Chapter XVII

YIELD OF GOLD--ITS DURATION--MORMON GULCH--THE DISTRIBUTION OF
GOLD--TUNNELLING--DAMMING RIVERS--HOLDEN’S GARDEN--ENERGY IN THE
MINES--QUARTZ-MINES--QUARTZ MINING SUCCESSFUL--THE AUTHOR GETS OUT
OF HIS DEPTH.

_October, 1851._

The diggings in our immediate vicinity were not actively worked, as there was not sufficient water for the purpose; this, however, was shortly to be remedied, for companies composed of miners were at work in every direction, conducting water from the rivers to the dry diggings; and at this moment new plots of auriferous soil are daily being added to the area of “paying ground” in the mines by the artificial introduction of the water which nature has denied to them. Most of these companies have received handsome returns; the charge to each miner supplied with water being about two shillings a day.

This affords another instance of the successful employment of capital originally procured by gold digging; and if you wanted a few shares in one of these young companies, you could procure them without money, for by taking your coat off and helping to cut the ditch, you could in six months work yourself into a very respectable stockholder. I suppose each traveller who returns to his home from California, whether he is an Englishman or a Sandwich Islander, is questioned on all sides as to whether the “diggings” are nearly exhausted? This is easy to answer in the negative, but then follows a query far more difficult to reply to, viz., “when will they be?” Conjecture must necessarily have much weight in determining this problem, statistics of the past or present yield of the placers being almost valueless for that purpose. Yet this should be a question of very great financial importance, and not alone as regards the probable duration of the twelve million sterling now annually exported from California. For we must consider how far we are sustained by facts in presuming that the present yield of this country will be doubled, nay, quadrupled annually before the surface-soil is left again as once no doubt it was, valueless in gold. Of course, the gold mines must some day be exhausted; let us see then how far we are justified in supposing this day to be, comparatively speaking, distant, as regards California. I offer the following remarks with the avowal that they are of worth only as the crude opinions of one who has had nearly all that practically bears upon the subject brought before his notice, but as they will necessarily be dull and heavy as a blue book, I recommend the generality of those who have followed me thus far, to skip this chapter, which they probably will do with all the rest of the book.

For you, reader, who have sent to the circulating library for the “Newcomes,” and have had this book forwarded you as a “new work,” (the “Newcomes” being out,) can scarcely be expected to peruse in your present state of disgust, a chapter on gold mines: I therefore dedicate this “paper” to two individuals, one of whom shall be the gold mine victim before alluded to, as contemplating the two and twopence he received for his invested sovereign, and the other is that unknown man, who, in the _ennui_ of a long sea voyage, shall peruse, mayhap, as I have done before to-day, the pages with which his trunk is lined.

Mormon Gulch was the name of a ravine that was about a hundred yards from my tent, it was reported to have been the wealthiest digging in the mines, and according to rumour, half an hour’s work with a clasp knife or tin spoon, had invariably enriched any of the fortunate Mormons who first discovered it in 1848. Since those days, however, the earth, or stones rather, for these preponderate, had been turned over again and again, each time yielding less, until the soil ceased to return sufficient remuneration to the only process of labour that could be at that time applied to it. But before now water has been conducted there, and by the more wholesale process of sluice-washing, the gulch claims are again up in the market.

By-and-by we shall hear of the sluice-washing companies having deserted the gulch, and perhaps for a short period the red stony gravel will lie idle; but soon steam-engines and some process of securing the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, will brighten up old Mormon Gulch again, and there is no knowing how remote the day is, when its red banks shall for once and all, finally and for the twentieth time, be reported to have “given out.”

The history of Mormon Gulch, and the future I have sketched for it, is applicable to every ravine in the country, so far as this, that each auriferous flat or gulch will be subjected to certain processes, until at last the appliances of steam and science shall have robbed every square foot of earth of the treasure it contains.

Now, if all the gold territory of this country had been seized upon and worked at the time that Mormon Gulch was first discovered, we might form some estimate of the time when machinery should be brought to bear generally upon the placers; but as yet we cannot ascertain the amount of gold-bearing soil that exists; for not only are fresh diggings still brought to light, in the vicinity of the original discoveries, but we have ample proof that plenty lies beyond in the direction of the Sierra Nevada, which now, from the presence of hostile Indians, cannot be disturbed, and indeed, for the present, is not wanted.

The number of those who are now actually collecting gold by mining in California, may be computed at about one hundred and forty thousand men.

