128 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [.TAN. 18, 



By two routes we have bisected the San Juan Mts., and found 

 them fifty-five miles wide. AVe have passed over their summits 

 and woniid around tlieir sluirp peaks, and find them forty miles 

 long. When we have looked over their tops, the scene was that 

 of a sea of peaks and summits, like a tem])est-tossed ocean of 

 chopping waves, without any visible connection with the world 

 below where people live and trade, and commerce flourishes. 

 Every mountain peak has its veins. Every trachytic dome is full 

 of them. Every valley, gulch, and cafion is blessed with them. 



One who has studied these mountains well says of them: 

 "There is a vein for every man, woman, and child in them." A 

 bold saying, but perhaps not out of the way when I can count 150 

 veins, named and owned. Avithin a radius of one and a half miles 

 from the cabin where I live. 



The ores that we meet with are silver and silver sulphides. 

 Every known form of silver and its coml)inations has here been 

 found; also rarer minerals, native gold, moly])denum, zincite, 

 magnesite, and tin. Argentiferous galena is the most abundant; 

 silver with copper is the next so, and silver with antimony comes 

 next. Bromides are rare, so ulso is chloride. 



If I should generalize, I should say that the richest mines are 

 found highest up the mountains in trachytic rocks. I use the 

 terms porphyry and trachyte in their local sense among miners. 



No one vein, nor any one mountain, is a clue to another, even 

 in the same neighborhood. Frank Hough mine produces silver 

 with yellow copper, and very little galena. It is the only one on 

 Engineer Mt. Ulay, Capital City, Vermont, and others are 

 purely galena veins. San Juan Chief is a dry ore without galena; 

 its richest streaks are ruby and gray co])per. Bill Young is 

 ruby silver with gold. Old Lout is bismuth and gray copper. 

 Sunnyside, with its extension, and Sampson have more native 

 gold than any others. National Belle and Yankee Girl are 

 galena with copjici-. Smuggler vein has native gold with its dry 

 ores, while at Ophir they v»'ork veins for gold alone. 



Veins of these mountains are mainly siliceous — silex mixed 

 with soft porphyry, lime, or feldspar. The prevailing course of the 

 veins is N. E. and S. AV., Init they also run in every conceiv- 

 able direction. Sometimes they lie in echelon, sometimes they 

 divide, run parallel for a short distance, then the branch re-enters 

 and joins the main vein. At Red Mt., ores are found in chim- 

 neys, as if formed or deposited in hot geyser springs. In the 

 veins ores are found in different horizons, which carry different 

 minerals. A vein may be rich at the surface and lean below, or 

 lean at the surface and rich in depths below. They are often of 

 great width, thirty, forty, fifty, and even more feet, and also 



