But what about our mines?  I shall be candid with you.  I shall express an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination.  Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God’s footstool.  Each mountain range is gorged with the precious ores.  Humboldt is the true Golconda.

The other day an assay of mere croppings yielded exceeding four thousand dollars to the ton.  A week or two ago an assay of just such surface developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to the ton.  Our mountains are full of rambling prospectors.  Each day and almost every hour reveals new and more startling evidences of the profuse and intensified wealth of our favored county.  The metal is not silver alone.  There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore.  A late discovery plainly evinces cinnabar.  The coarser metals are in gross abundance.  Lately evidences of bituminous coal have been detected.  My theory has ever been that coal is a ligneous formation.  I told Col.  Whitman, in times past, that the neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no confidence in his lauded coal mines.  I repeated the same doctrine to the exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt.  I talked with my friend Captain Burch on the subject.  My pyrhanism vanished upon his statement that in the very region referred to he had seen petrified trees of the length of two hundred feet.  Then is the fact established that huge forests once cast their grim shadows over this remote section.  I am firm in the coal faith.

      Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county.  They are
      immense—­incalculable.

Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to better comprehend certain items in the above.  At this time, our near neighbor, Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining locality in Nevada.  It was from there that more than half the daily shipments of silver bricks came.  “Very rich” (and scarce) Gold Hill ore yielded from $100 to $400 to the ton; but the usual yield was only $20 to $40 per ton—­that is to say, each hundred pounds of ore yielded from one dollar to two dollars.  But the reader will perceive by the above extract, that in Humboldt from one fourth to nearly half the mass was silver!  That is to say, every one hundred pounds of the ore had from two hundred dollars up to about three hundred and fifty in it.  Some days later this same correspondent wrote: 

I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this region—­it is incredible.  The intestines of our mountains are gorged with precious ore to plethora.  I have said that nature has so shaped our mountains as to furnish most excellent facilities for the working of our mines.  I have also told you that the country about here is pregnant with the finest mill sites in the world.  But what is the mining history of Humboldt?  The