66 [APPENDIX 



judgment which has marked the subsequent career of these undertak 

 ings that firm determination to surmount all natural obstacles and test 

 the truth or falsity of the claim advanced of the value of these veins, 

 been practiced in the earlier stages of quartz mining, we should have 

 been spared the disagreeable task of chronicling adversity and pseudo- 

 failures in a legitimate and profitable branch of employment, thus sav 

 ing this one- of the grand levers of our commercial prosperity the odium 

 that has heretofore attached to it and is still persistent in the minds of 

 some abroad. 



Aided by the discrepant and in many cases malicious reports from our 

 own hills, the savans of the Atlantic States and Europe reiterated the 

 howl, and the public of those distant shores were nightly harrangued in 

 the lecture-room, and popular assemblies, on the utter impossibility of 

 the auriferous veins of this country proving to be more than, a mere ephemeral 

 show, and unworthy the confidence of reflecting minds. Their gratui 

 tous expressions and unfavorable opinions, are now proved from the sub 

 sequent explorations which have been conducted on these veins, to be 

 equally unfounded as were the arguments made use of by these men to 

 convince their listening audiences of the supposed facts they so learnedly 

 put forth ; and our citizens engaged in these pursuits of industry have 

 labored on, temporarily affected only by the confusion of opinions and 

 anathemas issued from the portals of science, against this great interest 

 of the State, and have borne the testimony triumphantly to the world 

 that science unattended by personal experience will render him who uses 

 it far more notorious than popular or reliable. 



Notwitstanding the disadvantages of a manufactured public opinion 

 with which this branch of industry has been obliged to contend, and the 

 serious obstacles which have thus been presented to its progress, it has 

 now become one of the permanent employments of the State, and should 

 it meet with no other impediments than those which are the resultants of 

 nature, it will obtain a position second to none, within the next two 

 years. 



The permanency of their character would scarcely have been demon 

 strated in the short period of time in which it has occurred, in any other 

 country or State except this, and is in true keeping with the firmness of 

 purpose manifested in every great undertaking by the citizens of this 

 State, and is but another mark of that indomitable perseverance in over 

 coming difficulties either natural or artificial, that stand in the path of 

 their advancement, for which they have become peculiarly characterized 

 and proverbial. 



The popular belief that the gold mines of this State, and the opera 

 tions conducted upon them heretofore has been suspended, with the ex 

 ception perhaps of a few isolated cases scattered through the country, 

 and that they hold but a forced existence for speculative puposes, de 

 signed ultimately to be the means of conducting swindling operations 

 on a large scale abroad, is as base as it is unfounded ; those feelings and 

 ideas find a haven in the breasts of a few only, who from their position 

 commercially have been the means of propagating this erroneous and 

 unjust opinion in relation to this subject. The embittered feelings of 

 such persons, which have had their origin in disappointed hopes arising 

 from too hasty conclusions respecting the productiveness of thoge oper- 