The obstacles that are alike presented by the extremes of the wet and dry seasons, will not admit, probably, of these miners working for more than two hundred days in the year, and the average daily sum amassed by each man, may be fairly quoted at three and a half dollars, or fifteen shillings.

This will give an annual yield of twenty-one millions sterling from California, and I have no reason to doubt that this sum is obtained, although it does not (for many reasons) appear in the reported exports of specie from the country.

Now, if this sum can be annually realised by the exertions of comparatively so small a body of men, who have even at the latest dates no better plan of securing the gold than by a rude system of washing, what may we expect when machinery is employed, and labour concentrated?

Those portions of the placer fields that would reward manual labour with less than one or two dollars a day, are as yet unmolested, for as yet the ruling rates of wages in the mines is higher, being guided by the average yield. Therefore it is difficult to place a limit on the amount of auriferous earth that now, rejected by the miner, will, by the proper application of machinery and the reduction of labour, eventually produce a vast return. There is scarcely a hill-side but gives evidence of the existence of gold, but although this soil will not at present repay manual labour, no one can suppose that the metal will be allowed to rest there undisturbed.

The distribution of gold in the soil is most eccentric, and this is attributable probably to three causes:[19] firstly, that for the most part it was disintegrated from the matrix during the stupendous volcanic action to which all the gold territory of California has been subjected; secondly, that it has been carried to and fro by vast masses of water, the result of heavy rains, or more probably of heavy falls of snow in the mountains, that have suddenly melted and carried all before them; finally, from the land-slips and accumulations of upper soil that must necessarily result where steep hills of gravel have been for ages subjected to the sudden transitions of wet and dry seasons.

I tread very carefully whenever I find myself on the geologist’s ground, bearing in mind my scientific friend at Murderer’s Bar, who reached the bottom so much quicker than he desired; therefore I can only suggest; and the two readers to whom this discourse is dedicated, whilst they deplore the ignorance which prevents me leading them through a labyrinth of formations and stratas, must place something to my credit on the score of modesty.

Wherever gold is discovered in California, particles of quartz are found adhering to it more or less; this quartz, even when found at great depths, is generally rounded by the action of water, for quartz, when detached by violent action, is naturally angular, and inclined to splinter, and from its hardness it must require ages to give it the form of a pebble, by the slow process of grinding it receives in a comparatively dry mountain gorge. This, taken in conjunction with the facts that the gold is found now on the surface, and now low down resting on the bed rock, here forced into clefts of granite, and again in clusters of small pear-shaped nuggets, as if the metal had been ejected by intense heat, and had dripped from the volcanic boulders that lie scattered around; tends to bear out the supposition that disintegrated gold has been cast into places that time and accident alone can reveal, and that the original opinion that the gold was on the surface only no longer holds good.

Tunnelling has already been applied to rich hills in the mines with great success, and this fact alone is of great importance, in so far that it leaves us powerless to place a limit on the amount of auriferous soil that is imbedded in the small round hillocks that extend over a space of nearly four hundred miles, north and south.

Where ingenuity aided by science is at fault, a very slight clue will often accidentally lead to the solution of a problem; thus much capital has already been devoted to the damming of those streams in California, of which the banks were found to be wealthy; but in few instances hitherto have the beds been found to be productive: yet they must be so at some point, unless we are to imagine, what is improbable, that gold has been carried by rain water to the verge of a swift stream, and then has been arrested there without any apparent obstacle.

There is something capricious about this metal in its released state; a search for it, even where evidence of its existence has been shown, is seldom attended with success, yet every day almost chance brings to light some fresh gold field.

I remember a gentleman who, taking an early Sunday walk among the hills that surround the town of Sonora, struck his foot against a stone. He should have found a sermon in it, for he was not likely to find one anywhere else, but in the agony of a mutilated great toe, he turned and apostrophised the rock in unbecoming language; but he suddenly checked his impetuous feelings, and we will hope from a good motive; whether or no, the offending quartz was so richly coated with the dross that we make a point of despising when we can’t get enough of it, that he took it home. It was found to contain more gold than quartz, and yet within a few hundred yards of a populous city, it had protruded itself ostentatiously without notice for two or three years.

It is difficult to understand why gold remained so long undiscovered in California, considering that so much of it was on the surface, even in those parts of the country already inhabited by whites. The Indians, who will search assiduously for the flints they require for arrow-heads, do not seem to have been aware of the existence of gold on the plains, although the savages of the as yet unexplored mountain districts, are found with gold in their possession. The early Spanish priests evidently sought for it without success, judging from the old shafts that have been sunk, on part of the banks of the Stanislaus River; and yet these explorations were ineffectually made in the centre of a rich district, and by a class of gentlemen who were never in the habit of overlooking a good thing. Some of the best diggings have been discovered by market-gardeners, who have chosen some apparently valueless tract for the purpose of cabbage growing, and it is a fact that one man with more energy than agricultural experience, who was abusing the earth for producing cabbages that were all stalk, found on rooting up one very lengthy specimen, that a piece of gold adhered to the roots.

