CONSTITUTION AND LAWS. 857 
his tailings, and until such removal the title is not subject to 
forfeiture. And the prior occupant is under no obligation to 
be in haste; he can take the same time to remove the tailings 
that he would have taken if no claim for mining purposes had 
been made to the land. Itis not necessary that the owner of 
a claim should work upon it in person; the labor of a hired 
man is as good to maintain occupation and secure title as any 
other labor. In the Esmeralda silver district, work to the 
value of seventy-five dollars secures the title forever, according 
to the mining regulations. 
A company of miners may take up as much ground as the 
aggregate amount which they could take up separately; and 
when a company takes a claim, every member has an equal 
and undivided interest in every part of it. When a claim is 
to be taken for a company, it is sufficient that one member of 
the company should appear at the recorder’s office, demand 
that the claim be recorded, and offer to pay the fees.. The re- 
corder has no right to make any preliminary inquiries as to 
who the people are, or where they live, or whether they live 
at all. One man, finding a good tract of rich ground, may 
write down the names of a dozen persons living at a distance, 
and, without consulting them, have their names recorded as 
members of a company owning a large and valuable claim, 
and by such record their title becomes good. 
In most districts a miner may hold only one claim by his 
own original location, but an unlimited number by purchase. 
In districts where there are both dry ravine and bar-claims, he 
may at the same time hold one bar-claim and one ravine-claim 
by original location, the former being workable in summer and 
the latter in the winter. After having exhausted or abandoned 
one claim, the miner may always take up another. 
The manner of taking up claims in the argentiferous and 
quicksilver districts, is the same as in the gold districts. 
The water in the mineral districts is also subject to claim. 
The streams may be diverted from their courses and used for 
washing dirt, driving saw-mills, grist-mills, and quartz-mills, or 
