MINING. 303 



in California, and includes Bear valley, one of the richest 

 quartz districts in the world. There are two principal lodes, 

 called the Pine-Tree and Josephine, which unite and form a 

 vein thirty feet wide. The rock crushed at the mills of the 

 estate averages fourteen dollars to the ton. 



§ 226. Fresno^ etc. — Fresno county, south of Mariposa, has 

 the Chowchilla River for its northern boundary, and the Fresno 

 and head-waters of the San Joaquin within its limits. These 

 streams are all auriferous, but the diggings are not rich, and 

 the gold is not fine in quality. There are no mining towns of 

 note in this county. 



Between the San Joaquin River and White River, a distance 

 of one hundred miles, the Sierra Nevada is barren of gold. 

 White River is in Buena Vista county, and is not rich, but has 

 some small districts of placer mines and a little quartz. 



Kern River in the same county has a small extent of placer 

 ground and a good deal of auriferous quartz, most of which is 

 crushed and amalgamated with the arastra. 



In latitude 86° 20', east of the Sierra Nevada and Owen's 

 Mountains, lies the Coso argentiferous district, a region of 

 which very little is known as yet. 



Gold placers are found in the San Francisquito Pass, forty- 

 five miles northward from Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel 

 yanon, twenty miles northeastward from the Mission of San 

 Gabriel in Bear valley, fifteen miles eastward of San Bernar- 

 dino, on the banks of the Colorado, twenty miles north of Fort 

 Yuma, and in the Sierra of Santa Lucia, near the Mission of 

 San Antonio. It is said that veins of auriferous and argen- 

 tiferous quartz are also found in Bear valley, and in Holcomb 

 valley in the slopes of Mount San Bernardino, and that there 

 is rich auriferous quartz at Amargosa in the valley of the 

 Mohave, north of the sink of that river. 



Note. — The statement of the number of quartz-mills and mining canals in 

 the several counties, is taken from H. G. Langley's State Register. 



