A memorial and biographical history of northern California, illustrated. Containing a history of this important section of the Pacific coast from the earliest period of its occupancy...and biographical mention of many of its most eminent pioneers and also of prominent citizens of today, Part 13

Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1000

USA > California > A memorial and biographical history of northern California, illustrated. Containing a history of this important section of the Pacific coast from the earliest period of its occupancy...and biographical mention of many of its most eminent pioneers and also of prominent citizens of today > Part 13

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QUARTZ MINING AND MILLING.

The following, from Hittell's Resources of California, is a concise description of quartz mining and methods:

No donbt, geological knowledge is valuable to a miner, and it should assist him in prospecting; but it (that which the professional geologist has above the prac- tical miner) has never yet enabled anybody to find a val- uable claim. [Similar observations are made with regard to oil and gas discoveries in the East.] Chemists, geolo- gists, mineralogists and old miners have not done better than ignorant men and new-comers. Most of the best veins have been discovered by poor and ignorant men.

Auriferous quartz lodes are often tound by accident. Some good leads have been found by men employed in making roads and cutting ditches. The quartz might be covered with soil, but the pick and shovel revealed its

HISTORY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

position and wealth. In Tuolumne County, in 1858, a hunter shot a grizzly bear on the side of a steep cañon, and this animal tumbling down was caught by a project- ing point of rock. The hunter followed his game, and while skinning the animal discovered that the point of rock was auriferous quartz. In Mariposa County, in 1855, a miner was attacked by a robber, and the former saw a sparkle behind his assailant at a spot where a bul- let struck a wall of rock. He killed the robber and found that the rock was gold-bearing quartz! In Nevada County, a number of years ago, a couple of unfortunate miners who had prepared to leave California and were out on a drunken frolic, started a large bowlder down a steep hill. On its way down it struck a brown rock and broke a portion of it off, exposing a vein of white quartz which proved to be auriferous. This induced the miners to remain some months longer in the State, and paid them well for remaining.

After all, the author proceeds to compile a few scientific rules for gold-hunting, as follows:

It is useless to prospect for auriferous quartz in a coun- try where no placer gold has been found. If the metal exists in the rock, some of it will also be found in the al- luvium, and it can be discovered there more readily than in the vein. After the placers have been found, search should be made for the quartz. The following rules are serviceable:

1. If a ravine is rich in gold to a certain point and barren above, look for a quartz vein in the hill-sides just above the place where the richness ceases.

2. A line of pieces of quartz rock observed in a hill- side probably indicates the course of a quartz vein.

3. If a ravine crosses a quartz vein, fragments of the rock will be found in its bed below.

4. A large quartz vein will often show its presence in the topography of the country by forming hills in those spots where the rock happens to be very hard.

5. Quartz can be found and the veins traced with com- paratively little labor in the steep banks of cañons where the rock is bare or is covered with but little soil.

6. If a quartz vein contains gold, some of the metal may be perceptible to the naked eye.

The extraction of auriferous quartz does not differ materially from that of other ores in narrow veins. The rules for running tunnels and drifts for stoping. draining, ventilating and timbering are precisely the same. Ex- traction, however, requires much experience and judg- ment for proper management. The dip, the thickness and material of the vein, the horizontal length and the dip of the pay chute, the character of the walls, the sup- ply of water and the situation of the mill must be taken into consideration. Access must be had to the lower works by a horizontal tunnel or vertical shatt, or an in- cline running down on the dip of the lode. There are, however, very few auriferous quartz mines in which the lower works can be reached profitably by a tunnel. Or- dinarily an incline is preferred, which goes down in the

vein-stone, and sometimes, but rarely, pays for the work of taking it out. After the shaft or incline is down, levels or drifts are run off horizontally as far as the pay rock extends, at intervals usually of a hundred feet, and the levels are numbered from the surface; so when we read that they have found good rock in a certain mine at the eighth level, we presume that it is about 800 feet be- low the surface. The rock between two levels is broken down or stoped out, and it falls to the drift or level below, where it is loaded in a car and hauled to the shaft, in which it is carried up.

