The Black Hills mining district of South Dakota is a very large mining camp, where millions and millions of dollars in gold and silver have been taken out, and where, no doubt, hundreds of millions more will be produced.
Idaho has also proven to be a very rich State in mineral wealth, both gold and silver, with many places where gold is washed out of the sands and gravel of the valleys.
Silver City, in New Mexico, has produced a great many millions in gold and silver, and at present seems to be a mining camp of great merit.
The mining industry of the mountains has, of course, been the means of influencing the building of numerous railroads through and into some of the most difficult mountain ranges; in fact wherever there has been a flourishing mining district the railway people have found a way, with capital behind them, to build a road to it, and it has now become apparent that a rich mining camp will have a railway connection sooner or later, no matter how difficult of access it may be. I think the men and the companies who have had the building of roads through and into the Rocky Mountains, and the interests of the country at heart, are deserving of great praise. No doubt, as many camps are discovered, it will be necessary to build many more roads than are now in existence, without which the mining industry could not be conducted with profit.
I may, in concluding this chapter on mining, speak of the great future there is for both Washington and Oregon as mineral States.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
WILD WEST FRUITS.
It is still within the memory of boys when it was almost universally agreed that nothing was more impossible than successful fruit raising in Colorado, with the exception of certain varieties of small fruits. It is easy to see how such a belief grew up, for even now in many places it requires ocular demonstrations to convince that, in parched valleys where frequently even cactus and sage-brush are but sparsely represented, fruit can be grown that in lustrous bloom and richness of flavor can not be surpassed in any country or climate. That such is the case, however, has already been so thoroughly proven, and the proof is being so persistently repeated year after year, and in widely separated localities, that to longer disbelieve or cavil is sufficient evidence either of ignorance or determination not to believe.