68 MINING INDUSTRY. 



known wLich would firmly preclude a belief in the continuance of both 

 quartz and ore in depth. Only extended search, however, can determine the 

 points where the wedge closes and where the deep-seated vein exists. The 

 example of the Virginia chamber is remarkable, in that it affords an immense 

 longitudinal expansion of vein-material and almost unprecedented distribution 

 of bonanzas, with only the single, narrow, downward connection which we find 

 now in the Hale and Norcross mine. It is possible, therefore, that the Ophir 

 Consolidated chamber may likewise terminate downward in a single chimney, 

 through which have arisen the varied solfataric products. 



Horses. — Between the fissures whose position and relation have now been 

 indicated lie the series of included fragments of country-rock, or horses, with 

 which the reader is made somewhat familiar by a detailed study of sections. 

 In the Gold Hill division of the lode there is but one main body of this char- 

 acter within the lode. That mass of white quartzose propylite known as the 

 Hawk-eye horse, is in i-eality a portion of the country-rock, or rather, to speak 

 more correctly, is an intruded mass which lies between the lode and its west 

 wall, lined on either side with selvages of clay, so that it may be, by a stretch 

 of meaning, considered either as a horse or as a part of the west country-rock. 



North of the Middle Belcher, however, and continuing from that point to 

 the north line of the Empire claim, is a single included mass of propylite, 

 which has been fractured from the east wall, and occupies the whole middle 

 ground of the vein. Its general shape, like most of the other horses, 

 is that of a long wedge, with its point turned downward toward the intersec- 

 tion of the east and west clays. It is 2,500 feet from north to south, with a 

 transverse expansion on the 400-foot level of about 400 feet, and descending 

 to a probable average depth of 1,300 feet. Although a single general mass, 

 and well defined by prominent walls of clay, it is nevertheless greatly subdi- 

 vided both by immense conchoidal fractures and by a system of lesser fissures 

 which interlace it in every possible direction, cutting it up into blocks. 



In the north part of the Bullion claim the single vein of quartz, which 

 occupies nearly the entire breadth of the lode, opens toward the east, and 

 leaves room between its mass and the syenite for two limited horses which 

 have fallen in from the west country. With the exception of certain indistinct 

 bodies in the Gould and Curry, these are the only well-defined syenite masses 



