The following is a statement of the operations of the same mine for four months ending September 30, 1866:

The Rocky Bar claim on Massachusetts Hill, near Grass valley, has produced about $1,500,000 in the last six years.

The Princeton vein, in Mariposa county, has yielded $2,000,000 within the last twelve years, but lately it has produced very little, and for a time work on it was abandoned.

21.—THE SMARTSVILLE BLUE GRAVEL COMPANY'S MINE.

The richest placer mine in the State is that of the Blue Gravel Mining Company at Smartsville, in Yuba county. The yield since March, 1864, has been as follows:

The gold is obtained only when the sluice is cleaned up; and the cleaning. up occurs sometimes at intervals of two or three months, and there is no yield for the intervening months. The claim will continue to pay for many years, and probably it will be richer than ever, for the miners have not yet reached the bed rock. The claim covers an area of about a hundred acres on a long hill or ridge that stands over the bed of an ancient stream. The hill is made up of numerous layers of gravel, sand and boulders, with a rim of rock at the bottom on each side of the hill. To get access to the auriferous deposit it was necessary to cut a tunnel 1,700 feet long through the rim rock. This work was commenced in February, 1855, by the company, which had a capital of $20,000. This sum was soon expended in cutting a tunnel, which in places cost $100 per lineal foot, and then money was borrowed and the debt ran up gradually to $60,000, so that at the end of 1859 the company had spent $80,000 and nearly five years of hard labor, with no certainty of any return. In 1857 they began to wash some of the gravel in the higher portions of the claim, and the expense was greater than the yield for more than two years; but in 1860 this washing commenced to yield a profit, and in three years more the debt was reduced from $60,000 to $20,000. In December, 1863, the tunnel reached the pay-dirt, and then it was necessary to sink an incline down from the top of the hill so that the dirt could be carried off by the water through the tunnel. It was a difficult matter to open this incline to so great a depth and get it into such condition that there was no danger of the earth falling in and choking up the channel or kill

ing the miners; but at last this was accomplished, and since then the company have reaped a rich harvest of gold. They are using 500 inches (miners' measurement) of water per day, under a head pressure of 150 feet, at a cost of $75 per day. They use 125,000 pounds of powder annually in blasting to loosen the earth so that the water can wash it away readily. A steady current, eight inches deep and three feet wide, of mud, estimated to contain four inches in depth of solid matter, runs through their sluice, and they use three tons of quicksilver at one time to catch their gold. They have sluiced away an area of twenty acres, 100 feet deep, and they have built in all four miles of fluming, much of which is not now in use. They expended $80,000 on their first tunnel and have commenced another lower down. It will cost $75,000 and will require three years for completion.

The flume now in use is 3,000 feet long, and is paved alternately with wooden blocks set on end and flat stones set on the edge. The sections of block paving extend across the flume, and seventeen inches longitudinally, and the sections of stone paving are two feet long. The flume has an inclination of six and onehalf inches in twelve feet.

This company is the only one which has mined steadily for ten years in the Smartsville district, with a profit for the whole period. Many other companies have spent immense sums of money and obtained no return. Others have made a profit for a year or two, but the general result has been failure. The Blue Gravel company succeeded only by the extraordinary and, it might almost be said, the unbusiness indulgence of their creditors, who might at any time for a period of seven years have come and taken the claim. As late as 1862 the shares in the company were selling at the rate of $11,000 for the whole claim. When the enterprise, the patience, the perseverance, the privations, the risks of failure, the hard labor of nine unprofitable years, the faithful devotion of the stockholders to one another, and the generous trust of the creditors are considered, it must be admitted that the Blue Gravel company have abundantly merited all their success. Many other claims of less value have cost their owners proportionately as much in money, labor, and patience.

22.-PROFITS OF MINING GENERALLY.

of much profit The proportion fifteen years is

The business of mining has not been in any branch a source to the majority of those who have undertaken it in California. of California miners who have made fortunes within the last much less than that of the Illinois farmers. One of the chief sources of wealth in the United States east of the Rocky mountains has been the increase in the value of land, but in the mining districts hitherto there was little land to which a fee-simple title could be obtained. The largest income in the State of 1865 is that of Jules Tricot, who made in that year $182,511 by quartz mining and the sale of quartz mines, and the third largest is that of James P. Pierce, who made $102,011 in placer mining. When, however, we come to examine the incomes of the miners generally, we find that they are small.

