324 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



increased expense of raising the rock, thoiio;h nnlil a very considerable 

 deptli is reached this difference is not material. 



As is generally well known, many of the earlier attempts at qnai'tz 

 mining in this State w-ere pecuniarily failures, as some of more recent 

 date also have been. Of these earlier efforts, several undertaken at Grass 

 Valley were from the first eminently successful, as others in that locality 

 have since become, quite a good many more being attended with fair 

 results. Old}' a few have proved failures — hardly any disastrously so. 

 In Mariposa County, on the other hand, where also the business was 

 early and largely embarked in, having moreover the advantages of ample 

 capital at the start, it almost wholly failed of success. A great deal of 

 capital had here been invested ; large mills were put up and furnished 

 with every facility and appliance for crushing the rock and saving the 

 gold then known to the business. Men of scientific acquirements and 

 supposed practical skill were emplo3'ed to supervise the work of reduc- 

 tion and exploitation of the mines. But, upon trial, they could not be 

 made to' pay; not even gold enough being taken out to defray current 

 expenses, which at that time were of course two or three hundred per 

 cent greater than at present; and it is quite likely that in this financial 

 drain may be justly souglit the princijial cause of the failure and final 

 abandonment "of these first efforts in a district that with cheapened labor 

 and increased experience has since done much to retrieve its damaged 

 reputation. The stoppage of the Mariposa mills, started under such 

 favorable auspices, had a generally discouraging effect upon the business, 

 deterring any one from the further prosecution of it in the southern sec- 

 tion of the mines for several years thereafter. Meantime, however, it 

 Avas gaining a foothold in other parts of the State; and though for the 

 first six or eight years it failed to attain to a flourishing condition, 

 >except in a few instances, it has since been constantly improving and 

 advancing in prosperity until its permanency seems established and its 

 future assured. And vast and munificent as are the other resources of 

 California, none are so promising and pregnant of lasting and certain 

 wealth as her fields of auriferous quartz. These mines, illimitable and 

 exhaustless, yield a commodity that never has to encounter competition 

 or to seek a market — its value, like the world-girdling ocean, alwa^-s 

 standing at the same level. We may have a surplus of grain, and wine, 

 and wool, but can never have of gold. 



To the prolific character of this class of our mines, and the advantages 

 of the business, our people seem to be waking up. Having for the past 

 five or six years been investing their money in the mines of Washoe, 

 Mexico, and other distant countries, where the}' seldom realized any 

 profit, and often experienced loss, they are now wisely turning their 

 attention to these mines nearer home from which a more shrewd and 

 contented class of citizens have meantime been quietly amassing for- 

 tunes. The value of this description of mines being established, and the 

 obstacles that lay at the threshold of the business being removed, it only 

 requires, as a general thing, a moderate amount of capital and good 

 management to make it both safe and lucrative. The evidences of a 

 general revival of confidence in the mines of" California are presenting 

 themselves in that most obvious and satisfactory shape — the liberal 

 investment of capital and the initiation of numerous enterprises directed 

 to their more efiicient development. New mills are being built, new 

 mines opened, and money freely supplied for every legitimate require- 

 ment. Home as well as foreign capital is offering itself M'ith unprece- 

 dented freedom in the purchase of the mines, and in buj-ing up their 