Nearly all the quartz of California is crushed by stamps or iron hammers ten inches in diameter and weighing 500 pounds. The stamp is fastened to a verti- cal iron stem about six feet long, and near the top is a projection by which a cam or revolving shaft lifts the stamp a foot high and then lets it fall. Five stamps are placed side by side in a battery, and they fall successively, each making about forty blows in a minute. The quartz is shoveled in on the upper side, and when pulverized sufficiently it is carried away through a wire screen on the lower side of a stream of water, which pours into the battery steadily.

The arrastra is the simplest instrument for grinding auriferous quartz. It is a circular bed of stone from eight to twenty feet in diameter, ou which the quartz is ground by a large stone dragged round and round by horse or mule power. There are two kinds of arrastras, the rude and the improved. The rude arrastra is made with a pave- ment of unhewn flat stones, which are usually laid down in clay. The pavement of the improved arrastra is made of hewn stone cut very accurately and laid down in cement. In the center of the bed is an upright post which turns on a pivot; and running through the post is a horizontal bar, projecting on each side to the outer edge of the pavement. On each arm of this bar is at- tached by a chain a large flat stone or muller, weighing from 300 to 500 pounds. It is so hung that the forward end is about an inch above the bed, and the hind end drags on the bed and crushes the quartz

The pulverized auriferous quartz, as it comes from the stamps, consists of fine particles of rock and gold mixed together, and the aim of the miner is to separate them, save the metal and let the other material escape. Here again a small sluice, similar in principle to that used in mining, is employed; but instead of riffle bars the bot- tom of the sluice is copper covered with quicksilver, or is a rough blanket, in which the gold and heaviest sands are caught. In many mills quicksilver is placed in the battery, two ounces of quicksilver for one of gold; and about two-thirds of the gold is thus caught. Next to the battery is the apron, a copper plate covered with quick- silver, on which a good share of the gold is caught.

Below the aprons, different devices for catching the gold are used in different mills. The blanket is the most common. This is a coarse article, laid at the bottom of the sluice, through which the pulp from the battery runs, and the gold, black sand and sulphurets are caught in the wool, while the lighter material runs off. The blanket is

HISTORY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

washed out in a tub at intervals of half an hour to an hour.

In some mines nearly half the gold is mixed with pyrites and refuses to be caught with quicksilver. In such a case a sluice may be used to separate the sulphu- rets, which may form three per cent. of the pulverized rock. This separation is called concentration, and the material obtained is concentrated tailings. The sulphu- rets are five times as heavy as water and twice as heavy as quartz; so the separating is not difficult when the sup- ply of water is abundant.

In roasting for chlorination we have, first, to oxydize the iron and next, by the introduction of salt, to chloridize certain other substances which vary with the locality from which the ore is obtained. When this is rightly done, we have usually formed either oxydes or oxychlo- rids of all the base metals in the ore treated, leaving gold as the only free m+ tal to absorb the chlorine gas. In or- der to be successful in roasting the ore, attention must be given to the construction of the furnace. If the arch over the hearth is too high, the ore will not be oxydized ; so also if the flues are too large or the damper is opened 100 wide, as the excess of cold air or dratt cools the ore. The cost of the entire process does not exceed $20 per ton.

Many fine fortunes have been lost in gold-quartz min- ing; and it is proper to give warning to the ignorant against the dangers that beset the business.

1. Gold-quartz mining is one of the most uncertain of all occupations.

2. No amount of experience, scientific knowledge and prudence will secure the investor against loss.

3. Many of the men engaged in it are very bold, and their statements must not be accepted without great cau- tion, even when there is proof of their sincerity.

4. No one should risk more in gold quartz than he can afford to lose without serious inconvenience.

5. The presence of large lumps of gold in a vein is no evidence of a profitable mine. Most of the best mines have had little rich rock ; and the finest specimens have come from mines that are not now worked. It is the large supply of paying quartz, and not the extraordinary rich- ness of small pieces, that makes the great mine.

6. There is no occupation in which it is eas er to waste money hy inexperience, carelessness or folly.

7. No business has greater need of the presence and constant attention of an economical, attentive and capable manager, directly interested in the business.

8. For persons of small means, the only safe way to work a small mine is to make it pay as it goes along, and to abandon it when the outgo exceeds the income.

9. Many of the best quartz mines in the State were rich at the surface, and have yielded more than enough from the beginning to pay for all the work expended upon them.

