MINING. 303 
in California, and includes Bear valley, one of the richest 
quartz districts in the world. There are two principal lodes, 
called the Pine-Tree and Josephine, which unite and form a 
vein thirty feet wide. The rock crushed at the mills of the 
estate averages fourteen dollars to the ton. 
§ 226. Hresno, ete—Fresno county, south of Mariposa, has! 
the Chowchilla River for its northern boundary, and the Fresno 
and head-waters of the San Joaquin within its limits. These 
streams are all auriferous, but the diggings are not rich, and 
the gold is not fine im quality. There are no mining towns of 
note in this county. 
Between the San Joaquin River and White River, a distance 
of one hundred miles, the Sierra Nevada is barren of gold. 
White River is in Buena Vista county, and is not rich, but has 
some small districts of placer mines and a little quartz. 
Kern River in the same county has a small extent of placer 
ground and a good deal of auriferous quartz, most of which is 
crushed and amalgamated with the arastra. 
In latitude 86° 20’, east of the Sierra Nevada and Owen’s 
Mountains, lies the Coso argentiferous district, a region of 
which very little is known as yet. 
Gold placers are found in the San Francisquito Pass, forty- 
five miles northward from Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel 
eafion, twenty miles northeastward from the Mission of San 
Gabricl in Bear valley, fifteen miles eastward of San Bernar- 
dino, on the banks of the Colorado, twenty miles north of Fort 
Yuma, and in the Sierra of Santa Lucia, near the Mission of 
San Antonio. It is said that veins of auriferous and argen- 
tiferous quartz are also found in Bear valley, and in Holcomb 
valley in the slopes of Mount San Bernardino, and that there 
is rich auriferous quartz at Amargosa in the valley of the 
Mohave, north of the sink of that river. 
Notr.—The statement of the number of quartz-mills and mining canals in 
the several counties, is taken from H. G. Langley’s State Register. 
