Part 22

But by far the greatest gold-field in the world, has been opened by the discoveries of the last few years in California. At the close of the late war with Mexico, the United States acquired, by conquest and purchase, a tract of country of some five hundred thousand square miles in extent, known as the Mexican territory of upper California. And from the western portion of this region, Congress, in 1850, created and admitted into the American confederacy, the thirty-first state, under the name of California. It is almost superfluous to say, that California is one of the most important mineral regions in the world, particularly in its deposits of gold. Vague notions of the existence of this gold, had from time to time been spread abroad; but it was not till 1848, that an accident discovered the marvelous fact of its abundance. In that year, a Mr. Sutter, a native of Switzerland, was settled near the mouth of the American fork of the Sacramento river, at the head of navigation, one hundred and fifty miles from its mouth. Here he had founded New Helvetia, and obtained a grant of thirty miles round. He had sent some men to the upper part of the American fork, to clear out a mill-race. The soil was washed down in the process, and some shining scales laid bare. These proved to be gold, and on investigation, not only the valley of this stream, but the beds of all the other streams running into the Sacramento, were found to have a soil full of gold, in minute scales and in bits, from a grain to many ounces in weight. New “placers,” as the “washings,” or “dry diggings” are called, have constantly been discovered, and people have rushed to these hills from all quarters, with pans, tubs, pickaxes, shovels, hoes, filtering-machines, and energetic sinews, till they have extracted, by digging, washing, &c., millions on millions of dollars’ worth of the yellow treasure. Gold is now found over an extent of many hundred miles, and also on the Gila, and throughout the great central plateau, north and north-east of it.

In a favorable locality, the lucky finder of a placer will sift out hundreds of dollars’ worth in a day. Persons with not a shirt to their backs, and scarcely a whole garment upon them, are seen with bags of gold in their hands. Prices of everything went up at once to an enormous rate: laborer’s wages became eight or ten dollars a day; cooks at the diggings, ten dollars a day; clerks, fifteen hundred dollars to six thousand dollars =per annum=, &c., &c. As all the productive industry of the country is now turned to gold-digging, and as such vast numbers of consumers are flocking in from all parts, prices continue to range high for every article of necessity, although such large quantities of goods have been sent.

[Illustration: GOLD WASHING IN CALIFORNIA.]

The gold first discovered was evidently not in its original place, but had been washed down from higher regions; and when all that is thus spread through the sands of California shall have been exhausted, if it ever shall be, there are large bodies of auriferous quartz, which (with greater labor and expense) will doubtless afford large supplies of gold for generations to come. The amount of capital invested in quartz-mining, according to the state census of 1852, was about six millions, and in placer and other mining operations, about four millions of dollars; and the sum total of these amounts has been greatly increased since that date. Up to the close of 1851, there had been deposited in the United States mint, $98,407,990 of California gold; and the deposits of 1852 amounted to $46,528,076, making a total of $145,000,000. But all this falls far short of the real amount produced; as probably quite as much more has been sent to Europe in the shape of dust or bullion, not to mention the unreported sums which have been privately taken out of the state. An official estimate states the production of American gold in 1853, at $109,156,748; and of this sum nearly the whole is from the mines of California. And this vast amount is steadily on the increase, in about the proportion of the increase of the mining population, so that California not only is, but is likely to continue to be _the great gold-field_ of the world.

Before leaving California, it may not be amiss to add, that the country abounds in mines of almost every kind, as well as gold. Quicksilver, plaster, lead, iron, silver, copper, asphaltum and marble, are found in Butte, and also in Marion county; rich silver mines and coal, in San Louis Obispo; copious salt springs, in Shasta; bituminous springs, in many places along the coast; hot sulphur springs, in Santa Barbara; warm soda springs, near Benicia; and platina is said to be widely distributed in almost every section where gold has been found. Silver has been discovered in several mines in the southern district; copper is widely distributed in other sections beside those above-mentioned; chromium occurs in large quantities in the serpentine rocks; and diamonds are reported to have been recently found in several localities.

[Illustration: PLACE WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED IN AUSTRALIA.]

