IRLF 
 
 32 SEE 
 
GIFT OF 
 
PAP E R S 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 NOTES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 BY 
 
 FKEDEKICK GLEASON COKJNING, M.E. 
 
 DIPLOMIST ROYAL MINING ACADEMY, FREIBERG, SAXONY. MEMBER AMERICAN 
 INSTITUTE OF MINING ENGINEERS, ETC. 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 27 PARK PLACE 
 
 1889 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE PANAMA CANAL, . . ... . . .5 
 
 II. THE LAKE OF TITICACA, BOLIVIA, S. A., . . . .22 
 
 III. A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC, SOUTH AMERICA, 31 
 IV. THE GOLD MINES OF THE TIPUANI RIVER, BOLIVIA, S. A., . 49 
 
 V. THE GOLD QUARTZ MINES OF GRASS VALLEY, NEVADA 
 
 COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, . 64 
 
 VI. THE MILL OF THE NORTH STAR GOLD MINE, GRASS 
 
 VALLEY, CALIFORNIA, .77 
 
 VII. THE CONCENTRATION OF ORES THE CORNING CONCEN- 
 TRATOR, 85 
 
 VIII. UNPROFESSIONAL OFFICE AND LABORATORY MINING 
 
 REPORTS, 92 
 
 IX. THE CHOICE AND LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF MINES, . 95 
 
 451637 
 
I. 
 
 THE PANAMA CANAL.* 
 
 REVIEW OF THE FRENCH COMPANY, THE WORK ACCOMPLISHED, AND 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF THIS GIGANTIC UNDERTAKING. 
 
 THE names of De Lesseps, Suez, and Panama, whatever may 
 prove to be the issue of the latter venture, will always remain 
 great among the chapters in the progress of civilization. To 
 review the career of F. De Lesseps and fully appreciate the vast- 
 ness of his projects is to become forcibly impressed with the 
 man's extraordinary genius as the projector of startling under- 
 takings and his unsurpassed ability as a successful promoter. A 
 broad view of his achievements inspires a degree of admiration 
 for this magnetic character only comparable with the intense in- 
 terest felt throughout civilized countries regarding the success 
 of his globe-remodeling projects and their important bearing on 
 the interests of commerce and navigation. More minutely scru- 
 tinized, however passing, as it were, from the poetic to the 
 prosaic side of this talented Frenchman's schemes we meet 
 with some disappointment regarding the execution in detail and 
 probable fate of his last great engineering and speculative un- 
 dertaking at Panama. This concern for the future of the canal 
 and for the prestige so long enjoyed by De Lesseps grows out 
 of an impartial attitude toward the undertaking, in which the 
 present condition of things on the Isthmus is contrasted with 
 the original promises officially advertised by De Lesseps and his 
 company. 
 
 In the United States it has become almost fashionable to cry 
 down the Panama enterprise, and ridicule the efforts of the 
 
 * From The Scientific American, New York, Oct. 8, 1887. 
 
6 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 French company. It is hoped, however, that this small contri- 
 bution to the already voluminous literature on the subject will 
 not be taken as a blind indorsement of the many malicious ad- 
 verse opinions heretofore rendered. It is only intended to be a 
 compilation of the more important data affecting the success of 
 the canal and a synopsis of the company's policy and manage- 
 ment as observed on the isthmus and in Paris. 
 
