MINES ALONG THE COLORADO. 191 
railroad. Of these the best known are the copper mines of the 
Bill Williams, of which Mr. Ross Brown says—‘‘ There are 
fifty good mines of rich copper, black and red oxides, silicates, 
and carbonates, all of such a character that they can be 
readily smelted by heat alone. The ores average forty per 
cent. of metal. Many of these ores are also rich in gold, for 
which mills have been erected.” 
_ These mines were visited by Dr. Parry in December, who 
reports that they were shipping all ores of forty per cent. and 
over to San Francisco by an uncertain and circuitous water- 
channel nearly 2,500 miles long, and that the main bulk was 
thence transported, by way of Cape Horn, to Swansea, in 
Wales, for reduction. Even then they paid their possessors. 
4 Dr. Parry also visited the mining regions in western 
Arizona, south of Bill Williams Mountain, of which he 
reports :—‘‘ At several points gold has been successfully 
worked, yielding, in a few instances, rich returns from the 
r udest processes of dry washing. Quartz veins crop out in 
wonderful abundance in several isolated localities ; especially 
noted ten to fifteen miles west of La Paz, where vik deposits 
of silver and copper ores are also known to exist, and have 
been partially worked; but, in nearly every instance, mining 
enterprise has been tvsed to succumb to insurmountable 
diff culties, and in not a few cases to actual loss of life.” 
From ten to forty miles north of Callville, which is 100 
iles above Fort Mojave, both being on the Colorado, are the 
mous Salt Mountains, where there is an inexhaustible quan- 
ty of pure rock salt very accessible to miners. At one point 
ere isa surface exposure of seventy feet, clear as a crystal. 
r several miles square the formation is reported to be 
nost exclusively of this crystalline salt. There is a little 
op, of twenty-five tons, running from Fort Mojave to 
