126 SUEVEY OF COLOEADO AND NEW MEXICO. 



The company employs from six to fourteen men. The production of a 

 ton of salt costs the companj' from $15 to $20, and they sell it for from 

 $60 to $100; the miners and smelters getting it at the former price, both 

 because they do not require it as pure as do the ranchmen, and also 

 because their orders are invariably larger. 



EEMAEKS.— COLOEADO. 



That wliich has given Colorado such an uni)recedeuted forward 

 impetus in her internal development and growth, has undoubtedly been 

 the discovery of gold and silver in the beds of her streams and in the 

 recesses of her mountains. A detailed history of these discoveries would 

 be hardly in place here, especiallj^ as this has been pleasantly outlined 

 by Mr. Hollister in "The Mines of Colorado," but it is interesting to 

 know that the steps toward the establishment of mills, shafts, and 

 furnaces in the center of a but lately uncivilized country, have been the 

 same as in California and elsewhere. 



The existence of the precious metals in the mountains was not arrived 

 at by reasoning on the similarity of the Eocky Mountains to other ore- 

 bearing chains, nor even by concluding that if gold and silver were 

 fodnd in one part of their extent, they would be probably also in 

 other parts; but the rude hunter or ruder savage chanced upon a few 

 shining grains, which excited the curiosity and cupidity of the dwellers 

 in the States, and first one, and then two, and then more, girded up their 

 loins for a journey to the tempting wilderness, until the spark burst iuto 

 a blaze, and hundreds of men from all classes of life were drawn together 

 by the hope of enriching themselves with bags of gold. Many of these 

 early gold-seekers fondly imagined that they had only to pick the gold 

 up in the region within the shadow of the great Pike's Peak, and find- 

 ing that, on the contrary, their employ ment was one inseparably connected 

 with vicissitudes and uncertainties, they were discouraged and went 

 back. 



Gulch or i^lacer mining in gold countries precedes the more regular 

 and legitimate operations as naturally as all crude undertakings precede 

 the improvements they suggest. The first placer mining which promised 

 to reward the undertakers or prospectors in Colorado Territory had its 

 origin in Cherry Creek, in a mining settlement designated Auraria, and 

 just opposite the present city of Denver. This was in 1858. 



By the laws which govern the distribution of eroded materials by the 

 agency of water, the larger, coarser, and heavier particles are invariably 

 found deposited nearer to, and the finer, lighter, and more impalpable 

 wash farther from, the origin of the eroding force. Thus the drying 

 power and heat of the sun, the oxidation of the atmosphere, and the 

 eroding force of wind and water, tear off large and small masses of the 

 mineral veins; gravity precipitates them, along with boulders of the 

 country rock, into the creek and rivulet iDcds, and the water of these 

 streams grinds them up as in a mortar, and finally spreads them out in 

 beds whose distance from the point of abrasion is inversely proportional 

 to the weight of the individual particles. In this manner fine gold may 

 be carried to an enormous distance from its parent vein, but the farther 

 we recede from it the finer becomes the gold and the more diffused 

 through the silicious mass, so that the difficulty of obtaining it is in- 

 creased in two ways : first, there is much less gold, and second ; what there 

 is is present in a much more finely divided state. To one unacquainted 

 with the facts, this second difficulty may appear not a real one; the spe- 

 cific gravity of gold being the same whether the metal exists in large or 



