376 MINmG INDTJSTEY. 



Mills and Milling. — The milling of the ores of this district is rendered 

 costly by the necessity of roasting them with salt before they can be subjected 

 to the amalgamation process. None of them are sufficiently "docile" to be 

 treated successfully by the ordinary Washoe method of wet-crushing, but being 

 combined intimately with antimony, sulphur, arsenic, lead, copper, zinc, and 

 iron, require a method similar in its general features to that by which the first- 

 class ores of the Comstock are treated. This condition and the high cost of 

 mining exclude from profitable treatment all low-grade ores. It has been already 

 shown that the mining of the ore, even on a comparatively large scale and under 

 favorable circumstances, does not cost less than $45 or $50 per ton; and, allow- 

 ing a milling cost of $35 per ton, it is clear that an ore must yield $80 or $85 

 in order to return the costs of extraction and milling alone ; and until some 

 successful means of concentrating the poorer ores are introduced, or cheaper 

 methods of milling are made practicable, a large proportion of the ore raised to 

 the surface, or at least made accessible for stoping in the mines, must remain 

 unavailable. 



In the immediate vicinity of the Austin mining region there are now six 

 or seven mills, having in the aggregate about 75 or 80 stamps. They are all 

 designed to run by steam-power, and are furnished with roasting furnaces and 

 barrels or pans, chiefly the latter, for amalgamation. The milling capacity of 

 the region is far in excess of the production of the mines. During the early 

 summer of 1868 but one mill, the Manhattan, was running, treating its own 

 ores and those of all the other producing mines. The Keystone, a fine miU 

 of 20 stamps, had been running in the spring, but was destroyed by fire. 



The Metacom mill, in the Yankee Blade district, has since resumed 

 work, having been leased by the Lane and Fuller Company ; not so much to 

 supply a demand for increased milling capacity as to control the price of mill 

 ing by competition with the Manhattan. This excess of milling power is 

 chiefly due to the mistakes of those who in the earlier days of the develop- 

 ment of the district greatly overestimated the capacity of the mines to sup- 

 ply ore. Many of the companies first engaged there in mining operations 

 made the blunder so common in all such enterprises, of erecting a large and 

 expensive mill long before proving the value of their mine, the result being 

 that a large amount of capital is locked up in costly and idle establishments. 



