No perfect process of saving the gold has yet been invented, and much of it is still carried away in the sand or “tailing” of the mills. Rock that assays $40 or $50 to the ton will rarely yield more than half or two-thirds that amount, and sometimes falls far below it. Some of the mill owners claim to be satisfied with their present process, while others are constantly making experiments. Whoever succeeds in finding a cheap and effective means of saving all the gold in the pulverized rock, has a sure fortune before him. Many of the ores contain sulphurets of various kinds, and these are nearly always more or less refractory. Many of the mills are reserving their “tailings,” to be worked down again when some successful inventor makes his appearance. Some mill owners save the sulphurets from the ores for the purpose of selling them to the agent of an English house, who buys them for shipment to Wales.
Most of the quartz mines in California are from one hundred and fifty to six hundred feet in depth. The deepest and richest gold mine in the State is that known as Hayward’s mine, on Sutter’s Creek, Amador County. Its owner was unable to make it pay expenses for a long time, but it grew richer as it descended, and for the past twelve years or so has paid a handsome profit. Sixty tons per day are taken out and crushed; the operation goes on constantly, night and day.
The history of this mine seems to settle the question about the profitableness of deep mining, as the ore grows richer the farther it gets from the surface. The mines at Grass Valley steadily increase in richness as they descend from the surface. The owners of one mine have been pocketing a profit of $200,000 per annum.
THE QUARTZ MINERS.
All the fortunes made in California mining operations have not come from actual work upon the ledges. A great many men who never saw a mine have become rich by speculation in mining stocks; some of them have kept their money, but the majority have been unable to hold to it, in consequence of their eagerness for more. It is safe to say that more fortunes have been made by lucky sales of stock in mining companies than by holding for dividends. There have been some very large speculations in this kind of property, and at one time Montgomery street in San Francisco rivaled Wall street in New York in the magnitude of its operations. It is still a scene of financial activity, though the speculation is less than of yore.
“CLEANING THEM OUT.”
The California speculators are up to all the tricks and equal to the smartest of the Wall street men. A New York capitalist went there once with the laudable intention of “cleaning them out”. There had been a little flurry in the stock of a certain company, and it was well known who were the holders of the property. One day he received a telegram announcing that this mine had suddenly developed immense quantities of very rich ore, and the stock would consequently make an enormous advance. Other persons, who claimed to be his friends, received the same intelligence, and told him of it in the strictest confidence. The bait took, he bought all accessible stock of that company, paying a liberal price, and rejoicing at the reception of his news in advance of the market. The telegrams were all bogus; his pretended friends assisted in stacking the cards so as to win. The operators on the street used to speak of this as a very neat transaction, and declared that Wall street could not excel it.
A great deal depends upon knowing when to sell out. A friend of mine once bought fifteen feet of a mine, just opened, at ten dollars a foot, and sold it a year later at sixteen thousand dollars a foot. Three months later it could have been bought for not more than ten times the original cost. One man, who held on, is still keeping ten feet of the same mine, and is likely to do so.
Copper mining has been prosecuted to a considerable extent in California, and at one time was very profitable, owing to the war between Spain and Chili, which excluded the latter country from the copper market. The principal copper mines in California are at Copperopolis, in the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevadas, about forty miles from Stockton. The ore is extracted in the form of sulphurets, from a vein about twenty feet in width, which has reached a depth of more than six hundred feet. In consequence of the expense of smelting works, and the cost of fuel, it has been found more economical to send the ore to England, and to the Atlantic coast, for reduction. The sulphur is driven off by heat, and, after undergoing various manipulations to rid it of foreign matter, the fine copper remains. There are several mines at Copperopolis, all of them on the same vein. The most profitable of them employed at one time more than twenty ships in freighting its ore to the places where it was smelted. The net profit to the owners of the mine for one year, during the Chilian war, exceeded half a million dollars, but it fell off greatly with the return of peace.
COPPER AND SILVER MINES.