At a date still later than the discovery of gold in California, the same precious metal was discovered in Australia. The cut on the following page gives a view of the place where it was first found, in the county of Bathurst, not far from Sydney in New South Wales. It is worthy of note that we owe the discovery of gold in Australia to the high state of geological science. Sir R. Murchison, in his address to the London Geographical Society in 1844, alluded to the possibly auriferous character of the great eastern chain of Australia, being led thereto by his knowledge of the auriferous chain of the Ural, and by his examination of Count Strzelecki’s specimens, maps and sections. Some of Sir R. Murchison’s observations having found their way to the Australian papers, a Mr. Smith, at that time engaged in some iron works at Berrima, was induced by them in the year 1849 to search for gold, and he found it. He sent the gold to the colonial government, and offered to disclose its locality on payment of five hundred pounds sterling. The government, however, not putting full faith in the statement, and being, moreover, unwilling to encourage a gold fever without sufficient reason, declined to grant the sum, but offered, if Mr. Smith would mention the locality, and the discovery was found to be valuable, to reward him accordingly. Very unwisely, as it turned out, Mr. Smith did not accept this offer; and it remained for Mr. Hargraves, who came with the prestige of his California experience, to make the discovery anew, and get the reward from the English government on their own conditions. The first discovery was made in the banks of the Summer Hill creek and the Lewis Ponds river, small streams which run from the northern flank of the Conobalas down to the Macquarrie. The gold was found in the sand and gravel accumulated, especially on the inside of the bends of the brook, and at the junction of the two water-courses, where the stream of each would be often checked by the other. It was coarse gold, showing its parent site to be at no great distance, and probably in the quartz veins traversing the metamorphic rocks of the Conobalas. Mr. Stutchbury, the government geologist, reported on the truth of the discovery, and shortly afterward found gold in several other localities, especially on the banks of the Turon, some distance north-east of the Conobalas. This was a much wider and more open valley than the Summer Hill creek, and the gold accordingly was much finer, occurring in small scales and flakes. It was, however, more regularly and equably distributed through the soil, so that a man might reckon with the greatest certainty on the quantity his daily labor would return him. At the head of the Turon river, among the dark glens and gullies in which it collects its head-waters, in the flanks of the Blue mountains, the gold got “coarser,” occurred in large lumps or nuggets, but these were more sparingly scattered.

As already said, the discovery was made by Mr. Hargraves, in May, 1850; and before the end of June, there were more than twenty thousand persons at the mines. When it was known in the town of Bathurst, that the discovery had been made, and that the country, from the mountain ranges, back to an indefinite extent in the interior, was probably one immense goldfield, the excitement was intense and universal. A complete phrensy seemed to seize on the entire population; the business of the town was paralyzed; and there was a universal rush to the diggings. People of all trades, callings and pursuits were quickly transformed into miners; and many a hand which had been trained to kid gloves, or accustomed only to the quill, became nervous to clutch the pick or crowbar, or to “rock the cradle” at the newly discovered mines. The roads were literally alive with the crowds pressing on from every quarter, some armed with pickaxes, others shouldering crowbars and shovels, and not a few strung round with hand-basins, tin-pots and cullenders. Scores rushed from their homes, with only a blanket, and a pick or grubbing-hoe, full of hope that a few days would give them heaps of the precious metal. Everything at once rose in price, and the whole face of society was speedily changed in almost every aspect.

The first pieces found were in grains. Soon a piece was picked up weighing some eleven ounces; and soon after, several lumps weighing together about three pounds. Gold was speedily discovered in almost every place where it was looked for; in the beds of the streams, and in veins of quartz, in grains, in scales, and in lumps of various weights. Some, as might be expected, were successful, and some comparatively unsuccessful in seeking it; the great mass of the miners averaging not more than four or five dollars a day, while in some rare cases a single individual gathered to the value of a thousand dollars in the same time. Gold was soon discovered in the Wellington district, and in various other places. One piece was picked up weighing almost five pounds; and from a single cleft in a rock, a miner took out eleven pounds’ weight of gold, in separate pieces of various sizes. A Scotchman gathered fourteen hundred dollars’ worth in four days, and eight of his associates averaged from thirty to forty dollars’ worth a day. Apparently there is no end to the supply, at least for years to come; and all this within forty miles of a town where every comfort, not to say luxury, can be obtained, with a good post-road all the way to Sydney, and in the midst of tracts of the most fertile land, partly occupied, and where food may be supplied for millions of inhabitants, if needed. An official statement estimates the supply of Australian gold at sixty million dollars a year; and in addition to the gold, diamonds and platinum have also been found. Australia and California are likely to be the great sources of the supply of gold, compared with which all others will be relatively unimportant.

