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and ill looking on the surface, but is very fine, being worth twenty- 

 dollars an ounce. Only sixteen dollars an ounce is paid for it to 

 the Mexicans at the mines by the traders. When these miners 

 are employed by the day they receive from sixty to seventy-five 

 cents. 



The Gold Mountains and Placers' are about three hundred miles 

 south of Pike's Peak, and there is little reason to doubt that gold 

 will be found at intervals, if not in an almost continuous belt, 

 over this entire distance. The New Mexican gold field is prob- 

 ably much more extensive than is generally supposed, and when 

 it is thoroughly prospected many more rich placers will doubtless 

 be found. The geological indications in the mountains north of 

 Santa Fe, judging from specimens brought to me, are favorable 

 to the presence of gold, and are more like the auriferous rocks 

 of other gold regions than the formations at the Placer Moun- 

 tains. 



The observation of the occurrence of gold in beds of sandstone 

 is not only interesting to science but of considerable practical im- 

 portance. The erosion, or breaking down of such a bed, would 

 supply gold to a stream or deposit without its being accompanied 

 at the same time by the usual beds of quartzose gravel, the soft 

 friable sandstone being completely broken up into sand by attri- 

 tion. Thus, rich deposits may exist on the hill-sides without any 

 indication of their presence by beds of rolled gravel or broken 

 fragments of veins on the surface. Mr. Green Russell, an expe- 

 rienced placer miner and mountaineer, who made an extended 

 tour through the new gold region of western Kansas last year, 

 informs me that he has observed such conditions ; having found 

 rich deposits of gold without much gravel, and scarcely any 

 quartz. From the same authority, I learn that gold occurs in 

 considerable quantity upon the Arkansas River, in extremely thin 

 scales, as low down as the crossing of the old Santa Fe road, near 

 old Fort Atkinson. This is far out upon the broad plains, and be- 

 low any coarse alluvions. The quantity of gold increases as the 

 river is ascended, and the best prospects were obtained at the Pue- 

 blo above Bent's Fort. The Arkansas, near this point, has several 

 forks or branches heading in the mountains to the southward, in 

 the vicinity of the Spanish peaks, and there is much reason to 

 believe that gold will be found there. A connecting link between 



