MINERAL BELTS OF THE CONTINENT. 683 



Going south this mountain terminates in round knobs from 500 to 1,000 feet 

 high that form a mountain range to San Luis Potosi, where these belts bisect 

 each other, and which explains the great silver veins worked by the Spaniards in 

 the States of San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas. 



The reader will now have in his mind's eye these two great silver streams, 

 that reach from Behring Straits to the Isthmus of Panama. 



The Sierra Nevada or Pacific Coast Range passes into Old Mexico in the 

 State of Sonora, and following the coast forms the Cordillera or Andes of this 

 continent. 



Between these mountain ranges at the south is the high basin of the City of 

 Mexico, coming north the Mexican Desert or Bolson de Mapimi, which at its 

 north end forms the San Luis Valley, and farther north the basin of Utah, Ari- 

 zona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and Washington Territory, to Alaska. 



The lines must follow the center of these great watersheds in their sinuous 

 and serpentine courses, as they wind around at the heads of a thousand streams 

 that flow east and west, and form the heads of great rivers of the continent. 



A line on the west side of the Sierra Nevada, to follow the local watersheds 

 and centers from which the streams radiate from Alaska through Oregon, Cali- 

 fornia, Sonora to El Oro, in Durango, Mexico, and from there south to the Isth- 

 mus, c( vers the native gold and silver belt of the continent. This belt should 

 be colored yellow. 



In 1878, in going from Parral, Mexico, to Inde, a dry placer gold field was 

 crossed seventy miles wide. El Oro is in the southern part of this field. The 

 head waters of the Nueces and Sistine Rivers descend from the Cordillera, and 

 run east; along the ribs of this chain the gold bearing quartz veins must be 

 looked for. The country is black clay slate disrupted by granitoid rock, and in 

 geology it is the duplicate of the California gold field. 



There are evidently untold millions of dollars in the dry gulches of this gold 

 field, and all that is needed is ditches to bring the water. Here is an opening 

 for a large number of our floating mining population to invade industrially and 

 peaceably our sister Republic. The climate is good, living cheap, and gold easy 

 of access, to be worked by small parties with their individual labor. 



This is one of the first steps for the native miner to study up practically ; the 

 vein system of the silver and gold fields of Mexico. There are other Comstocks, 

 Silver Kings, Veta Grandes, and native silver veins as found at Batipilos to be 

 opened along these two belts and in the basins between them. 



We now have in the mind's eye the silver and gold framework of these two 

 mountain ranges, and now comes the embellishment of this topographical picture. 

 Along the sides of these mountain ranges and in the great basin between them, 

 are lesser drainage centers, marked by conic mountains that have their satellites 

 or lesser conic hills around them. These stand as sentinels along the great con- 

 tinental divides, as the Black Hills, Pike's Peak, Leadville, Mount Davidson, 

 and boofas as at Parral, Inde, and hundreds of others from the Canada line to the 

 halls of the Montezumas. These outlying knobs are the fixed stars of this stellar 



