Part 20

“Carson City,” just above Johntown, though it has few houses as yet, aspires to be the emporium of the new gold region, and perhaps of the embryo State of Nevada; but Genoa, ten or fifteen miles further up, is the present emporium, though a village of but forty or fifty houses. Here a convention had been in session for a fortnight, and had completed a constitution for the aforesaid embryo state of Nevada only the night before our arrival. We met some of the delegates bound homeward. Said state is to comprise the western half (very nearly) of Utah, with (I believe) a small strip of eastern California. California may object to this; but I trust Congress will organize at least the Territory of Nevada at an early day. It is an established fact that a division of power between Mormons and Gentiles seldom works harmoniously; but in Utah there is no division—the Mormons have all. The people of Carson Valley, and of western Utah generally, are not Mormons; the legislation of Utah is unsuited and unacceptable to them; they desire to be set off, and I trust they soon may be. Though few in numbers as yet, they are rapidly increasing, and will soon possess all the elements of a state.

I had previously seen some beautiful valleys, but I place none of these ahead of Carson. I judge that portion of it already in good part under cultivation, about thirty miles long by ten to fifteen wide—an area destined to be largely increased, as I have already indicated. This valley, originally a grand meadow, the home of the deer and the antelope, is nearly inclosed by high mountains, down which, especially from the north and west, come innumerable rivulets, leaping and dancing on their way to form or join the Carson. Easily arrested and controlled, because of the extreme shallowness of their beds, these streams have been made to irrigate a large portion of the upper valley, producing an abundance of the sweetest grass, and insuring bounteous harvests also of vegetables, barley, oats, etc. Wheat seems to do fairly here; corn not so well; in fact, the nights are too cold for it, if the water were not. For this spring-water, leaping suddenly down from its mountain-sources, is too cold, too pure, to be well adapted to irrigation; could it be held back even a week, and exposed in shallow ponds or basins to the hot sunshine, it would be vastly more useful. When the whole river shall have been made available, twenty to forty miles below, it will prove far more nutritious and fertilizing.

Genoa stands on the narrow bench or slope of hard granitic gravel, which intervenes betwixt the mountains and the valley, with half a dozen rivulets running through it, to fructify the fields and gardens below. Just behind it is the steep ascent of the mountain, its very soil formed of white, pulverized granite, gloriously covered with fragrant and graceful pines. As these steep acclivities are absolutely worthless for any other end than tree-growing, I entreat the people of Genoa to take care of these woods, and not let their place be shorn of half its beauty, merely to save a mile or so in the hauling of fuel. I may never see this lovely valley again—it is hardly probable that I ever shall—but its beauty, its seclusion, its quiet, the brightness of its abundant rivulets, the grandeur of its inclosing mountains, the grace and emerald verdure of their vesture of pines, have graven themselves on my memory with a vividness and force which only he who has passed weary weeks on some great, shadeless, verdureless desert can fully realize.

We stopped but to dine in Genoa, then economized the residue of the daylight by pressing on fifteen miles to the point at which the California road enters the mountains by the side of the largest of the brooks which unite to form the Carson. Here we halted at a fair two-story house, the first one I had entered with the hope of resting in it since I left Salt Lake City. We had beds here—actual beds, and good ones—our first since Camp Floyd. Though our night was not a long one, for we were to start again by 4, A. M., I reckon good use was made of it by the four through passengers who had not lain down before since they left Shell Creek, five days ago, and nearly five hundred miles away. My own slumber was partial and broken, as it generally is; but the bath which preceded and prepared for it was a genuine refreshment, and the sleep seemed quite sufficient. In fact, I felt that I could have gone without for another week, and experienced less discomfort than I did the first night that we rode, and the day after.

We were in motion again at the earliest dawn, for we had still about seventy-five miles of rugged mountain road to traverse before reaching this place. The Carson side of the road is not yet half made, while the half next to this place is in the main good. But in fact, the expense of a good highway up the eastern slope of the Sierra must be a heavy one. For that slope is here composed of granite—simple, naked rock—with scarcely a fraction of its surface thinly covered by soil. Of course, no trees but evergreens can live—a very few small quaking-asps in the bottoms of the ravines scarcely form an exception—while almost every rood is covered by giant, glorious pines. I saw sugar and yellow-pines at least eight feet in diameter and tall in proportion; I am assured that one was recently cut near this road which measured eight feet across at a height of eighty feet from the ground, and from which two hundred and forty thousand shingles were made. Beside these universal pines, there are giant cedars, balsam-firs, and some red-wood; after we cross the summit, we found also oaks, which gradually increased in size and number as we descended. I think I saw oaks (the prevalent California species is much like our white-oak) at least four feet through—in short, I never saw anything like so much nor so good timber in the course of any seventy-five miles’ travel as I saw in crossing the Sierra Nevada. How greatly blest California is in this abundance, I need not say.

