This article has been sent to me by a nonlistmember-but interested Mariposa Researcher- Jerry Morrisson Enjoy- Carolyn >From the article "How We Get Gold in California" printed in "Harper's New Monthly Magazine" By a Miner of The Year '49 Wm. V. Wells, No. CXIX.April, 1860.Vol. XX. No. 119. Q Our tour of the mines carried us into the famous gold country of Mariposathe far-famed region claimed by the pioneer Frémont. One of the largest mining counties in the State is that bearing this name, which is mellifluous Spanish for our word "butterfly." In the centre of its richest portion stands the picturesque town of Mariposa. This county ranks Number Four in the quartz-crushing interest, which has grown into an immense and lucrative business, despite the disaster and ruin attending it in 1850-'51. It employs millions of capital and thousands of miners, and has grown into the most important occupation in the State. In every part of the region there are found veins of quartz rock, outcropping in many places, and often traceable through leagues of country. These generally contain gold: sometimes so fine as to be invisible to the naked eye; at others the quartz, when broken, is completely studded with the glittering particles. In some instances the proportions of gold is so small that the most economical methods of pulverizing it to extract the gold will not pay the necessary expenses; again the yield has been so large that costly mills carried by steam and water power have been erected, and with such astonishing results that savans have at last been compelled to admit that "quartz is the mother of gold;" and it is now generally believed that gold has been originally formed in, or together with, quartz, and that it is by the gradual disintegration of the later by the action of water and atmospheric influences that the gold has been distributed over the country. The mill situated at the Frémont vein, in Mariposa County, was among those visited during our journey. Like most of the principal ones this mill is carried by steam power; and some description of this, and another in Nevada County, will give the reader some idea of the great interest in quartz crushing. The quartz is conveyed to the works by carts or mule panniers from the vein, near which they are generally erected. The machinery is under the cover of a large shed; the apparatus consisting of a series of iron stampers, placed in a line, and made to fit into iron boxes, which receive the quartz, previously broken into egg size. The stampers are moved by cogs or cans, connected with a revolving wheel, which alternately lifts and lets them fall into the boxes containing the quartz. By this means from ten to fifty tons per day are crushed, according to the power of the millsyielding, at Mariposa, from $30 to $80 per ton. The quartz operations at Grass Valley, in Nevada County, have probably made the largest returns. Some of the richest veins in the State have been discovered in this vicinity, some of them yielding occasionally two hundred dollars to the ton, but by no means averaging as much. The Helvetia quartz-mill at this place is one of the principal, working thirty-four stampers, and crushing on an average thirty tons a day. The stamping-box, already described, is supplied with water by a hose or pipe. Through a hole made for the purpose the quartz, as it is crushed, passes out in the form of a thick, milky water, carrying with it much of the fine gold, which is thus discharged upon a frame-work, across which are placed several quicksilver riffles, where the gold amalgamates in its passage. Any fine particles escaping the quicksilver are arrested below, as they pass over a hide or blanket stretched tightly across a frame. But even these careful preparations for saving the gold are not always successful; for the "tailings," or refuse from the mill, is found to pay nearly as well under a second process as by the original crushing. The question how to avoid this waste of gold has long been agitated among miners, and is apparently now as far from practical solution as ever. Besides the quartz-mill proper there is the primitive Spanish-American rastra, or drag, which we saw in operation at Bear Valley, in Mariposa County, and other places. This consists of two heavy stones attached by a strap to a horizontal bar. These are dragged by mule-power slowly around a circular trough, paved at the bottom, and through which a small stream of water is constantly flowing. The gold-bearing quartz, previously broken into small pieces, is ground to a paste in the trough, and flows away in the usual milky form, to which it is reduced by friction or crushing; and the gold amalgamates with quicksilver, which at short intervals, is sprinkled through the trough during the grinding. After a certain time the water is turned off, the entire pavement of the trough taken up, and the amalgam carefully collected and retorted. A single ton of quartz often affords a days work for one of these slow-jogging machines; but they do their work more effectually than the crushing-mills, as the quartz is more thoroughly pulverized by this constant friction and rubbing than by stamping; and in proportion as a stone can be thoroughly reduced to a paste, so much the more completely can the gold be extracted. Hence the rasta is used with success at veins which had been abandoned as profitless for the modern quartz-mill. These machines are usually put up and owned by Mexicans, who take the grinding of quartz by the job or ton, from mining companies who lack capital to erect steam mills. In the more retired parts of California, where the distance and difficulties of access have hitherto prevented the rush of population, there are extensive gold regions which have as yet only begun to be known. Years must elapse before the mineral wealth of Siskiyou, Klamath, and Shasta counties can be fully developed, though mining enterprises of great importance have been successfully attempted in all. Not many miles north of the California line on the Pacific is an extent of sea-coast, called Gold Bluff from the extraordinary gold discoveries made there in 1851. An American officer, in pursuit of hostile Indians with a detachment of troops, discovered, on the ocean beach, small shining particles in the sand, which extended many miles along the coast. These, on examination, proved to be gold. In a few months the report reached San Francisco in an exaggerated form, and crowds flocked to Gold Bluff. The result was ruin and death to many and fortune to a few. This style of mining has since been pursued with great success. Whether the gold is thrown up by the surf from a bed of the ocean, or washed down from the inland bluffs, remains unexplained. It is found by throwing off the upper or white sand, which discovers a layer of smooth, round stones embedded in a bank of black sand, in which the gold dust literally sparkles in the sunlight. The stones are thrown aside, and the auriferous sand shoveled into a long trough, on the bottom of which is tacked a course blanket or hide. A stream of water is let on, which carries away the sand while the gold is caught in the furze(sic) of the blanket. If any escapes, it is secured below in a short series of quicksilver riffles at the end of the trough or sluice. Instances are known at Gold Bluff and at Cape Blanco, in Oregon, where parties of four men have made from five to ten thousand dollars by gold-beach washing in a single season. ==============