 In spite of the indifference shown by Americans regarding the 
 success of this special company, the interoceanic canal problem 
 has nevertheless long been a subject of deep interest in the 
 United States. For, although we have not as yet, to any great 
 extent, actively participated in the construction of a canal, yet it 
 is still fresh in the minds of the people that our government at 
 one time expended a very considerable sum of money in recon- 
 naissance surveys and preliminary work with a view to deter- 
 mining from an engineering, geographical, and economical point 
 of view the most feasible route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
 And when subsequently it appeared, as the result of careful esti- 
 mates based on these accumulated data, that a sufficient amount 
 of shipping could be relied upon to insure a volume of business 
 for a canal through Central America to even justify an invest- 
 ment of at least double the amount of the cost of the Nicaragua 
 route, the great attractions of a properly constructed canal to 
 connect the two oceans by the most feasible line became mani- 
 fest. At the same time our carefully and ably conducted inves- 
 tigations pointed strongly to the Nicaragua route as practically 
 in all respects the preferable one. In the face of all this it is 
 not surprising that the French company's choice of the Panama 
 line should have incited a certain degree of adverse criticism 
 and prophecies of disaster on the part of the Americans of the 
 North. And now after quietly and patiently watching for six 
 years the company's progress and prospects on the isthmus, the 
 time is at hand when the nations pecuniarily and otherwise in- 
 terested in the operations of the " Compagnie Universelle du 
 Canal Interoeeanique " are beginning to realize the correctness 
 of the verdict of the United States scientists on the natural ob- 
 stacles to the Panama route. At the same time it is becoming 
 apparent that our exploratory engineering work, which showed 
 the impracticability of the Colon-Panama line, was more thor- 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 7 
 
 oughly and intelligently executed, and the results more reliably 
 made known to the public, than were the preliminary surveys 
 and estimates of other countries. 
 
 At the so-called " International Congress," held in Paris in 
 1879, nominally for the purpose of discussing and deciding upon 
 the best of the five projected canal routes submitted at that 
 time, the Nicaragua route, after some comparatively superficial 
 comment, was, with other plans, hastily set aside ; and thereupon, 
 in conformity with the wishes of Mr. De Lesseps, who substan- 
 tially controlled the whole convention and framed its resolu- 
 tions, it was finally decided : " That the cutting of an inter- 
 oceanic canal at sea level was feasible ; and that in order to 
 secure the natural conditions essential to an undertaking of this 
 character, it would be necessary to adopt the route from the 
 Gulf of Limon to the Bay of Panama." More particular reasons 
 for the choice of this line were stated on this occasion to be 
 " the length of 45 miles," that would require but " one day for 
 the passage." Following along in this impulsive, one-man pol- 
 icy, that may eventually culminate in serious reverses and disap- 
 pointments to the De Lesseps following, as far as the dividend 
 rate on the company's ultimate capital is concerned, came a long 
 series of erratic announcements in the u Bulletin Interoceanique 
 de Panama," the official organ of the company. Thus in the 
 early " circulates " and "bulletins" issued the management 
 constantly proclaimed its ability to cut and complete the entire 
 canal for 600 million frs., including expenses of every descrip- 
 tion and all fixed interest charges. For example, in an address 
 by Mr. F. De Lesseps at the general meeting in January, 1881, 
 we find, in his opinion, " the sum of 600 millions (frs.) will be 
 required to open the Panama Canal to all classes of navigation." 
 And in a February bulletin, 1884, by the same recognized au- 
 thority, " The original estimate of the cost of the canal, namely, 
 1 milliard 70 millions (1,070,000,000 frs.), has been reduced to 
 850 millions ; and upon the late arrival of contractors at Panama, 
 the total cost has been still further reduced to 600 millions. 
 The one hundred million cubic meters to be excavated will cost 
 500 millions, to which 100 millions are added for the general 
 expense account" About the same period a notice of similar 
 import was circulated among the shareholders, by a large firm, 
 
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THE PANAMA CANAL. 9 
 
 to whom had been assigned a considerable portion of the work, 
 stating and indorsing that : " Mr. De Lesseps announces that 
 eight years will be sufficient for the completion of the work, and 
 that the estimate of 512 millions is considerably in excess of the 
 real cost." Following these concise, business-like, official an- 
 nouncements, there appeared, about one year and a half later, in 
 the bulletin of August, 1885, a report of the general meeting held 
 in July, 1885, with the following extraordinary piece of incon- 
 gruous news : " Contracts having been entered into providing 
 for the completion of the canal to the bottom, we are now ena- 
 bled to compute the further cost of finishing the same at 480 
 millions (frs.). This sum, added to the amount already spent, 
 namely, 220 millions, gives 700 millions as the total cost of the 
 canal on the opening day. To this figure must be added the 
 expenses of administration and interest charges, to make up the 
 total estimate of 1 milliard and 70 millions (frs.)." 
 