Holden’s garden, near Sonora, is a case in point; this was found to be so rich, that the gamblers of the town sallied out to take possession of it, and a fight occurred, in which one or two lives were lost before the “claims” could be adjusted.

For four years Holden’s acre of cabbage ground has been worked with great profit, pieces of gold of many pounds weight each have been taken from it, and to this day it is a rich digging, as times go.

It is possible that both my readers have heard of a certain Irish pig that could only be induced to go in one direction by being at the onset driven in another; it is somewhat this way with the search for gold.--Start on a voyage of discovery for copper or coal, and you will probably, if in a gold region, tumble down and break your nose over a nugget as large as a paving stone; but if you give chase to the seductive metal itself, the toil of a lifetime will very likely not counterbalance the first week’s privation.

In respect to gold-fields, even if our argument leads to no definite conclusion, it is something gained if we can determine that no sign of diminution of yield is as yet apparent,--as regards the future, the wisest can only record an opinion. I believe for my part that the gold-fields of California will certainly yield in an equivalent proportion to their present produce for many years, even if the diggers are left to their own resources;--what may be done with the soil eventually, when capital shall increase in the mines and _from the mines_, is a question as impossible to solve as that of the advance of science in other respects within the next half century.

The miners of California are a highly intelligent and determined race, possessed of a degree of _mechanical genius_ that surprises me; they have before them a large area of soil, which they, equally with myself, believe still to be most wealthy. They may by-and-by have the advantages of foreign capital to help them; but if not, the capital that their sinews can accumulate ounce by ounce from the gold soil will, in the long run, so far answer the end, that the hills will be burrowed and the streams turned, until the wealth is sifted from them, and then they have a gold territory, as yet partially explored, to fall back upon--the first range of the Sierra Nevada.

Now, like enterprising farmers, they sow again perhaps one half of the year’s harvest, until each fertile spot shall be in cultivation, multiplying and fruitful; and so long as we see that the gold from the soil is turned against the soil in the all-powerful form of capital, aided by science; and so long as we know that what is separated to-day by the “long tom” may to-morrow be devoted to the erection of steam-engines and the sinking of vast tunnels; we know that a great system of improvement is being carried out independent of _all external aid_: and in the facts that on every side attest the strong faith the miners hold themselves in respect of the inexhaustible nature of the soil, and in the evidences of success that meet us at all points, where fresh inventions are applied, we have the best guarantee that the “placers” of California are in a state of progressive improvement.

The reader will better understand this when I state that the miners of California have many of them had six years experience, are naturally men of ability, and are now in positions of independence, though still miners. The popular opinion respecting gold miners, is that of a body of rough, vagabond, long-haired men, who work one day with a tin pan and get drunk the next; this is perhaps what they were, to some extent; and San Francisco, which owes existence to the mines, was then a canvas village, given up to dissipation; but the tents have disappeared from Yerba Buena, and we have in their room a large and substantially-built city; equally have the mines changed, and the “vagabond population” stands forth in the shape of engineers, excavators, mechanics, and cunning inventors, and, better still, organised bands of labourers, who, under the guidance of these first, bring profit to themselves and benefit to the country generally.

The quartz mines of California must now be reviewed, for, in connection with the probable future yield of gold, they occupy a prominent position.

In that column of the “Times” which is expressly devoted to a review of the Share Markets, some half-dozen Californian quartz mine operations will be found daily recorded; these, for the most part, are in a very sickly state. Why they are so is no business of mine; but the fact is no criterion of the value of the quartz lodes of California.

The quartz formation stretches in one great vein across the country for nearly three hundred miles in a north-westerly direction, and this main lode is throughout more or less impregnated with gold, excepting where it has been disturbed by volcanic eruption. From the main vein tributaries branch out on either side, throughout its length, and many of these possess undoubtedly sufficient wealth to repay labour, if this is properly applied. I say this cautiously, for I know something now of the traps and pit-falls that beset the path of the quartz miner. These are among them: you have rich and partially decomposed lodes that enrich you with a nest of gold on the onset, but lead you a wild-goose chase into the bowels of the earth before you find another; you have broad lodes white as alabaster, speckled in parts with gold, but from which you must quarry more valueless quartz than the “paying seam” will compensate for; and you have lodes that are liberally and evenly diffused with gold, but contain so many properties antagonistic to amalgamation by quicksilver that the metal you seek can only be secured by a most expensive process. These are the lodes that do not pay; and by this time probably the mining community here know as much of them as I do.