Before leaving the subject of gold, it may be interesting to the reader to trace the process of its coinage, which may thus be briefly stated. The metal, after being received in the deposit-room, is carefully weighed, and a receipt given. Each deposit is then melted separately in the melting-room, and molded into bars. These bars next pass through the hands of the assayer, who with a chisel chips a small fragment from each one. Each chip is then rolled into a thin ribbon, and filed down until it weighs exactly ten grains. It is then melted into a little cup made of calcined bone ashes, and all the base metals, copper, tin, &c., are absorbed by the porous material of the cup or carried off by oxydation. The gold is then boiled in nitric acid, which dissolves the silver which it contains, and leaves the gold pure. It is then weighed, and the amount which it has lost gives the exact proportion of impurity in the original bar, and a certificate of the amount of coin due the depositor is made out accordingly. After being assayed, the bars are melted with a certain proportion of silver, and being poured into a dilution of nitric acid and water, assume a granulated form. In this state the gold is thoroughly boiled in nitric acid, and rendered perfectly free from silver or any other baser metals which may happen to cling to it. It is next melted with one-ninth its weight of copper, and, thus alloyed, is run into bars, and delivered to the coiner for coinage. The bars are rolled out in a rolling-mill until nearly as thin as the coin which is to be made from them. By a process of annealing they are rendered sufficiently ductile to be drawn through a longitudinal orifice in a piece of steel, thus reducing the whole to a regular width and thickness. A cutting-machine next punches small round pieces from the bar, about the size of the coin. These pieces are weighed separately by the “adjusters,” and if too heavy are filed down; if too light they are melted again. The pieces which have been adjusted are run through a milling-machine, which compresses them to the right diameter and raises the edge. Two hundred and fifty are milled in a minute by the machine. They are then again softened by the process of annealing, and after a thorough cleaning are placed in a tube connecting with the stamping instrument, and are taken thence one at a time by the machinery, and stamped between the dies. They are now finished, and, being thrown into a box, are delivered to the treasurer for circulation. The machinery, of course, for all those processes, must be of the nicest kind. When in full operation, a mint like that of England, or that of the United States at Philadelphia, can coin millions on millions in a year.

QUICKSILVER MINES.

Quicksilver, or mercury, is the only metal which remains liquid at ordinary temperatures. It is white and very brilliant, as may be seen in common thermometers. It boils at six hundred and sixty degrees of heat; and freezes, and assumes a crystalline texture, at forty degrees below zero. It is extensively used in its various forms in the arts, and also for medicinal purposes. The thermometer and barometer illustrate some of its uses in its pure state; the backs of our common mirrors are covered with it, which gives them their reflecting power; it is used extensively in separating some of the purer metals from the mixtures with which they are found; and in some of its forms or combinations, it is the basis of calomel, corrosive sublimate, vermilion, &c.

Mercury is found in various parts of the world. Among its principal mines are those of Almaden, near Cordova, in Spain, and of Idria, near Carniola, in Austria; though it is also found in Peru, California, Italy and China. Formerly most of the quicksilver came from Germany; but more recently the largest production is probably in Spain. So extensively is it used, that in 1831, over three hundred thousand pounds were brought from the continent into England; and for the fourteen years ending in 1828, the imports of it into Canton, by the English and Americans, averaged nearly six hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, worth some three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Of all the quicksilver mines, those of Idria, mentioned above, are some of the most interesting, and demand a particular description, as they have been celebrated in natural history, poetry and romance. The ban of Idria, is a district of Austria, lying west of Carniola. The town, which is small, is seated in a deep valley, amid high mountains, on the river of the same name, and at the bottom of so steep a descent, that its approach is a task of great difficulty, and sometimes of danger.

The mines were discovered in 1497, before which time that part of the country was inhabited by a few coopers only, and other artificers in wood, with which the territory abounds. One evening, a cooper having placed a new tub under a dropping spring, to try if it would hold water, on returning the next morning, found it so heavy that he could scarcely move it. He at first was led by his superstition to suspect that the tub was bewitched; but spying, at length, a shining fluid at the bottom, with the nature of which he was unacquainted, he collected it, and proceeded to an apothecary at Laubach, who, being an artful man, dismissed him with a small recompense, requesting that he would not fail to bring him further supplies. From this small beginning, the product of these mines has steadily increased; and now might easily be made six hundred tuns per year, though to uphold the price of the metal, the Austrian government has restricted the annual production to one hundred and fifty tuns. In 1803, a disastrous fire took place in these mines, which was extinguished only by drowning all the underground workings. The mercury, sublimed by the heat in this catastrophe, occasioned diseases and nervous tremblings in more than nine hundred persons in the neighborhood.