The road over this pass—here claimed to be the lowest and most practicable of any over the Sierra Nevada—rises steadily for twelve or thirteen miles from our morning’s starting-point, then descends for two or three miles as abruptly to the valley of a brook which runs north into lake Bigler, which in turn finds an outlet into Truckee River, whereby its waters are borne eastward into the desert and there dissipated. There is fine grass on Lake Bigler, and several hundred cows are kept there in summer, making butter for the California market. When snow falls, these cattle are driven down to the valley of the Sacramento, where the rains are now commencing, and they here live without hay till June, when they are taken back to the mountains again, where only is butter made from them. The business is very lucrative, the land costing nothing and being unfenced. Taking into account gold, timber, and grass, the Sierra Nevada is probably the richest and most productive mountain-chain on earth.

From the valley aforesaid, we rose again for two miles, along a narrow road cut into the side of a mountain, with a precipitous declivity on the right. Then we began to descend once more, beside a rivulet which leaped and laughed on its way to the Pacific. The ascent from the Carson side is far shorter than the descent this way, Carson Valley being much higher than that of the Sacramento. But the road, even on this side, is, for most of the way, eaten into the side of a steep mountain, with a precipice of from five to fifteen hundred feet on one side and as steep an eminence on the other. Yet along this mere shelf, with hardly a place to each mile where two meeting wagons can pass, the mail-stage was driven at the rate of ten miles an hour (in one instance eleven), or just as fast as four wild California horses, whom two men could scarcely harness, could draw it. Our driver was of course skillful; but had he met a wagon suddenly on rounding one of the sharp points or projections we were constantly passing, a fearful crash was unavoidable. Had his horses seen fit to run away (as they _did_ run once, on the unhooking of a trace, but at a place where he had room to rein them out of the road on the upper side, and thus stop them) I know that he could not have held them, and we might have been pitched headlong down a precipice of a thousand feet, where all of the concern that could have been picked up afterward would not have been worth two bits per bushel. Yet at this break-neck rate we were driven for not less than four hours or forty miles, changing horses every ten or fifteen, and raising a cloud of dust through which it was difficult at times to see anything. We crossed the south fork of the American River, eighteen miles above this point, rising two or three miles immediately after to the summit of the ridge south, and thenceforward the road, nearly to this city, descends steadily a beautifully inclined ridge, and, but for the dust, would be one of the finest drives on earth. And right glad was I to find myself once more among friends, surrounded by the comforts of civilization, and with a prospect of occasional rest. I cannot conscientiously recommend the route I have traveled to summer tourists in quest of pleasure, but it is a balm for many bruises to know that I am at last in CALIFORNIA.

XXVII. CALIFORNIA MINES AND MINING.

SACRAMENTO, _Aug. 7, 1859_.

I have spent the last week mainly among the mines and miners of El Dorado, Placer, and Nevada counties, in the heart of the gold-producing region. There may be richer “diggings” north or south; but I believe no other three counties lying together have yielded in the aggregate, or are now producing, so much gold as those I have named. Of course, I have not been within sight of more than a fraction of the mines or _placers_ of these counties, while I have not carefully studied even one of them; and yet the little information I have been able to glean, in the intervals of traveling, friendly greeting, and occasional speech-making, may have some value for those whose ignorance on the subject is yet more dense than mine.

The three counties I have named lie near the center of the state, at the base of the Sierra Nevada, between those mountains on the east and the valley of the Sacramento on the west. They are rugged in formation, being composed of innumerable hills (mainly spurs of the great chain), separated by narrow valleys, usually descending to the west, and gradually opening out into the broad, rich valley of the Sacramento. The three branches or “forks” of the American and those of the Yuba River come brawling down from the Sierra Nevada through very deep, narrow valleys or cañons, and unite respectively to run a very short course less rapidly ere they are lost in the Sacramento—the Yuba having previously formed a junction with the Feather. “Bear River,” “Wolf Creek,” “Deer Creek,” etc., are the names of still smaller streams, taking their rise among the foot-hills, and running a short course into some fork of the American or Yuba, their scanty waters, with a good portion of those of the rivers aforesaid, being mainly drawn off into canals or “ditches,” as they are inaccurately termed, by which the needful fluid is supplied to the miners.

