The West American Scientist. 



We might well exclaim with Goethe: 



" O for the wise custom of the ancients to dissolve 

 The perfect, the sublime dignity of human form, 

 Which nature earnestly and slowly built, 

 After the spirit, the efficient has been severed, 

 By the action of purest flame. 



treasure up in a most precious urn 

 Tlie dull remains of ashes and of bones, 

 That these arms, in vain extended, 



May hold but something that unto this heart, 

 Which anxiously is yearning into empty space, 



1 still may press what is its melancholy own." 



THE GOLD FIELDS OF LOWER CALIFORNIA. 



The present excitement in San Diego, in fact throughout 

 Southern California, over the reports of remarkably rich dis- 

 coveries of gold in Lower California placer mines, will render any 

 information on this subject of popular interest, even if not of real 

 scientific value. 



The gold belt of Lower California, it the whole of the penin- 

 sular is not to be included in a general way, may be said to ex- 

 tend from near the United States boundary, south along the 

 mountains for two hundred or more miles, and an average of fifty 

 miles in width. 



The old Juarez district lies some forty miles southeast oi 

 Campo, and comprises many thousands of acres of auriferous 

 land, only a few hundred of acres of which has been even par- 

 tially worked or prospected. For possibly half a century these 

 Juarez placers have been worked in a primitive way by Mexicans, 

 Indians, and a few stragglers from the outside world, though at one 

 time several hundred men were employed in digging the gold. 



These mines are located on broad table lands on the top of 

 the mountain system of the peninsula, with numerous depressions 

 and broad, shallow valleys, where the miners were usually most 

 successful. The mines consisted mainly of square holes dug from 

 two to five or six feet in depth, from which the lower layer of 

 clay-like soil was taken, and either carried a few miles to water 

 and washed out, or the water would be brought to the mine 

 in casks and used over and over until a new supply became 

 necessary. This slow and wasteful way of working the mines 

 yielded the workmen from two dollars a day upwards, the aver- 

 age yield perhaps exceeding four dollars, but at present, or when 

 I last visited this district, less than a dozen men were engaged in 

 the work. I have myself washed gold out of the soil in these 

 mines, and it would be difficult to find ground that would not 

 yield at least a color in the whole of this vast district. 



Another equally extensive district is that east of the old Han- 

 son ranch, similar in general character, in fact, an extension of it, 

 but at a higher elevation being nearly six thousand feet above the 



