CHIEFS OF THE SOUTHERN UTES.
“Suit yourself: you won’t choose your language so carefully when you suddenly find yourself filled full of snow, after an involuntary header, and one or both of your snowshoes going on down the mountain like a race-horse. If you stay here a winter, though, you must learn, unless you are willing to remain cooped up in your cabin from November till May. There is no other possible way of getting about. Before the railway came, all our mail was snowshoed in, and it was very likely to be delayed two or three weeks at a time. Then we have debating societies. ‘Resolved, That a burro has no rights a miner is bound to respect,’ was our first question one winter—and parties and balls. Formerly, in the older communities, merchants could easily calculate the extent of their sales during the cold months, but those in the new camps, the first winter, sometimes saw hard times.
“We came very near a famine in Rico, the first winter,” our visitor continues. “Nobody could tell just how many people would stay, the winter closed in unexpectedly early, and, all together, before New Year’s day, it began to be whispered that the supply of ‘grub’ was short. As fast as the stores diminished, prices went up, until they were nearly fabulous. Everybody was on short rations alike. The hotel would give beds, but no board. One day a miner came in from over the range on snowshoes, and reached the hotel nearly dead with hunger and exhaustion. Pfeiffer took pity on him, as an exceptional case. ‘I gifs you your supper,’ he said, ‘und a ped, und I gifs you one meal to-morrow; after that you must rustle for yourself.’ Flour, bacon, ham, sugar, coffee, everything, even tobacco, gave out in the shops; and had it not been that one of the mines which had laid in a large stock of food, shut down and so sold out, it is probable that the whole camp would have been obliged to have dragged themselves through the depth of a hundred miles of February snows, out into the lower country. Comical stories are told of how the first burro-train load of provisions was distributed.”
But in spite of all this isolation, this necessity for elaborate preparation, the arctic altitude and polar length of the “season of snows and sins,” as Swinburne phrases it, the winter is really the best time in which to work these silver mines, and the impression that the San Juan district must be abandoned for half the year, is entirely wrong, when any thorough system of operations has been projected. Well sheltered and abundantly fed, removed from the temptations of the bar-room, which can only be got at by a frightfully fatiguing and perilous trip on snow-shoes, and settled to the fact that a whole winter’s work lies ahead, there is no season when such steady progress is possible, either in “dead-work” development or in taking out ore preparatory to shipment in the spring.
Two little streams come down to the Animas at Silverton—Mineral creek and Cement creek—the former passing between Sultan and The Anvil, and the latter between The Anvil and Tower mountains. Up Mineral creek a dozen miles we find Red mountain, the scene of the latest and richest discoveries in the San Juan, but which will be considered elsewhere. Cement creek has several good mines, while beyond, almost on the divide between the Animas and the Uncompahgre, lies the Poughkeepsie Gulch camp, which was, not long ago, the locality of a “boom;” and I have the opinion of a very competent judge, that there probably is no equally limited district in the whole region, Red mountain being perhaps excepted, where so much good ore exists.
Still farther, at the very head of Cement creek, is located the important Ross Basin group of mines, worked by English capital, as are many other claims in the San Juan mountains. A neighboring mine is remarkable for producing an ore of bismuth in such quantity as to give it great mineralogical interest. Bismuth is exceedingly rare. In the United States it is obtained only to a small amount in Connecticut. Saxony furnishes commerce its main supply, procuring it at the metallurgical works of Freiburg, where it is associated with the lead ores, and is extracted from the cupel furnace after large quantities of lead have been refined, being accumulated in the rich litharge, or liquid dross, near the conclusion of the process. This litharge is treated with acid, and the bismuth precipitated as a chloride by dilution with water. The making of lily white and other complexion compounds is the chief use to which bismuth is applied. The Madame assures me that the effect upon the skin is very noxious,—but how could she know that?
Crossing the divide, passing the “Mountain Queen” district, and proceeding eastward down the west branch of the Animas to the town of Animas Forks, another prosperous and populous mining area is reached. Mineral Point, where twenty or thirty rich veins crop out, is covered with claim stakes until it looks like a young vineyard. Its ores, in general, are dry,—that is, contain little lead; and some streaks show the beautiful ruby silver. Yet further down, on the eastern side of the river, lie the partly developed silver veins and ledges of gold quartz in Picayune gulch, where hydraulic machinery is used; and opposite is Brown’s gulch, where galena and gray copper occur.
The river in this part of the valley struggles through a close and pretty cañon, at the lower end of which stands Eureka,—a neat village nestling among trees. Here, too, are concentration works, and the headquarters of several companies operating in Eureka, Minnie, and Maggie gulches.
The wall-like sides of the mountains shutting close in together from Eureka down to Howardsville, show “mineral stains” everywhere, and the eye can trace dozens of veins slanting up and down the dark cliffs, and study how they thicken here and pinch there, or just beyond perhaps disappear altogether, upsetting all the old theories. At Howardsville, which was the center of everything years ago, the reviewer diverges up Cunningham gulch, completing the circle of his inquiries, for from Howardsville to Silverton it is only four miles.