At Swansea the smelters have the advantage of purchasing ores of all or any classes, as all are brought there from many different districts. With this assortment of ores at their command, they can arrange the charges of their furnaces to suit their fuel. On this coast there are no established means for obtaining such a wide selection of ores as will admit of their being combined so as to be worked with advantage. Most of the smelting works which have been tried on this coast operate on the ores from generally the one mine on which they were erected, and these are generally of one class.

The furnaces built on this coast bave generally been copies of such as are used in England, Germany, or France, where fuel of a totally different character is used. The impatience of the parties interested in such works to obtain from them immediate profitable results has prevented the necessary experiments being made to adapt these imported furnaces to our local fuel.

No smelting works have been carried on long enough on this coast to discipline a sufficient number of workmen to conduct the details of the operations with the care necessary to insure success. The few good workmen who have come here from England, France, or Germany, all aspire to be superintendents, or to own a mine themselves, without possessing the ability to impart their knowledge to the more intelligent laborers placed under their direction.

All these obstacles to success would be in a great measure removed if extensive works were to be erected at some convenient central point, where those having ores to dispose of could always find a fair market. Such works, properly conducted, would yield a liberal return on the money invested in their erection, and would be of incalculable benefit to the copper interests of the Pacific coast.

The export of copper ores from the Pacific coast. It is difficult to obtain a correct return of all the copper ores exported from this coast, as the custom-house authorities have not kept anything more than an approximating account of such as have been shipped through that department; the manifests of the vessels in which it has been shipped in many cases not specifying the quantity of ore taken, only giving its value; in some cases entering it as so many packages of unspecified merchandise of a stated value. This makes it difficult to estimate the quantity, because at the commencement of this exportation the ore was shipped in barrels, casks, and boxes, some of which contained nearly half a ton each, and as the value of the ore differs so much, the value given, if correct, would furnish no basis for calculating the quantity.

It is through this cause that the published reports of the exports of ore given in the leading commercial papers of San Francisco at stated intervals differ so much with one another. The reports of the exports for the nine months of the present year, published in these papers, are as follows:

The Alta, 15,1743 tons; the Bulletin, 15,350 tons; the Commercial Gazette, 20,848 tons.

There is considerable discrepancy in these reports, the Gazette being probably

nearest correct.

The following list, compiled from every available source, gives the names of mines which are known to have sent ore to San Francisco, and the quantity purchased from each. There are several firms in that city which purchase or make advances on copper ores. Among those most extensively engaged in this business are Meader, Lalor & Co, Martin & Greenman, Mr. Price, Conroy & O'Conner. None of these parties appear disposed to give information relating to their business, under the impression, perhaps, that such information might in some way or other injure them, and it was not through them directly that this list was made out:

A total of 78,239 tons, not including any shipments from the Queen of Bronze, or any of the mines in Oregon or Lower California, or any of the many small lots that were shipped as experiments by the mines worked in all parts of California during the excitement about copper that prevailed during the years 1860, 1861, 1862, and 1863. It is quite within limits to estimate the ores received from all unnamed sources since 1860 at 1,761 tons. This, added to the quantities given in the list above, makes a total of 80,000 tons received at San Francisco and exported since the discovery of the mines at Copperopolis.

The following table, giving the exports of copper ores from San Francisco from January, 1860, to October, 1866, compiled from the records at the customhouse and the shipping lists, shows a difference of upwards of 22,000 tons when compared with the list above. This discrepancy can only be explained on the grounds above stated. The books of the principal mines given in this list show that the quantities set opposite their respective names have been actually shipped from them. The ores shipped from the leading mines is calculated according to English weight, 2,376 pounds to the ton. Some of the smaller companies may have estimated their ore by the United States weight, or only 2,000 pounds to the ton; but this would not account for so large a discrepancy.

Exports of copper ores from San Francisco from January, 1862, to October, 1866.