THE CANALS.

These canals are a striking characteristic of the entire mining region. As you traverse a wild and broken district, perhaps miles from any human habitation or sign of present husbandry, they intersect your dusty, indifferent road, or are carried in flumes supported by a frame-work of timber twenty to sixty feet over your head. Some of these flumes or open aqueducts are carried across valleys each a mile or more in width; I have seen two of them thus crossing side by side. The canals range from ten to sixty or eighty miles in length, and are filled by damming the streams wherefrom they are severally fed, and taking out their water in a wide trench, which runs along the side of one bank, gradually gaining comparative altitude as the stream by its side falls lower and lower in its cañon, until it is at length on the crest of the headland or mountain promontory which projects into the plain, and may be conducted down either side of it in any direction deemed desirable. Several of these canals have cost nearly or quite half a million dollars each, having been enlarged and improved from year to year, as circumstances dictated and means could be obtained. One of them, originally constructed in defiance of sanguine prophecies of failure, returned to its owners the entire cost of its construction within three months from the date of its completion. Then it was found necessary to enlarge and every way improve it, and every dollar of its net earnings for the next four years was devoted to its perfection. In some instances, the projectors exhausted their own means and then resorted to borrowing on mortgage at California rates of interest; I learn without surprise that nearly or quite every such experiment resulted in absolute bankruptcy and a change of owners. Of late, the solvent and prosperous companies have turned their attention to damming the outlets of the little lakes which fill the hollows of the Sierra, in order to hold back the superabundant waters of the spring months for use in summer and autumn. This course is doubly beneficent, in that it diminishes the danger from floods to which this city is specially subject, but which is also serious in all the valleys or cañons of the mining region wherein there is anything that water can injure. I judge that the cost and present cash value of these mining canals throughout California must be many millions of dollars, paying in the average a fair income, while their supply of water is at this season, and from July to November, utterly inadequate. Water is sold by them by the cubic inch—a stream four inches deep and six wide, for instance, being twenty-four inches, for which, at fifty cents per inch, twelve dollars per day must be paid by the taker. A head of six inches—that is, six inches’ depth of water in the flume above the top of the aperture through which the water escapes into the miners’ private ditch or flume—is usually allowed. The price per day ranges from twenty cents to a dollar per inch, though I think it now seldom reaches the higher figure, which was once common. Were the supply twice as copious as it is, I presume it would all be required; if the price were somewhat lowered by the increase, I am sure it would be. Many works are now standing idle solely for want of water.

THE MINES.

Go where you will, in the mining region, you are seldom a mile distant from past or present “diggings.” Speaking generally, every ravine, gully, or water-course has been prospected; each has, at some point, been dug open to the “bed-rock,” and the overlaying earth or gravel run through a “rocker,” “tom,” or “sluice,” in the hope of making it yield the shining dust. Many of these water-courses have been deeply and widely dug up for miles in extent. If any are left entirely undisturbed, the presumption is strong that the subjacent rock is so near the surface, that gold has had no chance to deposit itself thereon. In some instances, basins or depressions in the rock have been gradually filled up with earth—probably auriferous—through thousands of years, and the gold which might otherwise have been strown down the valley for miles is here collected, so that it would be sheer waste to mine throughout those miles. But the more general opinion seems to be, that gold is diffused throughout the soil of the entire mining region, especially upon, and just above the surface of, the bed-rock, though only in certain localities is it sufficiently abundant to justify efforts to extract it. I find no one seeming to cherish any apprehensions that California will cease to produce gold abundantly, at least within the next quarter of a century. On the contrary, the current belief seems to be, that the influx of population will in time so reduce the wages of labor, or the progress of invention and discovery so increase its efficiency, that extensive districts will ultimately be mined with profit, which are now necessarily avoided. If the amount of available water were doubled, with a considerable reduction of price, the gold product of California would thereupon be increased several millions per annum. At present, mining enterprises of considerable promise and indefinite magnitude remain in abeyance, simply because the price of labor, the rate of interest, and other elements of the cost of mining, are deemed too high to justify their prosecution.

MODES OF MINING.