 The continued outpouring of dispatches of this character, 
 proving the company's calculations and official reports to be in- 
 excusably inaccurate, could not but give rise to much unfavora- 
 ble criticism on the part of the United States, which the French 
 attribute to jealousy. Already about 900 millions (frs.) have 
 been sunk (realized from the marketing of various classes of 
 securities whose aggregate face value is almost doubly as great), 
 and, it may be said, without accomplishing much more than 
 fairly starting the great work, now at the best not over one- 
 fourth completed. Up to the end of December, 1885, the so- 
 called general expense account ^ above referred to, amounted to 
 something like 350,000,000 (frs.), and at this date cannot be far 
 from the alarming sum of 500,000,000 (frs.). Furthermore, it 
 is evident that should the company's operations continue for six 
 or eight years longer, which would seem to be the least time re- 
 quired to finish the canal, these general expenses will swell to a 
 sum closely approximating 1 milliard (1,000,000,000 frs.) ; be- 
 cause already they have reached the enormous sum of over 80 
 millions (frs.) annually and must continue to increase propor- 
 tionately with the increase in the loan account, the limit of which 
 is not yet in sight. 
 
 Some of the round sums of money which contribute yearly to 
 swell this "general expense account" are interesting in the sig- 
 
10 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 nificance they bear to the ultimate outcome of this system of 
 financiering in the event of either a suspension of operations or 
 a continuance of the actual work of construction beyond a certain 
 limited number of years. They have been given to the public 
 at various intervals through bulletins and annual reports, approx- 
 imately as follows : 
 
 Interest on 250,000 bonds (5 per cent.) 6,235,000 frs. 
 
 Interest on 477,387 bonds (4 per cent.) 9,547,740 frs. 
 
 Interest on 600,000 shares of stock (6 per cent.) 18,000,000 frs. 
 
 Interest on 600,000 bonds (3 per cent.) 9,000,000 frs. 
 
 Interest on 458,302 bonds (6 per cent.) 13,764,000 frs. 
 
 Annual cost for services and miscellaneous acts 9,000,000 frs. 
 
 Central administ ration 1,500,000 frs. 
 
 Minimum local administration, Panama, (1,100 salaried 
 
 employes in June, 1886) 10,000,000 frs. 
 
 For inspectors, engineers, opening new roads, repairs, 
 
 hospitals, etc 3,000,000 frs. 
 
 General expense account 80,046,740 frs. 
 
 After the next loan or two shall have been placed, it is quite 
 probable that the above general expenses will run closely to 100 
 millions yearly. Added to this account, it must be remembered, 
 are the actual expenses of the machinery and the canal work 
 proper the excavations now under contract which latter, to- 
 gether with the general expense account, make up the entire 
 yearly outlay. 
 
 The total material to be removed in cutting the canal appeared 
 in July, 1885, to be finally estimated at 128,000,000 cubic meters. 
 By persons more familiar with the topography and surveys of 
 the line than would be possible for one who has only paid four 
 visits to the isthmus, it is claimed that this volume of 128 mill- 
 ions of cubic meters is a very considerable underestimate ; and 
 that in this figure, as in most others, a serious increase will 
 eventually be met with. But however this may prove, the sad 
 fact remains that, up to May 1, 1887, there had been excavated 
 only a little over 36,000,000 cubic meters of the grand total 
 Yet in the face of all these hard facts, which would appear to 
 unavoidably retard the progress of the work, that sooner or later 
 must come to the surface, it would appear that the company's 
 policy has been to foster self-deception regarding the real state 
 of affairs on the isthmus. In this connection we find in a Sep- 
 tember bulletin, 1886 : " The work done per man per day now 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 11 
 
 exceeds 5 cubic meters." Then again, in a January bulletin, 
 1887 : " The army of 12,000 to 15,000 laborers on the isthmus 
 has the co-operation of machines representing an effective power 
 equivalent to nearly 600,000 men." 
 
