272 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Pie 



assures us, buffalo-paths have indicated the best tracks for 

 passing over the Cumberland mountains in the south-western 

 parts of Virginia and Kentucky, and over the Rocky Mountains 

 between the source of the Yellowstone and Plate Eivers, and 

 between the southern branch of the Columbia and the Cali- 

 fornian Rio Colorado. vi. 



Where to find Pleasure. 



The fact is undeniable that the portions of rock which have 

 as yet proved to be the richest in gold are those which are at 

 or nearest the surface. Experience too, dearly bought in 

 numberless instances, has taught the miner throughout long 

 ages that as he follows the veinstones downwards by deep 

 shafts into the body of the rock, the gold diminishes in volume, 

 so that in many cases the cost of extraction has been greater 

 than the value of the metal. The Ural Mountains will illus- 

 trate this fact. The Indians who lived in tracts adjacent to 

 the Slaty Mountains of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, followed the 

 simple process of picking the shining material from the gravel, 

 sand, and shingle derived from the chain; so that when the 

 Spaniards, the best miners of the sixteenth century, first colo- 

 nized South America, they naturally inferred that, if ignorant 

 natives could thus gather sufficient quantities of gold to roof 

 the palaces of their sovereigns, they, as skilful Europeans 

 might extract incredible quantities from the bowels of moun- 

 tains the mere detritus or surfaces of which had contributed 

 such a vast amount of gold. But as surely as deep mines 

 frequently enriched the Spanish speculators who sought for 

 copper and silver, so surely gold-mining in the solid rock proved 

 abortive, owing to the slender downward dissemination of gold 

 in a hard and intractable matrix. Experience in every country 

 proves that the field of gold decreases with the depth where 

 mining in the solid rock has been attempted. Here is a lesson 

 to people in search of pleasure. Look out for your pleasure in 

 the duties which lie nearest to your hand. On the surface of 

 your everyday life there are more enjoyments to be obtained 

 than you are disposed to believe. You do not look for them, 

 therefore you do not see them. You erroneously imagine that 