The subterraneous passages of the great mine are so extensive, that it would require several hours to pass through them. The greatest perpendicular depth, computing from the entrance of the shaft, is eight hundred and forty feet; but as these passages advance horizontally, under a high mountain, the depth would be much greater if the measure were taken from the surface. One mode of descending the shaft is by a bucket, but as the entrance is narrow, the bucket is liable to strike against the sides, or to be stopped by some obstacle, so that it may be readily overset. A second mode of descending, which is safer, is by means of a great number of ladders, placed obliquely, in a kind of zigzag: as the ladders, however, are wet and narrow, a person must be very cautious how he steps, to prevent his falling. In the course of the descent, there are several resting-places, which are extremely welcome to the wearied traveler. In some of the subterraneous passages, the heat is so intense as to occasion a profuse sweat; and in several of the shafts the air was formerly so confined, that several miners were suffocated by an igneous vapor, or gaseous exhalation, called the fire-damp. This has been prevented by sinking the main shaft deeper. Near to it is a large wheel, and a hydraulic machine, by which the mine is cleared of water.

To these pernicious and deadly caverns, criminals are occasionally banished by the Austrian government; and it has sometimes happened that this punishment has been allotted to persons of considerable rank and family. The case of Count Alberti is an interesting instance of this kind.

The count, having fought a duel with an Austrian general, against the emperor’s command, and having left him for dead, was obliged to seek refuge in one of the forests of Istria, where he was apprehended, and afterward rescued by a band of robbers who had long infested that quarter. With these banditti he spent nine months, until, by a close investment of the place in which they were concealed, and after a very obstinate resistance, in which the greater part of them were killed, he was taken and carried to Vienna, to be broken alive on the wheel. This punishment was, by the intercession of his friends, changed into that of perpetual confinement and labor in the mines of Idria; a sentence which, to a noble mind, was worse than death. To these mines he was accompanied by the countess, his lady, who belonged to one of the first families in Germany, and who, having tried every means to procure her husband’s pardon without effect, resolved at length to share his miseries, as she could not relieve them. They were terminated, however, through the mediation of the general with whom the duel had been fought, who as soon as he recovered from his wounds, obtained a pardon for his unfortunate opponent; and Alberti, on his return to Vienna, was again taken into favor, and restored to his fortune and rank.

IRON MINES.

The metal which is called iron, is familiar to all, both for its value and its various uses. It is capable of being cast in molds of any form; of being drawn in wires, extended in plates or sheets, of being bent in every direction, and of being sharpened, hardened, or softened at pleasure. It accommodates itself to all our wants, desires, and even caprices; it is equally serviceable to the arts, the sciences, to agriculture, and to war; and the same ore furnishes the sword, the plowshare, the scythe, the pruning-hook, the needle, the graver, the spring of the watch or that of the carriage, the chisel, the chain, the anchor, the compass, the cannon, the bomb, the edge of the finest knife or razor, and the ponderous trip-hammer of enormous weight. It is a medicine of much virtue, and the only metal which is always useful, and tends to no injury to mankind.

The ores of iron are scattered over the entire crust of the globe in beneficent profusion, and in proportion to the utility of the metal itself: they are found in every latitude and zone, in every mineral formation, and in every soil and clime. These ores are nineteen in number, ten of which are worked to profit by the miner, either for the sake of the iron they contain, for use in their native state, or for extracting from them some principle or material, useful in manufactures or the arts.

Native iron, the existence of which was formerly questioned, has been found in several places: it is, however, far from being common, though it occurs in several mines. A mass of this description of iron was discovered in the district of Santiago del Estero, in South America, by a party of Indians, in the midst of a widely extended plain. It projected about a foot above the ground, nearly the whole of its upper surface being visible; and the news of its having been found in a country where there are not any mountains, nor even the smallest stone, within the circumference of a hundred leagues, was considered as truly surprising. Although the journey was attended with great danger, on account of the want of water, and abundance of wild beasts in these deserts, several individuals, in the hope of gain, undertook to visit this mass; and, having accomplished their journey, sent a specimen of the metal to Lima and Madrid, where it was found to be very pure soft iron.