42 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



like all the other mining booms, will wreck a good many adventurers, and carry 

 a few to fortune. 



In my next, I may give some descriptions of English and American enter- 

 prises. — Cor. Eng. and Mining Journal. 



THE SAN JUAN REGION, COLORADO. 



BY THEO. B. COMSTOCK. 



San Juan County has had less snow than last year; but avalanches have been 

 perhaps more frequent, though but little destructive. If late snows do not come, 

 the season will open quite early. Not a few who have wintered in the East have 

 already returned. The Denver & Rio Grande R.ailroad has been vigorously 

 pushed, and it will very soon be completed to Durango, from which point it will 

 be quickly extended to Silverton. Meanwhile, comfortable coaches will daily 

 cover the intervening distance. The Upper Animas Valley, as far as the Animas 

 Forks, will be provided next season with as good facilities for travel as last year, 

 or better. Freight transportation must become much cheaper and more easily 

 procurable than ever before, while the increased facilities for ore-reduction will 

 undoubtedly give better prices and enable lower grades to be profitably treated. 



There has been much less than the usual amount of "wild-cat" organization 

 of San Juan companies here in the East this season, though one or two have slip- 

 ped in unnoticed with the large number of good incorporations. Boston capital- 

 ists, with characteristic forethought and judgment, sent out some competent 

 investigators last season, and the result of their labor is now apparent in at least 

 some of the new enterprises brought to public notice in that city. Still, I feel it 

 necessary to warn investors that not every one of these schemes is worthy of full 

 support. Good companies will not suffer from my hint that high capitalization 

 and stock speculation have already injured the San Juan country more than the 

 failure of any business enterprise. In fact, it may be truly said that there have 

 been no failures in San Juan ; for in every instance of disaster, the fault has been 

 with manipulators in the East. The mines are still there, ready to justify all that 

 was ever predicted by competent authority. 



The production of this district last year was actually less, by the records, 

 than in 1879; but the work performed, the development of the mines, and the ore 

 taken out were much greater ; for we were placed in circumstances such as can 

 never again occur, which gave us no tempting market. 



Silverton has received new impetus from the forming of companies to work 

 the mines in Cement and Poughkeepsie and other gulches, and good reports have 

 been received from reliable sources of the work done this winter upon the pro- 

 ductive veins in the neighborhood. 



Arrastra and Cunningham gulches are not behind, and all at Eureka are more 

 than ever convinced of the great value of the local fissures. There is now a very 

 strong probability of important additions to the working facilities at this point. 



