in be

ver the

mines are soon exhausted. In California, notwithstanding the skilful application of hydraulic power, the production of gold by gulch or placer mining has diminished from $60,000,000 in 1853 to $20,000,000 in 1866. Except for new discoveries, and some successful enterprises of quartz mining, the Australian supply of gold would have likewise diminished. Very few diggings hold a mining population longer than a single season. The "dust of gold " is soon gathered. It may be admitted that Australia, Siberia, perhaps the sources of the Zambesi and the Nile in Africa, and northwest British America will, when further explored, reveal a great many districts where the surface deposits are rich and accessible; but each will be in turn a scene of great excitement and of rapid exhaustion, and, perhaps, before the close of the present century alluvial gold mining will be almost a tradition. This tendency is so apparent in every gold-producing community that public attention turns constantly, and with solicitude, to the separation of gold from its native matrix of rock as the only permanent means of production. But at that stage silver mining comes into successful competition with all existing methods for the reduction of auriferous rock. It has always been more profitable to work mines of silver than of gold, of which Mexico, during two centuries of experience, and the Pacific coast, during two decades, are illustrations.

There was very little mention of silver while the discovery and conquest of America were in progress. Among the vast mineral treasures of Montezuma, the quantity of silver was small compared with gold. It was El Dorado" which was eagerly sought for by European explorers. Each country was ransacked, with the forced labor of Indian slaves, for gold. This was the era of placermining in the American dominions of Spain. In consequence of the importation of gold, Isabella of Castile was obliged, as early as 1497, to modify greatly the relations of gold and silver at the mints. The Spanish sovereigns acknowledged the grant by the pontiff, Alexander VI, of their discoveries "in India" by a donation of gold from Hayti. At length, however, after the discovery of the silver mines in Peru and Mexico, and when the experience of miners had elaborated a systematic industry, gold ceased to be of much practical importance and silver became the leading metallic product of Spanish America. Of the coinage of Mexico from 1535 to 18 45, $2,465,275,954 was of silver and $126.981,021 of gold. Except for Brazil, the proportion in South America would be fully equal to that recorded in Mexico.

In the case of California, after many unsuccessful experiments, the reduction of auriferous lodes has been established. The veinstones, when pulverized, readily release the gold; there is a remarkable absence of refractory alloys; all the conditions, especially in Grass valley, are favorable. Yet the yield of gold does not exceed $9,000,000 per annum, while on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada the annual production of silver, chiefly from the Comstock lode, amounts to $16,000,000 per annum.

As the mining territories are explored, the discoveries of argentiferous veins are reported in all directions. The interior of the vast mountain mass developes in Sonora, Chihuahua, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, the identical formations and conditions which, in a lower latitude, characterize Durango, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and the other well known silver districts of Mexico. With the exhaustion of the placers (perhaps a remote contingency) it is quite possible that the production of silver, as compared to gold, will be restored to the old ratio of three of silver to one of gold.

But at present, as well as for the last eighteen years, the ratio of production is reversed-three of gold to one of silver. The following statement is submitted as an approximation, carefully avoiding exaggeration, of the quantities of the precious metals produced in 1866:

60,0

The annual production of silver since 1853 has not exce £10,000,000. Yet, within the period of fourteen years-fr sum of £11,250,000 has been annually transported from cluding shipments from Egypt) to Asia. The aggregat were as follows:

France alone, although the richest country of the world i has, since 1848, parted with $165.947,253 of silver and tak This has resulted from a fall in the value of gold, as com 2 per cent, which, by comparison of the course of exchang using a gold standard, and Hamburg and Amsterdam, us is the only monetary result of the excess of gold supply and America will substitute gold for silver as money, whil continue to absorb silver for many years to come, before th population now existing in Europe shall extend over the ea

A brief statement will illustrate the extent of the ori precious metals, which, now mostly confined to silver, will as the world shall desire it, extend to gold. India, in 18 medium of $400,000,000 for the use of a population of 180,0 capita. France has a population of 38,000,000, with $910,000,000, or $24 per capita. Suppose China, Japan, trious populations of Asia to be in the situation of India of bullion since 1853 has supplied the Asiatics with $3 remains a difference of $21 per capita before the moneta attained, demanding a further supply of $21 per capita 600,000,000, or not less than $12,600,000,000.