10. Not one in five of the mines which did not pay at the surface, and has been worked to a depth of 100 feet, has ever paid.

11. The richness of a vein at one point is no evidence of its richness at another.

12 Not one quartz miner in a thousand has made a moderate fortune.

13. Nearly all the owners of the rich quartz mines of California are capitalists, who made money in other busi- ness, and then could afford to risk considerable sums in ventures which they considered uncertain.

14. Do not build your mill until you have opened your mine and got enough pay rock in sight to pay for it.

An old mining engineer says: "In 1858 there were upward of 280 quartz mills in California, each one of which was supplied with quartz from one or more veins. The number of stamps in these mills was 2,610, and the total cost of the whole mill property of this nature in the State exceeded $3,000,000. In the summer of 1861, only three years afterward, there were only some forty or fifty mills in successful operation, several of which were at that time leading a very precarious existence."

HYDRAULIC MINING

was invented in April, 1853, at American Hill, by E. A. Matteson, who was still living in 1885, in the upper part of Nevada County. This proc- ess came into general practice, but, on account of its filling up the streams of valleys below with debris and thus threatening to throw the water out upon the rich horticultural lands and ruining them, the Legislature of 1882 prohib- ited the practice; and it still remains a question with those living among the foot-hills whether the gain in horticultural area will ever equal the loss they suffer in mining interests.

PACKING IN THE MOUNTAINS.

The following account is the substance of an article written in 1857 upon the above and eol- lateral topies, and published in Hutchings' Cal- ifornia Magazine:

In some of the more isolated mining localities the arri- val of a pack train is an event of some importance, and men gathered around it with as much apparent interest as though they had expected to see some dear old friend stowed away somewhere among the packs. This neces- sity has created an extensive packing business with the cities of Stockton, Marysville, Shasta and Crescent City, but very little with Sacramento at the present time. There are generally forty to fifty mules in a train, mostly Mexicans each of which will carry from 300 to 500 pounds, and with this they will travel twenty-five to thirty miles a day without being weary. If there is plenty of grass they seldom get anything else to eat. When fed on barley-which is generally about three

HISTORY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

months out of a year, November, December and January -it is given only once a day, and in the proportion of seven to eight pounds per mule. They seldom drink more than once a day, even in the warmest weather.

The average life of a mule is about sixteen years. The Mexican mules are tougher and stronger than the Ameri- can; for while the latter can seldom carry more than 200 to 250 pounds, the former can carry 300 to 1,000. This superiority may arise from the fact that the Mexicans are more accustomed to packing and traveling over a moun- tainous country, while the American are used only for draft. The Mexican mule, too, can carry a person forty miles a day for ten or twelve days, over a mountainous trail; while it is very difficult for an American mule to accomplish over twenty-five or thirty miles a day. The Mexican mule can travel farther and endure more with- out food than any other quadruped, and with him it makes but little difference apparently whether he is fed regularly or not. The Mexican mules are also easier under the saddle and are not so fatiguing to ride.

The packing trade of Marysville gives employment to about 2,500 mules and between 300 and 400 men. From the town of Shasta, during the winter of 1854-'55, 1,876 mules were employed, not including the animals used by individual miners. The Shasta Courier claims there were 2,000. From the above data it was estimated the amount of trade at the respective points. The packing trade from Marysville is most extensive with Downieville, Eureka of the North, Morrison's Diggings, St. Louis, Pine Grove, Poker Flat, Gibsonville, Nelson's Point, American Valley, Indian Valley and all the intermediate and surrounding places in the counties of Sierra and Plumas; and the trade of Shasta is with Weaver (Weaverville), Yreka and the settlements around them. One is astonished to see the singular goods that are often packed across the Trin- ity and Scott mountains to those places, such as buggies, windows, boxes, barrels, bars of iron, chairs. tables, plows, etc. In the fall of 1853 an iron safe nearly three feet square, and weighing 352 pounds, was transported on a very large mule from Shasta to Weaverville, a dis- tance of twenty-eight miles, over a rough and mountain- ous trail, without an accident (!), but after the load was taken off the mule lay down and died within a few hours. A man in Yreka once sent among other things a rocking-chair and a looking-glass, "and when I reached there," said he, " I found that the chair back was broken, the rockers off and one arm in two pieces; and the look- ing-glass was as much like a crate of broken crockery as anything I ever saw."

