STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 187 



Small lots of choice ore are also frequently sent abroad for treatment, 

 while immense quantities of the poorer classes accumulate about the 

 mines, being reserved in the hope that they may some day, through 

 cheapened labor and improved processes, be worked with profit. Many 

 mills also omit to work their tailings very closely, saving them for a like 

 purpose. 



To illustrate how rapidly communities grow up and how vigorously 

 business thrives under the stimulus of this species of mining, a brief 

 glance at the history and condition of affairs in Washoe will suffice. In 

 four years the population of that country, from less than two thousand, 

 has increased to sixty thousand, the value of property having multipled 

 in a much greater ratio. Estimating everything at a low figure, five 

 millions of dollars has been expended in erecting quartz mills and reduc- 

 tion works; another five millions of dollars has been laid out in opening 

 the mines, and three times as much in various other kinds of improve- 

 ments. In wagon roads alone, leading into and through the Territory, 

 five hundred thousand dollars have been spent — an investment that has 

 paid from forty to eighty per cent per annum. The tolls collected on 

 these roads the past year reached at least the sum of two hundred thou- 

 sand dollars. ' The money paid on freights corning into the Territory 

 amounted to fully thi-ee millions of dollars — some rating it much higher. 

 About three thousand teams of various kinds are employed in this busi- 

 ness, besides numerous pack trains. These facts, coupled with the pros- 

 pective increase of business, should be all the argument necessary to de- 

 monstrate that the one great and pressing want of Washoe is a railroad 

 connecting it with San Francisco. No where else is a railroad needed so 

 much, and nowhere else would one pay so well. 



The Reese River country, which one year ago contained not over fifty 

 persons, all told, and could boast nothing nearer a town than some dozen 

 wretched huts, has now five or six thousand inhabitants, with one good- 

 sized city and several thrifty villages. Six months ago there was not a 

 quartz mill in that region ; now there are ten or twelve — counting those 

 in course of erection or on the road in — six or seven being already in 

 operation. With such facts before us, it is easy to divine what must be 

 the future of a country whose main reliance and principal branch of in- 

 dustry is silver mining. To make this business, however, or rather that 

 branch of it which consists in dealing in stocks, not only profitable but 

 respectable, it must be divested of the wretched character — hardly better 

 than that of public gambling — which has come to attach to it. This evil 

 must, of course, soon cure itself — all that is necessary to its instant eradi- 

 cation being the abandonment of any attempt at operating in a stock not 

 known to possess intrinsic value, and all meretricious efforts at inflating 

 prices. 



.QUARTZ GOLD AND SILVER MINING. 



This branch of business was extensively engaged in as much as ten 

 years ago, in California. Nearly all the earlier efforts, though in most 

 cases backed by large capital, were ruinous failures. So completely was 

 the public dispirited with these trials that for many years the business 

 was wholly neglected, except at Grass Valley and a few other points in 

 the State. The obstacles to success having at length been in a measure 

 overcome, quartz mining gradually revived, and for several years past 

 has been carried on in a great man}'' localities, and generally with profit. 

 Some notice of it might properly have been taken in our remarks on sil- 

 ver mining, as at many of the places therein mentioned much of the rock 



