CHAPTER XXX.
THE GOLD-BEARING QUARTZ.—THEIR LOCALITY.—RICHNESS AND EXTENT.—SPECIMENS AND DOUBTFUL CONCLUSIONS.—THE SUITABLE MACHINERY TO BE USED IN THE MOUNTAINS.—THE COURT OF ADMIRALTY AT MONTEREY.—ITS ORGANIZATION AND JURISDICTION.—THE CASES DETERMINED.—SALE OF THE PRIZES.—CONVENTION AND CONSTITUTION OF CALIFORNIA.—DIFFICULTIES AND COMPROMISES.—SPIRIT OF THE INSTRUMENT.
The surface gold in California will in a few years be measurably exhausted; the occasional discovery of new deposits cannot long postpone such a result; nor will it be delayed for any great number of years, by any more scientific and thorough method of securing the treasure. California will prove no exception in these respects to other sections of the globe where surface gold has been found. The great question is, will her mountains be exhausted with her streams and valleys? Will her rock gold give out with her alluvial deposits? The gold-bearing quartz is the sheet-anchor at which the whole argosy rides; if this parts, your golden craft goes to fragments.
When an old Sonoranian told me in the mines that the quartz sweated out the gold, all the young savans around laughed at the old man’s stupidity; and I must say the perspiration part of the business rather staggered my credulity, which has some compass, where there are no laws to guide one. But the old digger was nearer the truth than many who have more felicitous terms in which to express their theories. Though the gold may not ooze from the quartz as water drips from a rock, yet it is there, and often beads from the surface like a tear that has lost its way among the dimples of a lady’s cheek. In other instances it shows itself only in fine veins; and in others still, is wholly concealed from the naked eye, and even eludes the optical instrument; but when reduced to powder with the quartz, flies to the embrace of quicksilver, and takes a virgin shape, massive and rich. The specimens of quartz which have been subjected to experiment, have yielded from one to three dollars the pound. These specimens were gathered at different points, in the foot range of the Sierra Nevada, and are deemed only a fair average of the yield that may be derived from the quartz.
The gold rocks of Georgia and Virginia yield, on an average, less than half a cent to the pound, and yet the profits are sufficient to justify deep mining. What then must be the profits of working a rock which lies near the surface, and which yields over a dollar to the pound! The result staggers credulity; and we seek a refuge from the weakness of faith in the more reasonable persuasion, that the specimens tested are richer than the average of the veins and quarries which remain. And yet the poorest specimen, which the casual blow of the sledge has knocked from the sunlit peak, has seemingly more gold in its shadow, than the rock unhouseled from its mine in Virginia beneath forty fathoms of darkness. The only real defence for our incredulity lies in the presumption, that the gold-bearing quartz, like the surface deposits, has its confined localities. And yet Mr. Wright, our member of Congress from California, who has traversed the slopes of the Sierra, collected more specimens, and made more experiments than any other individual, is sanguine in the opinion that the gold-bearing quartz occupies a broad continuous vein through the entire extent of the foot range: and in this opinion the Hon. T. Butler King, in his lucid report, coincides. Still such a wide departure in nature from all her known laws, or capricious impulses, in the distribution of gold, leaps beyond my belief. In no other part of her wide domain has she deposited in the quartz rock a proportion of gold more than sufficient barely to compensate the hardy miner: and it is difficult to believe, that with all her affection for California, she has been so prodigal of her gifts. It surpasses the rainbow-inwoven coat bestowed by the partial love of the patriarch on his favorite child.
When a simple swain saw a necromancer break a cocoanut shell and let fly half a dozen canary birds, he remarked, there was no doubt the young birds were hatched in the cocoanut; but what puzzled him was, to know how the old bird could get in to lay the eggs. But a deeper puzzle with me is, that each and every cocoanut on this California tree, should have a nest of canaries in it. And yet, with all these dogged doubts and dismal dissuasives, were I going to invest in California speculations, my inklings would turn strongly to quartz and stampers.
But I would send out no machinery which should have a piece in it weighing over seventy or eighty pounds: no other can be taken through the gorges, and over the acclivities to the lofty steeps where the quartz exists. The machinery which can be readily taken to the mines in Virginia, would cost a fortune in its transportation to the proper localities in California. The heaviest capitalist would find himself swamped before he got to work. Every piece must be taken over elevations where a man can hardly draw himself up, and where his life is often suspended on the strength of the fibres which twine the bush to the fissures of the rock. It should be so light as to render its removal to any new and more productive locality practicable, without involving a ruinous expense. A machine wielding the force of one man, and stamping on the spot, will be more productive than a forty-horse power working at a distance. All the transportation must be done by hand, for no animal can subsist among the steeps where the quartz prevail. Watch the eagle as he soars to his high cliff with a writhing snake in his beak, and then seize your light machinery and pursue his track. But, chained to a heavy engine, you would make about as much progress as that mountain bird with his talons driven into the back of a mastodon or whale.