 It is surprising, in view of the transparency of these absurdly 
 exaggerated dispatches, that their object of sustaining the com- 
 pany's credit should have been at all attained. The unsuspect- 
 ing shareholder naturally concludes from such glowing accounts 
 that the canal work is being vigorously pushed forward in ac- 
 cordance with the original assurances of the promoters, and 
 quietly subscribes to new loans as fast as the opportunities are 
 presented. His enthusiasm is too great and his mathematics too 
 limited to reflect that, with " six hundred thousand men " hand- 
 ling " five cubic meters per man per day," the entire canal could 
 be cut in less than two months. Again, the return to Paris of 
 the Messrs. De Lesseps from Panama was the signal for some 
 further authoritative utterances : and about this time we find an 
 extract from one of Mr. De Lesseps' announcements published 
 in the bulletins as follows : 
 
 u After having exhaustively studied all technical questions 
 and examined every foot of ground along the line, I consider it 
 within the bounds of truth to say that in 1887 the scale of the 
 work as well as the amount accomplished will be three times as 
 great (that is, more than 3,000,000 cubic meters per month)." 
 As near as can be ascertained, however, this year's records do 
 not show an average of much over 1,000,000 cubic meters per 
 month. 
 
 The rapidity of the work, generally speaking, is regulated by 
 the labor supply and the ability of the local management, or the 
 contractors, to gradually increase the working force, or at any 
 rate to keep the same constant when once an adequate number 
 of men has been secured. But their power to do this is in turn 
 almost entirely dependent upon the ups and downs, the periods 
 of relative salubrity and insalubrity, of the climate. The latter, 
 without doubt, if not the greatest, is one of the most serious 
 factors militating against the satisfactory, uniform progress of 
 the work. With reference to this subject, about two years ago 
 Mr. De Lesseps, with a promoter's enthusiasm, was published 
 in the bulletin as stating : " The mortality is lower than in any 
 
12 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 other excavations, not even excepting Europe." Notwithstand- 
 ing, however, the opinion of one in a position to be familiar 
 with the local climatic conditions, the incontestable fact remains 
 that the canal happens to follow along one of the most unhealthy 
 zones known on the planet, as proved by all statistics, personal 
 observation, and in fact by the actual experiences of the com- 
 pany. Indeed, it is fully established that one of the first and 
 greatest disappointments in the company's original calculations 
 was the rapid doubling of the price of labor in consequence of 
 the extra risks involved in living on the isthmus, particularly 
 adjacent to the line workings ; and now it has become so difficult 
 to draw labor from Jamaica even at the advanced prices that it 
 seems almost impossible to secure the adequate force for the 
 rapid advancement of the work. In the rainy season the inter- 
 ruptions are incessant, while night work is hardly entertained. 
 This climatic feature has proved a drawback to the Panama 
 route, as far as the rapidity and cost of construction are con- 
 cerned, little calculated upon originally ; but already it has en- 
 tered into the account, directly and indirectly, to the extent of 
 many millions of pounds sterling. 
 
 This same fatal peculiarity of the narrow isthmus section in 
 Colombia renders it difficult to see wherein lies the immense 
 value of the company's land grant, already amounting to 500,000 
 hectares, gratuitously secured from the Colombian government 
 in pursuance of a provision in the aot of concession. Here 
 again, in a May bulletin of this year, the vice-president, Mr. 
 Charles. De Lesseps, refers discreetly to the prospective value of 
 the land, stating : u In addition to the; revenue accruing from 
 traffic, there are five hundred thousand hectares of land gratui- 
 tously granted by the Colombian government. How much these 
 lands are worth I cannot determine ; but what I do know is, 
 that the lands at Port Said and Suez are worth from 100 to 120 
 frs. per meter." The Suez valuation here hinted at, applied to 
 the Panama land grant, would lend a value to the latter of some 
 600,000,000,000 (600 milliard frs.). Even were this absurd 
 comparison at all permissible, it would not indicate much of an 
 asset, for it is plainly set forth in the Suez reports that the lands 
 sold at Suez and Port Said in 1885 and 1886 collectively real- 
 ized only about 670,000 frs. ($134,000). 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 13 
 
