3*8 CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS. 
pation of a railway, many large companies 
are prospecting their concessions, while 
the individual miner is also to be found 
with pickax, pan, and shovel on his back, 
making for this El Dorado, so old in 
many ways, and yet so very new. 
Mr. H. H. Porter, the prospecting 
engineer of the Batopilas Mining Com¬ 
pany, told me, and showed me the vari¬ 
ous specimens to verify his statement, 
that in one little area three hundred yards 
square, there were found twelve veins of 
silver running from three dollars to sev¬ 
enty-eight dollars to the ton. The reader 
unacquainted with mining may under¬ 
stand this by my saying that any silver 
mine of over twenty dollars to the ton is 
a fortune to its owner if on or near a 
railway. There are over five hundred 
veins in the Batopilas concession of sixty- 