The above table includes concentrated ores and regulus, when shipped in bags or barrels, but not metallic copper in pigs or bars, of which there was shipped about 25 tons in 1865 and 3,787 bars, of unknown weight, in 1866. In this quantity is included 120 tons from the smelting works at Buchanan Hollow, Mariposa county, shipped by Coffee & Risdon, of San Francisco. As this metal averages 80 per cent., one ton of it is equal to five tons of 16 per cent. ore. The export of this metal is consequently equal to 1,725 tons of such ore, making a total, when added to quantity in the first table, of 79,964 tons-in rourd numbers, say 80,000 tons; in addition to which there are upwards of 2,000 tons of ores at Stockton and San Francisco ready for shipment, awaiting vessels to carry it away, and nearly 20,000 tons are ready for shipment at the various mines, where it is retained in consequence of the very low price of such ores in this market at present; the whole showing that upwards of 100,000 tons of copper ore have been taken out of the mines of California since their discovery in 1860. Estimating this ore at an average value of $50 per ton, which is very much below its actual value, the products of these copper mines since their discovery have added $5,000,000 to the material wealth of the country, and opened a wide field for the employment of the enterprise, capital, and labor of thousands of its citizens. A comparison of the product of the copper mines of the Pacific coast with those in other countries may be instructive in this place. Sir Henry De La Beché, the head of the department of mines in England, stated in a lecture given at the great exhibition in London, in 1861, that the average of all the ores of copper produced in Cornwall and Devonshire did not exceed 8 per cent. when dressed, and that the supply was constantly becoming less, and more costly to obtain as the working in the mines became deeper. These two counties are the chief sources of copper in all Europe. Here, on this coast, there are absolutely inexhaustible sources of ores ranging from 10 per cent. to 12 per cent., which may be obtained within a couple of hundred feet of the surface of the ground.

In the parliamentary returns published by order of the British government, it appears that in the year 1861 the gross yield of copper ores in Great Britain, including England, Ireland, and Wales, amounted to 231,487 tons of the value of $6,800,000, or a little over $29 per ton. On this coast, under the present system, ore of that value would not pay to take it out of the ground. As has already been explained it costs between $40 and $50 per ton to place the ores obtained on this coast in a market. The rates for freight to New York and Liverpool are more than double as high as they were two years ago, in consequence of the great demand for first class vessels to carry grain to those places.

Concluding remarks.-None of the metallic copper made on this coast is suitable for castings or for rolling into sheets, owing to defects in the processes for refining it. It is too brittle for rolling, in consequence of containing traces of sulphur. It is too hard for casting, turning, and polishing, and too liable to tarnish and turn nearly black in color, in consequence of containing more or less iron in alloy.

The present depression in the copper mining interests on the Pacific coast has been much increased by the excessive cost of freight to New York and Swansea, which, falling at a time when the ores are of less value than they have been for the past fifteen or twenty years, causes it to be unprofitable to ship those that heretofore have formed the great bulk of the exports. The price of freight at this time is nearly double what it was in 1861 and 1862. To illustrate this fact, it may be stated that the ship Haze, in 1861, was chartered to carry a cargo to New York for $5,000 in gold. Within the past few weeks the same vessel has been chartered for the same destination for $16,660 in gold, or $25,000 in currency. In 1861 freight to Liverpool was offering at $11 per ton; at present it is not procurable at less than $17 per ton.

It will be readily understood that an article, the exports of which, though amounting to two millions of dollars annually, the profits of which are limited to such a slight margin, as already explained is the case with copper ores on this coast, must cease to be a source of revenue to the government, or of employment and profit to the people, when the cost of its production and export exceeds the value of the product. This is a question deserving the most serious consideration.

The products of the copper mines on the Pacific coast might be greatly increased if the legislation of Congress were so framed as to make them profitable to procure. This would increase the taxable property of the country, while the products of the mines, now far below their capacity, would add materially to its absolute wealth; for if we do produce our own copper, it must be purchased from other nations, for money or produce, as it is indispensable in the arts and manufactures.

Under our form of government, with such an extent of territory as we possess, and such an intelligent and enterprising people as inhabit our mineral regions, it should be a paramount object so to regulate the scale of taxes and duties on the products of any branch of national industry as to encourage the labor engaged in its development. A sound policy would dictate that so great an interest as copper mining is destined to become in the United States should be encouraged by every possible means in its infancy, and until the skill and experience of those interested in its development shall enable them to compete with a reasonable hope of success with the copper miners and smelters of other countries in which the business has been conducted for centuries. This they cannot do at present, nor ever will be able to do, unless they are assisted for a few years by favorable legislation. The duties and taxes, direct and indirect, on copper, under the present system, amount to $4 63 on each 100 lbs. of American-made metal, while that imported from other countries only pays $2 50 on each 100 lbs. It is this invidious distinction that is crippling the energies of those interested in developing the copper resources of the Pacific coast. A reversal of this state of affairs, the levying of a duty of about $250 on each 100 lbs. of foreign copper, over and above what is levied on our homeproduced copper-a duty that would inflict no injury on any American interestwould immediately revive the now languishing copper interests of the whole country.