 But the threatening complications of the Panama company do 
 not end with a diminution in the value of its land assets. Of 
 far greater gravity are the old difficulties involved in the com- 
 plicated Chagres River diversions, the Garriboa regulating dam, 
 and the great Culebra mountain cut. On account of the numer- 
 ous windings of the erratic Chagres across the path of the canal, 
 as also owing to the heavy double drainage of the country on 
 either side toward the river (the latter following with the canal 
 practically the same synclinal axis), it has become necessary to 
 provide two separate diversions for the respective river bends, 
 together with the corresponding tributaries on either side of the 
 canal. By this means it is expected to prevent the Chagres 
 from running along the canal bed for long distances or from 
 emptying into and repeatedly crossing the same back and forth. 
 Thus in numerous places the work amounts to almost as much as 
 three parallel canals, doubling, if not trebling, the cost of con- 
 struction ; and with all the occasional disturbances incident to 
 the sudden freshets and rises so characteristic of this tropical 
 region will probably not be fully eliminated. 
 
 Probably no division of this immense work of altering and 
 regulating the natural drainage system of the isthmus remained 
 longer obscured in uncertainty than the Gatnboa dam, its feasi- 
 bility, cost, and exact requirements. As early as November, 
 1883, it was announced through the bulletins in Paris that " the 
 dam was very simple, and would cost eight millions." But in 
 1886, after some three years of pondering over its simplicity, 
 less favorable reports began to appear ; and, in a May bulletin 
 of that year, the dam was announced to be " the greatest tech- 
 nical difficulty yet encountered." About this time, according to 
 the company's annals, the estimates of the cost of this piece of 
 work jumped from eight to forty, and then to one hundred mill- 
 ions (frs.). But now the plan is to control the drainage by the 
 more extended system of Chagres diversions in process of exca- 
 vation, which will materially reduce the enormous scale and cost 
 of the dam as originally designed. Hence this piece of work 
 and the Culebra cut are now looked upon as the most serious 
 and costly divisions of the canal. With reference to the latter, 
 at the general meeting in August, 1885, the Culebra mountain 
 was qualified as " the culminating point and most knotty prob- 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 15 
 
 lem." But it was officially reported that notwithstanding the 
 cut involved the removal of twenty-five millions of cubic meters, 
 the contractors were " tinder agreement to finish the canal through 
 Culebra mountain and open the same to all navigation by July 
 1, 1889." The February bulletin of 1887, however, showed 
 plainly that of the twenty-five millions of cubic meters in the 
 Culebra not much over two millions had been removed, leaving, 
 according to the company's own statements, something like 
 twenty-three millions yet to be handled in this job alone. 
 
 These and similar exaggerations directly from the management 
 have inspired the frequent accusations of bad faith that have 
 been made against the company. But notwithstanding the am- 
 biguity and unwarranted favorable character of many official re- 
 ports, it does not necessarily follow that the whole enterprise is 
 a " barefaced swindle," as many have unjustly claimed. These 
 sanguine reports are rather to be construed as an effort on the 
 part of the directors to keep lip the shareholders' spirits and sus- 
 tain the company's credit. Having once embarked in so formid- 
 able an undertaking, and subsequently discovered that much 
 larger sums of money would be required than originally antici- 
 pated, it is easily understood how difficult would be the task of 
 protecting the shareholders' interests and floating new loans un- 
 aided by the infusion of a sanguine tone into reports from the 
 seat of operations. 
 
 The work yet to be done may be roughly classified in the fol- 
 lowing six subdivisions: 
 
 1. The canal excavation proper ; a minimum of say 90,000,000 
 cubic meters (in all probability greater), including something like 
 20,000,000 cubic meters falling to the Culebra section. 
 