But a great number of veins, worked unostentatiously by American companies, are giving very satisfactory results; a _larger_ number are paying their expenses only, but with good prospects of improvement. But I must direct attention to this fact; the amount of profit derived from quartz-mine speculations is not of so much importance to my argument as the number of quartz mines being worked. If many of the lodes now open in California are bringing at present a smaller percentage to their owners than was anticipated, fault perhaps of imperfect machinery and false economy, they are none the less of importance as affecting the question of the yield of gold. For although the hundred ounces per day that pass through the stamping-mill may scarcely leave a profit on the expenses, the hundred ounces are none the less added to the gross daily yield of the country. Palpably plain as this is, I mention it because we are apt, when speaking of gold quartz mining as comparatively profitless to speculators, to forget that the gold is for all that compressed from the rock; and it is with this alone I have to do.

But as it may be observed that operations that combine so much risk of failure will shortly be abandoned, particularly in a country where money commands so high a rate of interest, I must mention these facts.

In the first place, many American mining companies are already paying handsome dividends, and those which are least successful have, in most instances, their machinery to blame more than the vein, on which it is erected; but everything is in favour even of those who are thus situated, for improvements in machinery start up on every side, labour and the expense of living is diminishing rapidly, whilst fresh developments bring new aspirants continually into the field. For there is something about quartz mining that is seductive; fail as you will, as long as some are successful around you there is a “never-say-die” feeling which ever prompts to fresh exertion in the same field.

I shall not attempt to draw conclusions from an estimate of the number of veins that are now being profitably worked, or the amount of gold that may be derived from them in California, as that country is still in a state of transition, and not yet ripe for figured calculations. I can only fall back again upon my belief, that where gold exists ready to man’s hand, as it does in the great veins of California, the people of that region are not likely to allow it to remain slumbering.

Having now shown that the material, the capital, and the energy exist to warrant a belief amounting almost to a certainty, that an amount of gold will yet be produced from California that will throw into the shade the millions that have already been acquired, I leave it to others to argue how far the same facts apply to Australia, Oregon, and other gold-fields as yet less perfectly developed. I scarcely dare guess at the sum that the next ten years will see produced from California, but call attention to this fact, that seven years have elapsed since the discovery of gold, and as yet no apparent sign of exhaustion is manifest, although all predicted, from the first, that the auriferous soil was but superficial. Had this prophecy been borne out to any degree by experience we might have made a calculation; as matters stand, all tends to the belief that the best is yet to come. Nor should it be overlooked that the price of labour in California is still slightly _higher_ than in Australia, one country being four years older (in gold discovery) than the other, and both necessarily regulating wages by the profits of the gold-field.

When I have stated that twenty millions sterling are annually produced from California, and that as yet no probability is apparent of a less yield for some years, I have said as much as comes within the province of my narrative.

How far gold may be eventually permanently depreciated by the addition of five hundred millions, to the specie currency of the world, is a question for financiers, and those who have gold enough to care about the value of it; but ten years of successful work in the gold-fields already discovered, may produce that sum, and in all probability will.

There is but one question more: is gold already depreciated in value? As measured by labour and property undoubtedly it is; for it matters not whether in speaking of a gold country, we say that gold is cheap, or labour is dear: as affecting the question the terms are equivalent. Like a stone thrown in the water, the effects of a gold country spread from it in widening circles; the increased value of labour there is diffused to places more remote, and consequently the depreciation of gold is diffused also. If the farmer here, affected by the extending influence of the gold-field, already pays more for his labour, he may individually counterbalance this loss by receiving a higher price for his wheat: still his gold (supposing these effects to be perceived) represents less labour on the one hand, and less property on the other. But it will be argued that such a depreciation is caused by the indirect means of emigration, and that this is temporary. Granted: but if it is a depreciation, may it not last, in a temporary way, as fresh gold-fields are discovered, until it is supplanted by the permanent depreciation which will arise when the vast influx of precious metal shall first make itself felt throughout the world?

Already out of my depth, I leave the foregoing remarks as they stand, and the reader will observe that they are only suggestive. If I have allowed myself to plunge from a firm bank of facts into a small puddle of conjecture, with which I had no business, all I can say is that I am very sorry for it, and will wade out of it as fast as I can.