A gentleman had also informed us that in the summer of 1855 two sets of millstones were packed from Shasta to Weaverville, the largest weighing 600 pounds. Being looked upon as an impossibility for one mule to carry, it was first tried to be "slung" between two mules; but that being impracticable, the plan was abandoned and the stone packed upon one.

When the Yreka Herald was about to be published, a press was purchased in San Francisco, at a cost of about $600, upon which the freight alone amounted to $900.

The bed-piece, weighing 397 pounds, was placed upon one mule, with ropes and other equipage, so that the whole load was 430 pounds. On descending Scott moun- tain this splendid animal slipped a little, when the load careened over and threw the patient mule down a steep bank and killed him. Many of the older Californians have breathed their last in a ravine where accident had tossed them, to become the food of wolves and coyotes. One train was passing the steep side of a mountain in Trinity Counly, when a large rock came rolling from above and struck one of the mules in the side, frighten- ing others off the track and killing one man and three mules. During the severe winter of 1852-'53, a pack train was snowed in between Grass Valley and Onion Valley, and out of forty-five animals only three were taken out alive. The amount of danger and privation to which men following this business are sometimes ex- posed, is almost incredible.

It is truly astonishing to see with what ease and care these useful animals pack their heavy loads over the deep snow, and to notice how very cautiously they cross holes where the melting snow reveals some ditch or stream beneath, and where some less careful animal has "put his foot in it" and sank into "deep trouble." We have often watched them descending a snow-bank when heavily packed, and have seen that as they could not step safely they would fix their feet and brace their limbs and unhesitatingly slide down with perfect security over the worst places.

There is something very pleasing and picturesque in the sight of a large pack train of mules quietly descend- ing a hill, as each one intelligently examines the trail, and moves carefully step by step on the steep and dan- gerous declivity as though he suspected danger to him- self or injury to the pack committed to his care.

In the deep and otherwise unbroken stillness of the dark pine or redwood forests the loud hippah and mulah of the Mexican muleteers sound strangely to the ear. During these trips the Mexican sings no song and hums no tune.

Muleteers were also exposed to highway robbers and Indians. Sometimes they were plundered of their whole train and cargoes, and they themselves murdered. The trail from Sacramento to Yreka was so infested that it was entirely abandoned for two years or more.

Before attempting to pack a mule, the Mexicans in- variably blindfold him; he then stands quietly until the bandage is removed. A man generally rides in front of every train, for the purpose of stopping it should any- thing go wrong, and acting as guide to the others. In every train there is also a leader called the bell-mule. Most of these animals prefer a white mule for a leader. They seldom start before nine o'clock in the morning- after which they travel until sunset before stopping, un, less something goes wrong.

When about to camp, the almost invariable custom of packers, after removing the goods (near which they always sleep in all kinds of weather), is for the mules to stand side by side in a line or in a hollow square with

HISTORY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

their heads in one direction, before taking off the apara- jos (a kind of pack-saddle, a leathern sack stuffed with hair, and generally weighing from twenty-five to forty pounds), and then in the morning, when the train of loose mules is driven up to camp to receive their packs, each one walks carefully up to his own aparajo and blanket, which he evidently knows as well as does the packer. When the toils of the day are over and the mules are peacefully feeding, begins the time of relaxa- tion to the men, who, while they are enjoying the aroma of their fine-flavored cigaritas, spend the evening hours telling tales of some far-off but fair señorita, or make their beds by the packs, and as soon as they have finished their supper lie down to sleep.

HABITS OF THE MINERS.

When the Incky prospector had found a pay ing claim, the next thing was to set up his household. From two to four was the usual number of the mess, and though their humble collection of goods was somewhat exposed they were tolerably secure from depredation. A stray horse or ox would sometimes get into the flour sack or bread sack, upset the sugar or make a mess of the table ware; wandering In- dians would pilfer small things or take away clothing, but these were the principal depreda- tions. The houses, often the initial points of towns, were generally located near some spring, if practicable. Bottle Spring (Jackson), Double Springs, Mud Springs, Diamond Spring and Cold Springs at once suggest their origin. Logs were generally at hand, with which to build. The ground served for a floor. The sleeping places were as varions as the minds of inen; but generally bunks were made by putting a second log in the cabin at a proper elevation and distance from the sides and nailing potato or gunny sacks across. A second bunk over this was sometimes made in a like manner. Some ferm leaves or coarse hay on the sacks, with blankets, made a comfortable bed. A good fire place was also provided; and a vigorous fire was often required, as most of the mining had to be done in water, which wet the clothes. Some of these fireplaces would be six feet across, and built of granite or slate rocks, as each abounded. Very little hewing was done to make them fit. Four or five feet up an oak log 5