 2. The completion of the Chagres diversions. 
 
 3. The Gamboa dam (on reduced scale). 
 
 4. The deviation of the Panama Railroad. 
 
 5. The turning out or passing basins. 
 
 (5. The Atlantic and Pacific approaches and the canal en- 
 trances. 
 
 7. Numerous miscellaneous improvements, of secondary mo- 
 ment in point of cost as compared with the foregoing. 
 
 The magnitude of the Panama undertaking is so great, and 
 the unforeseen contingencies arising to complicate and retard 
 
16 PAPEES FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 the work have proven so numerous, with the probability in the 
 future of at least a temporary suspension of the company's oper- 
 ations, owing to the difficulty in placing new loans, that it seems 
 futile to presume to set a date for the inauguration of the canal. 
 With the immense mechanical equipment and permanent im- 
 provements already paid for and in operation (valued at over 
 147,000,000 frs.), it would follow, theoretically, that in the future 
 the work must progress more rapidly than in the first years of 
 preparatory work. But this is the very point that has lately 
 proved so delusive, for reasons already stated, although since the 
 completion arid working of the plant in all its branches along 
 the line divisions, the work of excavation has become noticeably 
 accelerated, though far from what had been expected. 
 
 With reference to the guesswork of determining the number 
 of years that will still be required to finish the work, one formula 
 is about as good as another under the existing circumstances. 
 Perhaps as simple and safe a method as any (assuming the com- 
 pany's credit to hold out) is to reason that if in five years forty 
 million cubic meters have been dug, it will take, on a basis of 
 90,000,000 cubic meters remaining to be cut, 
 
 / 90, 000, 000 \ 
 
 1 40,000,000 J Xg yearS ' l6SS 4 Per C6nt 
 
 The latter for the possible acceleration and increased efficiency 
 of the work in the future over the past ratio. This would give 
 about seven years more. A similar reasoning applied to ascer- 
 tain the probable cost of the work gives something near 2,325,- 
 000,000 frs. as the total minimum cash cost and 3,750,000,000 
 frs. in various forms of securities as the total ultimate capitaliza- 
 tion (capital stock plus bonded debt) of the concern. Up to 1887 
 the securities issued by the company represented a nominal value 
 of 1,500,000,000 frs. (1J milliard), that were marketed at rates 
 which brought the treasury in cash about 930,000,000 frs. 
 
 It may be interesting here to recall the company's old figures, 
 that show how far short were the most liberal calculations as to 
 the amount of capital required. 
 
 Canal estimated to cost 1,070,000,000 
 
 The Panama Railroad purchase, about _ 94,000,000 
 
 1,164,000,000 
 
 Now practically spent 930,000,000 
 
 Balance margin Frs. 234,000,000 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 17 
 
 Should in reality at the expiration of five years (1892) the 
 canal not be finished, as indicated by the facts here stated, seri- 
 ous legal, if not political, complications may arise with the Co- 
 lombian government, involving the forfeiture of the company's 
 grant and property. The act granting the concession provides 
 that " The canal must be finished and thrown open for public 
 service within 12 years from the date of the formation of the 
 company that shall have as object the construction of the canal. 
 But the executive power is authorized to grant an extension of 
 six years in case of exigencies beyond human foresight." 
 
 As the shares of capital stock were issued in 1880, the work 
 should be finished in or before 1892, or, with the extension, if 
 secured, in or before 1898 at the outside. After either of these 
 dates the Colombian government will have the right to force the 
 law and declare the concession and the canal forfeited without 
 indemnity, however near completion the work may be, to either 
 finish it themselves or dispose of it to another company. In the 
 event of such a fatal issue, the millions lost to France would fall 
 most heavily on the small investors. It is principally this thrifty 
 class of the great French public that has with unparalleled loyal- 
 ty backed Mr. De Lesseps in his Panama scheme ; and it is diffi- 
 cult to conceive how deep-seated and long of duration would be 
 the depression and mistrust in new undertakings that would fol- 
 low so sad a failure of the present canal company. Should, how- 
 ever, at such a crisis, the French people show the same admirable 
 perseverance and fortitude that have characterized their liberal 
 investments thus far, notwithstanding the increase in the amount 
 of money required, it is quite possible, and sincerely to be hoped, 
 that, after a scaling down of the capital and obligations of the 
 old company, a liberal extension of time may be secured, and 
 the government step in and complete the work of connecting 
 the two oceans on a financial basis that will at least bring a fail- 
 return to a portion of the nation's good money. 
 