The railway system will soon connect Europe and A most important agency for the transfer of capital and d among the populations of the eastern continent. Since t Indian mutiny, an English writer estimates that more than sterling have been added to the currency and reproducti mostly from England, in the construction of railroads and 3,186 miles of railway in operation in 1865, having cost having been constructed with the aid of a guaranty of fi holders by the province of India. The system, for which dorsement is already given, will be 4,917 miles of railway of £77,500,000. These roads will relieve the governm their earnings reach £25 per mile per week, a point which t nearly reached and which all are destined to attain. dian railways that their connection with Europe by the val and their extension into China, will probably be accompl ten years. By that tim Russia will have undertaken a

Such

obras

to Pekin, through southern Siberia-a great trunk line that would soon justify a series of southern lines, penetrating central Asia over those leading caravar routes which have been the avenues of Asiatic commerce for centuries.

If an investment of $430,000.000 in 5,000 miles of railway is financially successful in Hindostan at this time, it may be anticipated that a population of 180,000,000 will warrant the enlargement of the system within the present century fully four-fold, which would be only a fifth of similar communications required and supported by an European or American community Suppose such a ratio of railway construction extended over China, central and western Asia and Siberia, it would be only one mile for every 9,000 people; while in the United States there are 36,000 miles for 36.000,000 people, or a mile to every thousand; and yet the Asiatic ratio, moderate as it is, presents the startling result of 66 000 miles of railroad constructed by the expenditure of $5,676,000,000. Such a disbursement of European accumulations in Asia would go far to diffuse not only the blessings of civilization, but any excess of production from the gold and silver mines of the world.

In Australia a railway has been constructed from Melbourne to the Ballarat gold fields, 380 miles, at a cost of $175,000 per mile, which pays a net profit nearly equal to the interest on the immense investment. It is difficult to estimate the amounts destined to be absorbed for railways in all the continents, under the direction of the great powers of the world-projected, constructed, and administered by the wealth and intelligence of America, Russia, England, Germany, and France. But the railway system is but an instance, among many other causes, conducing, in the language of an eminent English writer,* "to augment the real wealth and resources of the world; to stimulate and foster trade, enterprise, and production, and, therefore, conducing, with greater and greater force, to neutralize by extension of the surface to be covered, and by multiplying indefinitely the number and magnitude of the dealings to be carried on, the a priori tendency of an increase of metallic money to raise prices by mere force of enlarged volume. Already the boundaries within which capital and enterprise can be applied, with the assurance and knowledge alone compatible with durable success, have been extended over limits which ten or even five years ago would have been regarded as unattainable. There have come into play influences by which it seems to be the special purpose to contribute, by the aid of the concurrent advance of knowledge, to the removal or mitigation of many chronic evils against which past generations have striven almost in vain."

TRANSPORTATION FROM THE MISSOURI RIVER TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

While postponing a detailed consideration of the character and extent of trade and transportation from the Missouri river to the mining territories of the interior since 1848, some idea of the westward movement of merchandise and the cost of its transportation, may be obtained from the Quartermaster General's report to the Secretary of War for the year ending June 30, 1866, which exhibits the transportation on account of government, and the rates paid per hundred pounds per hundred miles The rates from the Missouri river to northern Colorado, Nebraska, Dakota, Idaho, and Utah were $1 45; to southern Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico, $1 38, with an addition from Fort Union in New Mexico to posts in that Territory, in Arizona, and western Texas of $1 79 per hundred pounds per hundred miles. The total number of pounds transported was 81,489,321 or 40,774 6-10 tons, at a cost of $3,314,495 Parties familiar with the course of this inland trade, estimate that the transportation on account of government is one-ninth the total amount of transportation. At this rate the whole amount paid in 1866 for freights from the Missouri river westward was $30,330,055 According to a statement recently made by the officers

* Tooke's History of Prices, vol. vi, p. 235, published in 1857.

