Notes on Upper California. 263 



disseminated in grains, scales, delicate leaves or thin plates, irreg- 

 ular strings, and sometimes in rude lumps. The quartz being 

 an extremely hard mineral, is quarried out with much labor. A 

 large part of it may not show a grain of gold to the naked eye, 

 and still by pounding, washing, and amalgamation, a consider- 

 able quantity may be obtained. Masses of quartz at the Moss 

 mine, Virginia, examined during a visit of Prof. Silliman, yielded 

 five to eight dollars of gold to the bushel of rock ; yet no gold 

 was previously detected, although examined by a magnifier.* In 

 better parts of the vein, grains or strings of the metal may be at 

 times visible, and very rarely a lump of a few ounces, or perhaps 

 pounds, is encountered. The largest mass of gold from the Rus- 

 sian mines was found in 1842, in Taschku Targanka; it weighed 

 nearly 100 troy pounds. 



The quartz is generally cellular, and sometimes tabular in 

 structure. Iron pyrites is often present ; and this mineral may 

 contain gold in extremely delicate leaves. Galena or lead ore, 

 and several other minerals, may also occur in the quartz. Mag- 

 netic iron is frequently found in the same region, and occurs as 



•% ■ ^ ... _ -_ __ — - _ 



abundant 



regions. 



hoped 



is the discovery of quartz in large veins or beds, which by dint 

 of hard quarrying, the working of heavy stamping mills, and 

 careful amalgamation will yield its produce, large or small as the 

 case may be. 



Alluvial washings, the world over, have been the principal 

 sources of the precious metal. Among the Russian mines (which 

 m 1846 yielded over $16,000,000) the rock is mined only at 

 Ekaterinburg. The sand or gravel of a gold district, as that of 

 California, is the rock ready pulverized by natural causes (wear 

 from abrasion and decomposition) ; and it is thus made ready for 

 the farther operations of the miner. The streams of water wash- 

 ing over this soil, still farther aid in the preparation, by collecting 

 l he gold into the bottoms of valleys and carrying off the light 

 gravel and sand (these being seven times lighter than the gold), 

 thus leaving the grains of metal along the beds of the streams 

 and the bottoms of ravines. 



Auriferous sands or gravel seldom contain the gold in grains 

 that are visible without a farther careful washing by the miner; 

 and often little then becomes apparent, until mercury is added 

 a nd the process of amalgamation carried through. 



The region covered by the debris of the California mountains 

 is as wide as the vast prairies of its long-reaching rivers, and the 

 slopes that rise into the ranges on either side. The gravel of 





* This Journal, xxxii, 105, 106—1837. 