 This consideration suggests the all-important question of the 
 earning power or incoming value of the canal and the equivalent 
 average interest on the invested capital that may be looked for 
 when the work shall have been completed and the highway 
 opened to the world. The point of momentous interest in 
 financial circles is : Will the traffic be sufficiently large at the 
 2 
 
18 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 proposed tariff rate (15 frs. per ton) to yield a revenue that, 
 after deduction of the expenses of maintenance and preserva- 
 tion (presumably unusually heavy, owing to the peculiarities of 
 the climate), will still leave a fair interest on the total nominal 
 capital ? Officials in high standing at Panama speak confidently 
 of an annual traffic of 10,000,000 tons, at 15 frs. per ton. And 
 this appears to be the accepted basis for the argument that even 
 if the capital swells eventually to 4,000,000,000 frs. (4 milliards), 
 the gross income will amount to 150,000,000 frs. or 3| per cent, 
 (without allowance for running expenses, to be deducted here- 
 from). The more exact figures are embodied in one of the re- 
 cent official reports of Senor Nicolas Tanco Armero, canal com- 
 missioner for the Colombian government, as follows: "The 
 committee on statistics of the International Congress calculates 
 the tonnage that will pass the canal in 1889 ( ! ! ) at something 
 less than 7,000,000 tons. But in my later calculations, taking 
 into account the growth of commerce, the sum total comes nearer 
 9,000,000 than 7,000,000 tons, as is evident from the following 
 abstract from the official statistical table published in England : 
 
 From Europe to American Pacific ports : 
 
 England 1,426,852 
 
 France 573,922 
 
 Germany 360,000 
 
 From other European countries to American Pacific 
 
 ports 210,000 
 
 Total Tons 2,570,774 
 
 European trade with Australia, Oceanica, Philip- 
 pines, etc., that will pass the Panama Canal 2,696,754 
 
 United States trade, excepting- from San Francisco, 
 with the same places, and also India, China, and 
 Japan 1,619,440 
 
 From the United States, Western coast, with the 
 Eastern section, for Europe and Eastern American 
 States 1,500,000 
 
 Actual traffic per R.R. from Colon to Panama and 
 vice versa 262,497 
 
 Total tonnage ready for canal first year 8,649,465 
 
 " Moreover, a few years hence, when the canal shall be opened 
 to commerce, the available annual tonnage will have reached 
 12,000,000 to 15,000,000 tons." ( ! ! ) The bulletin of the com- 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 19 
 
 pany attempts to give more accurate figures regarding certain 
 divisions of the traffic when it states that the trade from Ant- 
 werp that would have passed the canal in 1886, had the same 
 been finished, may be taken at : 
 
 Peru 46,635 tons. 
 
 Bolivia 5,919 " 
 
 Chili 42,046 " 
 
 Australia 58,046 " 
 
 152,646 
 
 Furthermore, in the same year the trade between Antwerp 
 and the United States rose to 1,029,037 tons, of which 100,000 tons 
 fell to American Pacific ports. Hence 250,000 tons are a more 
 accurate estimate of this particular line ot traffic, included in the 
 foregoing large and more general estimate of Mr. ~N. T. Armero. 
 
