CHAPTER X. 



DO THE RUBY HIEL DEPOSITS FORM A LODE? 



Difference of scientific opinions on this subject. — On this subject there appears to have 

 been a great difference of opinion. In the celebrated lawsuit between the 

 Eureka and Richmond mining companies, which was argued before Justice 

 Field, of the United States Supreme Court, Judge Sawyer, of the ninth 

 United States circuit, and Judge Ilillyer, for the district of Nevada, in 

 July, 1877, a large amount of expert testimony was offered by both parties. 

 Messrs. T. Stqrry Hunt, W. S Keyes, R. W. Raymond, T. J. Reid, and I. E. 

 James testified in favor of the Eureka that in their opinion the zone of 

 limestone included between the quartzite and the shale" was a lode in the 

 miner's sense of the term; whereas Messrs. Clarence King, J. D. Hague, 

 J. D. Whitney, William Ashburner, and N. Wescoatt declared it as their 

 opinion that neither from a practical nor a scientific point of view could the 

 above mentioned belt of limestone be regarded as a lode, and denied the 

 existence of a stratum of shale in the position mentioned by the other ex- 

 perts. 



causes leading to the suit. — The Richmond company had been following down 

 a body of ore which had been developed in the Richmond and Tip-Top 

 inclines and terminated in the Potts chamber, which lay partly in the ground 

 claimed by both companies. The so-called "compromise line" had been 

 established, after a former trial, as a boundary between the properties of 

 the two companies, and it was the prolongation of this line, or rather of a 



"This shale was variously Teferred to by the Eureka experts as clay and shale. In the Eureka 

 ground the clay was supposed to be a thin belt of shale which had been flattened out by pressure and 

 decomposed. By some it was believed to be a continuation of the same body of shale which existed 

 on the surface and below in the Richmond mine. It is, in reality, a rhyolite dike in the Jackson and 

 Phoenix. 



(Ill) 