In the course of a week’s travel through a portion of the mining district, I did not see a single miner engaged with pick and pan in prospecting. Higher up in the mountains, or further to the north, I might have found such. Nor do I remember having seen white men, save, perhaps, in a single instance, engaged in digging and washing the gravel or earth in the bed of any water-course, whether river, creek, or dry gulch. But Chinese bands, of six to twelve, were often hard at work in these water-courses—Bear River, the south fork of the Yuba, etc.—digging, and washing with rocker, sluice, and a sort of wheel-and-flume arrangement, which I did not get the hang of.

The Chinese are hardly used here. In the first place, they are taxed four dollars each per month for the naked privilege of mining at all. Next, they are not allowed to mine anywhere but in diggings which white men have worked out and abandoned, or which no white man considers worth working. Thirdly, if these rejected diggings, happen, in Chinese hands, to prove better than their reputation, and to begin yielding liberally, a mob of white sovereigns soon drive the Chinese out of them, neck and heels. “John” does not seem to be a very bad fellow, but he is treated worse than though he were. He is not malignant nor sanguinary, and seldom harms any but his own tribe. But he is thoroughly sensual, and intent on the fullest gratification of his carnal appetites, and on nothing else. He eats and drinks the best he can get, and as much as he can hold; but he is never so devoid of self-respect as to be seen drunk in a public place; even for an opium debauch, he secludes himself where none but a friendly eye can reach him. His “particular wanity” in the eating line is rice, whereof he will have the best only, if the best is to be had; he likes a fat chicken also, and will pay his last dollar for one, rather than go without. Lacking the dollar, it is charged that he will rob hen-roosts; at all events, hen-roosts are sometimes robbed, and “John” has to bear the blame. He is popularly held to spend nothing, but carry all his gains out of the country and home to his native land—a charge disproved by the fact that he is an inveterate gambler, an opium-smoker, a habitual rum-drinker, and a devotee of every sensual vice. But he is weak in body, and not allowed to vote, so it is safe to trample on him; he does not write English, and so cannot tell the story of his wrongs; he has no family here (the few Chinese women brought to this country being utterly shameless and abandoned), so that he forms no domestic ties, and enjoys no social standing. Even the wretched Indians of California repel with scorn the suggestion that there is any kinship between their race and the Chinese. “John” has traits which I can neither praise nor justify; yet I suspect that, if other men’s faults were punished as severely as his, a good many Californians would be less comfortable than they are.

As to quartz-mining—or the reduction to powder of the vein-stone wherein gold is contained, and the extraction of the gold from the powder, by means of water, quick-silver, etc.—I judge that the time has not even yet arrived for its profitable prosecution. There are conspicuous instances of its success, that of the concern known as “Allison’s Ranche,” in Grass Valley, for example—but I am confident that fully three out of every four quartz-mining enterprises have proved failures, or have at best achieved no positive success. The current estimates of the yield of gold by quartz rock, are grossly exaggerated. I judge that the average yield of gold by quartz vein-stone is less than twenty dollars per ton—barely one cent per pound—and that this yield will not pay the average cost of sinking shafts, running drifts or adits, pumping out water, raising ore (and an immense aggregate of dead rock with it), crushing it, and extracting the gold, in a country where common labor costs two and a half to three dollars per day. At forty dollars per ton of vein-stone, quartz-mining might pay; but where one vein yields forty dollars per ton, there are many which yield less than twenty dollars. There are some instances of profitable quartz-mining by men on the spot who thoroughly understand the business; but I have not heard of an instance in which money has been invested in quartz-mining, by persons out of California, who have not lost every farthing of it.

I think the most popular form of mining at present is that of sinking or drifting into hills which have a stratum of gravel at or near their base, directly overlying the bed-rock. Many of these hills would seem to have been piled, in some far-off, antediluvian period, upon a bed or basin of solid granite, which often hollows or dips toward its center like a saucer. If, then, a tunnel can be run in through the “rim rock” or side of this saucer so happily as to strike the level of the bottom, thereby draining off the water, and affording the utmost facility for extracting the gold-bearing gravel, the fortune of the operator may be made by one lucky, or better than lucky, operation. In a few instances, these subterranean gravel-basins would seem to have formed parts of the beds of ancient rivers, and so to be extraordinarily rich in the precious dust. In some cases, the “pay dirt” is hauled by steam up an inclined plane, or even raised perpendicularly by windlass; but it is easier to extract it by a horizontal drift or tunnel, wherever possible. Many mines of this order are worked night and day on the “three-shift” plan, and are paying very handsomely.