, author of various standard works on the geology and mineral resources of California, Baron Von Richtofen, the distinguished German savant, Mr. Degroot, an experienced statistican and topographer, Mr. Bennett, a mining expert, thoroughly familiar with the mineral regions, to Dr. Blachley, of Nevada, and others, I am indebted for nearly all that is valuable in the report.

It is my intention to visit the various mineral districts of the Pacific slope during the coming spring and summer. Personal examination of the mines, increased experience, and sufficient time for the careful preparation of the material collected, will enable me, I trust, to present for your consideration, before the next meeting of Congress, a report better worthy of your approval than that just submitted. Reliable statistics and valuable information, showing the resources and products of our new States and Territories, cannot fail to result beneficially to the country and the government. Nothing can tend in a greater degree to encourage immigration and the investment of capital.

The question arises, how can the object be best accomplished in the future? A statistical bureau for the Pacific coast has been recommended.

It is manifest to my mind that the work cannot be properly done by bureau organization. Information derived from interested parties by means of blanks and circulars, sent out over the mining regions, would be very imperfect and for the most part unreliable.

The plan that appears to me most feasible would be

1st. To authorize the appointment in each State and Territory of an able and experienced geologist, familiar with all the operations of mining.

2d. Annual reports to be made by each officer so appointed and assigned to duty, under official instructions, to the supervising commissioner at San Francisco. 3d. The commissioner to make a visit every year to each mining district, for the purpose of personal inspection of the mines, and conference with his assistants; after which he would be prepared to make his annual report to the Secretary of the Treasury.

Proper measures, of course, would be taken to secure the official returns of assessors, surveyors, tax collectors, and other local State or territorial officers. The expense would be comparatively trifling, inasmuch as the services of professional experts could be had without requiring their entire time. A small compensation to each would be an object of some importance.

An appropriation of $25,000 would probably be sufficient to inaugurate such a system, though a much larger amount could be advantageously expended. In the hope that these suggestions, hastily made and informally stated, may at least furnish some ground for action, I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Hon. H. MCCULLOCH,

Secretary of the Treasury.

J. ROSS BROWNE,

Special Commissioner.

SECTION 1.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GOLD AND SILVER MINING ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE.

1. First mention of gold.—2. Gold found before 1843.-3. Marshall's discovery.—4. The gold discovery in print.-5. Excitement abroad.-6. Pan washing.-7. The rocker.— 8. Mining ditches.-9. Miners' "rushes."-10. Gold Lake and Gold Bluff.-11. The "tom."-12. The sluice.-13. Placer leads traced to quartz.-14. A gold-dredging machine.-15. Decrease of wages.-16. Growth of the quartz interest.-17. Failures in quartz.-18. Improvement in quartz mining.-19. The hydraulic process.-20. Hill mining.-21. Decline of river mining.-22. "Rushes" to Australia.-23. The Kern river excitement.-24. Ancient rivers.-25. The Tuolumne table mountain.-26. The Fraser fever.-27. Discovery of Comstock lode.-23. The Washoe excitement.-29. The barrel and yard process.―30. The pan process.-31. Growth of the Washoe excitement.— 32. Virginia City.-33. The silver panic.-34. Litigation about the Comstock ledge.35. The many-lode theory.—36. Expenses increasing with depth.-37. Some characteristics of Esmeralda, Humboldt, and Reese rivers.-38. Sutro tunnel project and--39. Baron Richthofen's report.-40. Columbia basin and Cariboo mines.

1.-FIRST MENTION OF GOLD.

The first mention of gold in California is made in Hakluyt's account of the voyage of Sir Francis Drake, who spent five weeks in June and July, 1579, in a bay near latitude 38°; whether Drake's bay or San Francisco bay is a matter of dispute. It certainly was one of the two, and of neither can we now say with truth, as Hakluyt said seriously, "There is no part of the earth here to be taken up wherein there is not a reasonable quantity of gold or silver." This statement, taken literally, is untrue, and it was probably made without any foundation, merely for the purpose of embellishing the story and magnifying the importance of Drake and of the country which he claimed to have added to the possessions of the English crown.

If any "reasonable quantity" of gold or silver had been obtained by the English adventurers, we should probably have had some account of their expedi tions into the interior, of the manner and place in which the precious metals were obtained, and of the specimens which were brought home, but of these things there is no mention.

Neither gold nor silver exists" in reasonable quantity" near the ocean about latitude 380, and the inference is that Drake's discovery of gold in California was a matter of fiction more than of fact.

2.-GOLD FOUND BEFORE 1848.

Some small deposits of placer gold were found by Mexicans near the Colorado river at various times from 1775 to 1828, and in the latter year a similar discovery was made at San Isidro, in what is now San Diego county, and in 1802 a mineral vein, supposed to contain silver, at Olizal, in the district of Monterey, attracted some attention, but no profitable mining was done at either of these places.

Forbes, who wrote the history of California in 1835, said "No minerals of particular importance have yet been found in Upper California, nor any ores of

metals."