was laid across for a mantel-piece and as tlie base for one side of the chimney. A couple of rocks served as andirons.

A shelf or two of shakes, or sometimes an open box in which something had been shipped around the Horn, would serve for a cupboard, and in this the stock of table ware would be kept, consisting of a few tin plates and cups and two or three cans containing salt, pepper and soda. A table of moderate size was also made of shakes, sometimes movable but oftener nailed fast to the side of the honse. Sometimes the tail gate of a wagon was used for a table. A frying-pan, coffee-pot, Dutch oven and water bucket completed the list of kitchen utensils.

Cooking was sometimes done " turn about " for a week, and sometimes it seemed to fall to the lot of the best-natured one in the crowd, the others bringing wood and water by way of offset. Dish-washing was generally omitted al- together. The cooking of course was of the simplest kind, and very often of the poorest, especially in respect to bread; and therefore for the latter the famous flap-jack was generally relied upon. Two frying-pans would often be used to make these, for convenience of turning the cake, which as done by turning one over the other.

Game sometimes entered into the miner's bill of tare. Quails, rabbits, coons, squirrels and hawks were all converted into food, as well as deer and hare. Some Frenchmen in 1852, dur- ing a time of scarcity, killed and ate a coyote, but their account of his good qualities was not such as to induce others to try the experiment. In 1851. some miners, getting ont of both money and meat, shot a young and fine-looking hawk, cooked him and ate him, declaring that " he was better nor a chicken !" Some neigh- bors tried the same experiment, but unfortu- nately killed the old fellow that was preserved from drowning a great many years ago through the kindness of one of our forefathers. His flesh was about the color and consistency of sole-leather; and after boiling him for three days in the vain attempt to reduce his body to

HISTORY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.

an eatable condition he was cast away. Even the rice with which he was boiled acquired no hawk flavor, which induced one of the miners to remark, "They's much difference'n hawks as'n women." A second trial resulted in a splendid dish, and after that hawks learned to avoid that settlement. But, with all the simplicity and supposed monotony of the miner's bill of fare, it was almost a constant series of comicalities as well as nuisances.

The washing of clothes was scarcely ever attended to, with such results as may better be imagined than described. The vermin which were consequently so abundant were after some years vanquished; but whether by the neater habits of miners or the sanguinary flea is still an open question. The fleas were sometimes caught in large numbers in dishes of soap suds set around lighted candles at night. Later the bed-bng drove out to some extent the flea. Rats also became numerous.

Rattlesnakes sometimes crawled in between the logs, and first made their presence known by the sharp rattle of their chain or the deadly thrust of their poisonous fangs into the sleeper's limbs. As the miners got to building their cabins of sawed humber and elevating them above the ground, snakes, rats, mice and skunks became less frequent visitors ; when dogs and cats were called in as friends and protectors the people could sleep without fear or disturbance.

THE GREAT IMMIGRATION.

The greater part of the overland immigration took the route by way of the valley of the Platte River, the south pass of the Rocky Mountains and the valley of the Humboldt, entering Cali- fornia by the Pit River route, or Lassen's Cut- off, or the valley of the Truckee and the Bear River Ridge; and a stream poured through the Carson Pass into the Central Mining Region. Many thousands took the old Santa Fe trail through the valley of the Arkansas to the Rio Grande, thence by the road followed by the Colonel Cooke and the Mormon Battalion, through northern Sonora to the Gila River,

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A memorial and biographical history of northern California, illustrated. Containing a history of this important section of the Pacific coast from the earliest period of its occupancy...and biographical mention of many of its most eminent pioneers and also of prominent citizens of today, Part 13

Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn Publication date: 1891 Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1000

Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn
Publication date: 1891
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1000