Measured by the facts and figures contained in this report, it requires no stretch of the imagination to comprehend the great national importance of the copper resources of the Pacific coast; already, within five years of their discovery, exporting sufficient ores of unusual richness to produce 10,000 tons of metal annually-a quantity nearly equal to one-half of the supply of the whole world twenty-five years ago, and five times as large as the produce of the whole United States only ten years ago! It requires but experience and the advantages it gives, and a slight protection on the part of the general government, to make the Pacific coast occupy the same prominence as a copper-producing country that it now occupies as the producer of gold and silver.

SECTION 6.

QUICKSILVER MINES OF CALIFORNIA.

1. New Almaden mines.-2. Products and exports.

1.-NEW ALMADEN MINES.

The ore of quicksilver.—Cinnabar is the principal and only valuable ore of the mercury of commerce, which is prepared from it by sublimation.

It is a sulphide (sulphuret) of mercury, composed, when pure, of quicksilver 86.2, sulphur 13.8, in which case it is a natural vermilion, and identical with the vermilion of commerce; but it is sometimes rendered impure by an admixture of clay, bitumen, oxide of iron, &c. Cinnabar is of a cochineal red color, often inclining to brownish red and lead gray, with an adamantine lustre, approaching to metallic in dark varieties, and to dull in friable ones. It varies from subtransparent to opaque, has a scarlet streak, and breaks with a subconchoidal uneven fraction. H = 2 to 2.5, specific gravity 8.99. In a matrass it entirely sublimes, and with soda yields mercury with the evolution of sulphurous fumes. When crystallized it belongs to the rhombohedral system.

Cinnabar occurs in beds in slate rocks. The chief European beds are at Almaden, near Cordova, in Spain, and at Idria, in Upper Carinthia, where it usually occurs in a massive form, and is worked on a thick vein belonging to the Alpine carboniferous strata. It also occurs in China, Japan, Pluanca Vilica, in South Peru, and at New Almaden, in California, in a mountain east of San José, between the bay of Francisco and Monterey, where it is very abundant and easy of access.-Ure's Dictionary.

Classes of cinnabar ores.-Gruesa is the best quality or first class, in pieces eight to twelve inches or more in diameter; mostly pure ore of cinnabar, with little or no admixture of refuse rock.

Granza is the second quality, in pieces of three to eight inches, generally containing a considerable proportion of rock. It is either taken from the mine in such pieces or is broken off from larger pieces of rock in the yard.

Tierras-earth or dirt-is the lowest quality, and is not taken into account in the ores produced at the mine; neither are the miners paid for it. It is made into bricks and sun-dried previous to being reduced in the furnaces. Each adobe or brick weighs about twelve and a half pounds.

The "carga" or load of ore is considered to be three hundred pounds.

Extracts of a report by Professor B. Silliman, jr., from the American Journal of Science and Arts for September, 1864.

The New Almaden quicksilver mines are situated on a range of hills subordinate to the main Coast range, the highest point of which at the place is twelve to fifteen hundred feet above the valley of San José. Southwest of the range which contains the quicksilver mines, the Coast range attains a considerable elevation, Mount Bache, its highest point, being over thirty-eight hundred feet in height.

New Almaden is approached by the railroad running from San Francisco to San José, a distance of forty-five miles. In the course of it there is a rise of one hundred feet, San José being of this elevation above the ocean. From San José to New Almaden the distance is thirteen miles, with a gradual rise of one hundred and fifty or perhaps two hundred feet.

The rocks forming the subordinate range, in which the quicksilver occurs, are chiefly magnesian schists, sometimes calcareous and rarely argillaceous. As a group they may be distinguished as steatitic, often passing into well-characterized serpentine. Their geological age is not very definitely ascertained, but