It was in 1838, sixty-nine years after the arrival of the Franciscan friars, and the establishment of the first mission, that the placers of San Francisquito,

forty-five miles northwest from Los Angeles, was discovered. The deposit of gold was neither extensive nor rich, but it was worked steadily for twenty years. In 1841 the exploring expedition of Commodore Wilkes visited the coast, and its mineralogist, James D. Dana, made a trip overland from the Columbia river, by way of the Willamette and Sacramento valleys to San Francisco bay, and in the following year he published a book on mineralogy, and mentioned in it that gold was found in the Sacramento valley, and that rocks similar to those of the auriferous formations were observed in southern Oregon. Dana did not regard his discovery as of any practical value, and if he said anything about it in California no one paid any attention to it. Nevertheless, many persons had an idea that the country was rich in minerals, and on the 4th of May, 1846, Thomas O. Larkin, then United States consul in Monterey, a gentleman usually careful to keep his statements within the limits of truth, said in an official letter to James Buchanan, then Secretary of State, "There is no doubt but that gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, lead, sulphur and coal mines are to be found all over California, and it is equally doubtful whether, under their present owners, they will ever be worked."

The implication here is that if the country were only transferred to the American flag, these mines, of whose existence he knew nothing save by surmise, or by the assertion of incompetent persons, would soon be opened and worked. In sixty-six days after that letter was written, the stars and stripes were hoisted in Monterey, and now California is working mines of all the minerals mentioned by Larkin save lead, which also might be produced if it would pay, since there is no lack of its ores.

3.-MARSHALL'S DISCOVERY.

The discovery of the rich gold fields of the Sacramento basin is an American achievement, accomplished under the American dominion, by a native of the United States, and made of world-wide importance by American enterprise and industry, favored by the liberal policy of American law.

It was on the 19th day of January, 1848, ten days before the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, and three months before the ratified copies were exchanged, that James W. Marshall, while engaged in digging a race for a sawmill at Coloma, about thirty-five miles eastward from Sutter's Fort, found some pieces of yellow metal, which he and the half dozen men working with him at the mill supposed to be gold. He felt confident that he had made a discovery of great importance, but he knew nothing of either chemistry or gold mining, so he could not prove the nature of the metal or tell how to obtain it in paying quantities. Every morning he went down to the race to look for the bits of the metal; but the other men at the mill thought Marshall was very wild in his ideas, and they continued their labors in building the mill, and in sowing wheat, and planting vegetables. The swift current of the mill-race washed away a considerable body of earthy matter, leaving the coarse particles of gold behind, so Marshall's collection of specimens continued to accumulate, and his associates began to think there might be something in his gold mine after all. About the middle of February, a Mr. Bennett, one of the party employed at the mill, went to San Francisco for the purpose of learning whether this metal was precious, and there he was introduced to Isaac Humphrey, who had washed for gold in Georgia. The experienced miner saw at a glance that he had the true stuff before him, and after a few inquiries he was satisfied that the diggings must be rich. He made immediate preparation to go to the mill, and tried to persuade some of his friends to go with him, but they thought it would be only a waste of time and money, so he went with Bennett for his sole companion.

He arrived at Coloma on the 7th of March and found the work at the mill going on as if no gold existed in the neighborhood. The next day he took a

pan and spade and washed some of the dirt from the bottom of the mill race in places where Marshall had found his specimens, and in a few hours Humphrey declared that these mines were far richer than any in Georgia.

He now made a rocker and went to work washing gold industriously, and every day yielded him an ounce or two of metal. The men at the mill made

rockers for themselves, and all were soon busy in search of the yellow metal. Everything else was abandoned; the rumor of the discovery spread slowly. In the middle of March, Pearson B. Reading, the owner of a large ranch at the head of the Sacramento valley, happened to visit Sutter's Fort, and hearing of the mining at Coloma, he went thither to see it. He said that if similarity of formation could be taken as proof, there must be gold mines near his ranch, so after observing the method of washing, he posted off, and in a few weeks he was at work on the bars of Clear creek, nearly two hundred miles northwestward from Coloma. A few days after Reading had left, John Bidwell, now representative of the northern district of the State in the lower house of Congress, came to Coloma, and the result of his visit was that in less than a month he had a party of Indians from his ranch washing gold on the bars of Feather river, seventy-five miles northwestward from Coloma. Thus the mines were opened at far distant points.

4. THE GOLD DISCOVERY IN PRINT.

The first printed notice of the discovery was given in the California newspaper published in San Francisco, on the 15th of March, as follows:

"In the newly made race-way of the saw-mill recently erected by Captain. Sutter on the American Fork, gold has been found in considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars to New Helvetia. gathered there in a short

time."

On the 29th of May the same paper, announcing that its publication would be suspended, says:

"The whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the seashore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the sordid cry of gold! gold! gold! while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of picks and shovels, and the means of transportation to the spot where one man obtained one hundred and twenty-eight dollar's worth of the real stuff in one day's washing; and the average for all concerned is twenty dollars per diem."

The towns and farms were deserted, or left to the care of women and children, while rancheros, wood choppers, mechanics, vaqueros, and soldiers and sailors who had deserted or obtained leave of absence, devoted all their energies to washing the auriferous gravel of the Sacramento basin. Never satisfied, however much they might be making, they were continually looking for new placers which might yield them twice or thrice as much as they had made before. Thus the area of their labors gradually extended, and at the end of 1848 miners were at work in every large stream on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, from the Feather to the Tuolumne river, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, and also at Reading's diggings, in the northwestern corner of the Sacramento valley.

5.-EXCITEMENT ABROAD.

The first rumors of the gold discovery were received in the Atlantic States and in foreign countries with incredulity and ridicule; but soon the receipts of the precious metal in large quantities, and the enthusiastic letters of army officers and of men in good repute, changed the current of feeling, and an excitement almost unparalleled ensued. Oregon, the Hawaiian islands, and Sonora sent their thousands to share in the auriferous harvest of the first year; and in the