Upon the Pacific slope minerals are now being deposited in some of the openings of the rocks from which hot springs issue. A study of these springs has led to the opinion that the gold-bearing quartz veins were formed in a similar manner, but at a very remote time in the past.
The milky or glassy quartz, which is so hard that you cannot scratch it with the point of your knife, the little grains of pale yellow iron pyrites, and the grains and threads of gold scattered through the quartz, were at one time in solution in water. This water came from some region far down in the earth, farther than we can ever reach with the deepest shafts, and there, where it is very hot and the pressure is great, the water dissolved the little particles of gold and other minerals from the rocks; and then, gathering them up, bore them along toward the surface, depositing them as solid particles again in the form of veins in the fissures through which the stream was passing.
FIG. 100.—HYDRAULIC MINING ON THE KLAMATH RIVER, CALIFORNIA
As the rocks upon the surface decay and the crumbling material is carried away by running water, the gold, being very heavy, washes down the hillsides and is at last gathered in the gulches. This fact explains why we find gold both in veins and in the gravel of the streams. Getting gold from the veins is called quartz-mining. Washing it from the gravel is called placer-mining; and if the gravel is deep and a powerful stream of water is required, the work is called hydraulic mining.
FIG. 101.—MAY ROCK, A VEIN OF QUARTZ ON THE MOTHER LODE
Everyone has heard of the Mother Lode of California. Every miner wishes that his mine were upon this famous lode, which is made up of a large number of quartz veins extending along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and is marked by hundreds of important mines. A line of towns marks the course of the Mother Lode for over a hundred miles. They are almost entirely supported by the gold which the lode supplies.
The gold first discovered in California was placer gold. After the miners had worked over the stream gravels and had secured all that they could in that way, they began to search for the home of the gold. It could not always have been in the creek beds, and the miners were correct in thinking that it must have been washed from some other place. Gold was so frequently found in pieces of loose or float quartz that this fact finally turned their attention to the quartz veins which were numerous upon the mountain slopes. Then came the discovery of the series of great quartz veins now known as the Mother Lode.