I beg leave to close this communication with a few obse nature:

1. There are two indispensable requisites to the develop mines-security from Indian hostilities, and the establishm munication to the Pacific coast on the parallels of 350, 400 the completion of the "Union Central" on the average la parallel may be anticipated in 1870 and will unquestio impulse to the communities which it will traverse, probably to warrant the immediate construction of a northern line Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and a s indispensable to the Indian Territory, Texas, New Mexico ern California.

2. Great results of a social, no less than a material cha pated from the act of July 26, 1866, extending facilities mineral lands. By that act, freedom of exploration, free o ment lands for placer mining, a right to pre-empt quartz and improved according to local customs or codes of mini for aqueducts or canals, not less essential to agriculture tha extension of the homestead and other beneficient provisio system in favor of settlers upon agricultural lands in miner established as most important elements for the attraction of encouragement of mining enterprises. The Commission has carefully analyzed this enactment, and greatly facilita a circular recently issued. The spirit of the legislation u in the interest of actual settlement and occupation, and ownership for merely speculative purposes, of mining pro bably be necessary to supplement the act in question by of the local mining customs, which, although generally fou code so long in use in Mexico, are often incongruous and o

3. Great loss and disappointment have resulted from t and mineralogical development of auriferous and argen Rocky mountains and the Alleghanies. Metallurgical ma which had been successful in Europe, and even in Californ plicable or met with unexpected obstacles in the reducti no subject of greater importance than a scientific analysis combinations of the precious metals and the best method How far Congress or any executive department can judici solution of the mechanical and chemical problem which n and experience of all interested in the economical reducti and silver, it is not within the province of this report to great utility of the geological survey of Lake Superior and t in 1847, under the direction of Professor D. D. Owen, ma to as suggesting the expediency of a similar exploration u of the mineral districts of the western States and Territo be appropriately extended to include the metalliferous ghanies.

JAM

CIRCULAR

IN RELATION TO

MINING

G CLAIMS

UNDER

THE ACT OF CONGRESS APPROVED JULY 26, 1866.-U. S. STATUTES, PAGE 251, CHAPTER CCLXII.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

General Land Office, January 14, 1867. GENTLEMEN: Herewith will be found the act of Congress approved 26th July, 1866, "granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands, and for other purposes."

By the first section of this act all the mineral lands of the United States, surveyed and unsurveyed, are laid open to "all citizens of the United States, and to those who have declared their intention to become such, subject to statutory regulations," and also "to the local customs or rules of miners in the several mining districts not in conflict with the laws of the United States."

It therefore becomes your duty, in limine, to acquaint yourselves with the local mining customs and usages in the district in which you may be called upon to do those official acts which are required by law, whether the same are reduced to authentic written form, or are to be ascertained by the testimony of intelligent miners, which you are to obtain as occasion may require and justify, in acting upon individual claims, a perfect record whereof is to be carefully taken and preserved by the register and receiver, and to be accompanied by a diagram or plat fixing the out-boundaries of the district in which such customs and usages exist.

pos

The second section of the act declares that "whenever any person or association of persons claim a vein or lode of quartz or other rock in place, bearing gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper, having previously occupied and improved the same according to the local custom or rules of miners in the district where the same is situated, and having expended in actual labor and improvements thereon an amount of not less than one thousand dollars, and in regard to whose session there is no controversy or opposing claim, it shall and may be lawful for said claimant, or association of claimants, to file in the local land office a diagram of the same, so extended laterally or otherwise as to conform to the local laws, customs, and rules of miners, and to enter such tract and receive a patent therefor, granting such mine, together with the right to follow such vein or lode, with its dips, angles, and variations, to any depth, although it may enter the land adjoining, which land adjoining shall be sold subject to this condition." Mining claims may be entered at any district land office in the United States under this law, by any person, or association of persons, corporate or incorporate. In making the entry, however, such a description of the tract must be filed as will indicate the vein or lode, or part or portion thereof claimed, together with a diagram representing, by reference to some natural or artificial monument, the position and location of the claim and the boundaries thereof, so far as such boundaries can be ascertained.

First. In all cases the number of feet in length claimed on the vein or lode