The following table shows the nu nber of adult white men in some of the mining counties, and the number of those who pay tax on an income of $1,800 or more, reckoned in legal tenders :

An examination of the lists shows that most of those who have these incomes are not miners, and that the proportion of those who have large incomes is greater in the agricultural districts and in the towns than in the mines. As a matter of curiosity, the list of incomes of Nevada county for 1865 is here appended, with the names of those who derive their incomes from quartz marked with an asterisk, and those who derive their incomes from placers, marked with a dagger.

This list is marked by a gentleman well acquainted in the county, but a few of those whose names are not marked may be miners. It appears that out of 148 names, 42 are those of quartz miners and 40 of placer miners. It must be remembered, however, that Nevada is the most prosperous and the most productive mining county in California, and that the proportion of large incomes among the miners is greater there than elsewhere.

23.-DIFFICULTY OF GETTING GOOD CLAIMS.

A fact which should never be overlooked on the Atlantic slope by persons who speak of mining is, that a good claim cannot be had by merely making an effort to get one. It costs as much effort generally as it costs to get a good farm, or more. If the claim is open and its value is established, it can only be bought at a high price. If it is not cpen, years may be spent in opening it, and then it may prove to be barren at last. That has been the experience of thousands. A list of the expensive tunnels and shafts undertaken in California and Nevada would include numerous failures after years of time and scores of thousands of dollars had been devoted to the labor. These things are not written, because few want to publish their own failures or to read about those of others; and a number of those who own mines famous for their rich yields had to struggle along for years, barely paying expenses and exposed to the jeers or the pity of their acquaintances for their obstinacy in sticking to claims that could never, it was said, be made to pay. It is unjust to the miner to assume that he is taking the public property without compensation. In most cases he has more than paid for it by his labor, and although it may not yield him a good income, it is no more than a fair return for his enterprise and industry, and he should be allowed to enjoy it as a proper encouragement to others to devote themselves to the development of other mines. Many, indeed, think that even with unrestrained liberty to take the precious metals from the public lands, and with entire exemption from taxation, the pay of the miner is less than that of any other equally industrious and intelligent body of laborers in the country.

24.-COMSTOCK LODE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE IN THE WORLD. Although some rich argentiferous veins have been discovered in California, Idaho, and Arizona, they have not been developed sufficiently to enable us to say much of them; and our remarks on the condition of silver mining on the coast must be based chiefly upon the business as conducted in Nevada. During

the last three years there has been no increase in the production, but the general condition is very satisfactory. The Comstock lode is now the most productive mineral vein in the world. A strip of land six hundred yards wide and three miles long yields $12,000,000 annually. There is no parallel to that in ancient or modern times. The other richest silver mining districts of the present century, such as Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Sombrerete, Durango, Chihuahua Alamos, Real del Monte, Potosi, Cero Paseo, and Chañarcillo, do not produce more than about $20,000,000 each annually, and the Comstock lode is now contributing more silver to the commerce of the world than any other four lodes. The total number of men employed in the mines and mills to obtain this metal is about 5,000, giving an average annual yield of $2,500 for each. The ore is not so rich nor so abundant as it has been in some Mexican lodes, but a greater yield has been obtained by employing more machinery. The general custom of the Mexican mines has been to employ men to carry the ore up out of the mine on their backs, and to transport it from the mine to the mill on mules, to pulverize it by mule power, and to stir it during amalgamation by tramping with the feet of men or mules. If water invaded the works it was hoisted by hand or by horse whims. Thus a Mexican mine required a hundred men to do the work that can be done in a Nevada mine by twenty, and it was difficult to make room for a hundred men to work within such narrow limits. Either they were continually in the way of one another or most of them discharged, and the work advanced with corresponding slowness.

The leading mines at Virginia City are marvellous for the extent of their works and the rapidity with which they extract and reduce the ore. The chief gold mines of California, high as their product is, are small affairs when compared with the vast works of the chief silver companies of Nevada.

25.-COMSTOCK MINING COMPANIES.

S. H. Marlette, surveyor general of the State, in his official report for the year 1865, gave the following list of the mining companies on the Comstock lode, with the accompanying statistics and remarks