 By the very complicated nature of the subtile changes in the 
 relations of navigation and commerce bound to be called into 
 existence by the shorter lines of transportation that will follow 
 the opening of the canal, the element of conjecture must neces- 
 sarily enter largely into all attempts to solve mathematically 
 this all-important traffic problem. But, to say the least in op- 
 position to the canal company's figures, it is difficult to conceive 
 how so high a rate as 15 frs. per ton can be consistently main- 
 tained at Panama, if the canal intends to monopolize the Aus- 
 tralian trade, while at Suez the average rate is now about 10 frs. 
 per ton. Then, too, in the matter of tonnage, everything indi- 
 cates that a considerable reduction in the foregoing figures will, 
 in all probability, be met with ; for it should be remembered 
 that the traffic at Suez after some fifteen years grew only to 
 5,767,656 tons in 1886, notwithstanding all brilliant predictions 
 of a much larger volume of business. The Suez report for 1886 
 records 3,100 vessels, 5,767,656 tons, from which the receipts 
 were 54,771,076 frs. Added to this are receipts from passenger 
 traffic amounting to 1,714,115 frs., and revenue from miscellane- 
 ous sources of 313,093 frs., making the total gross income 56,- 
 798,285 frs. for 1886. 
 
 The economy in the principal lines of transportation to be 
 afforded by the canal, expressed in "milles marins" of 1,852 
 meters, is compiled from official sources as follows : 
 
20 
 
 PAPEES FKOM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 
 Via Cape 
 Horn. 
 
 Via the 
 Canal. 
 
 Economy 
 of 
 Distance. 
 
 London to San Francisco 
 
 13 795 
 
 8 135 
 
 5 660 
 
 London to Honolulu 
 
 13 915 
 
 9 556 
 
 4 359 
 
 Liverpool to San Francisco. 
 
 13 678 
 
 7 897 
 
 5 781 
 
 Le Havre to San Francisco 
 
 13 627 
 
 7 949 
 
 5 678 
 
 Bordeaux to Valparaiso 
 
 8 675 
 
 7 239 
 
 1 436 
 
 New York to Valparaiso 
 
 8,550 
 
 4 574 
 
 3 976 
 
 New York to Panama 
 
 11,057 
 
 1 966 
 
 9 091 
 
 New York to Callao 
 
 9 791 
 
 2 333 
 
 6 488 
 
 New York to Guayaquil 
 
 10 441 
 
 2 808 
 
 7 633 
 
 New York to San Francisco 
 
 13 334 
 
 5 257 
 
 8 077 
 
 
 
 
 
 A not over-conservative weighing of the available statistics 
 bearing on these points, leaving out of account a probable com- 
 petition at Nicaragua in the near future, would indicate that in 
 any event the Panama traffic at the start will fall considerably 
 below present anticipations; while the 15 f rs. rate appears too exor- 
 bitant to command the anticipated volume of business. Is it not 
 more probable that the traffic will be about 5 million tons at say 
 10 frs. a ton, making 50,000,000 frs. as the revenue for the first 
 year ; i. e., about 1 per cent, on the probable cost of the canal ? 
 
 Notwithstanding all rumors to the contrary, the work of ex- 
 cavation is being prosecuted at more points and with a larger 
 working force than has generally been acknowledged in the 
 United States. As the work is now almost entirely under con- 
 tract, it is extremely difficult to ascertain accurately the number 
 of men actually employed. The management claim between 
 15,000 and 18,000 men, while special contractors do not esti- 
 mate less than 10,000. Under the efficient management of Mr. 
 Pioch the company is learning at last to conduct its operations 
 with economy ; and the sums of money now spent are accom- 
 plishing relatively more than ever before. Setbacks are still 
 caused occasionally by land slips, particularly in the rainy sea- 
 son. But the Culebra mountain is not " traveling into the ca- 
 nal on a bed of quicksand." N"or is the bottom of the canal, 
 through some unheard-of tropical phenomenon, rising up even 
 with the old surface of the ground. 
 
 The conclusion is, therefore, that while the canal can be built 
 and operated with sufficient money, as far as overcoming all en- 
 gineering difficulties is concerned, yet in the hands of the pres- 
 
THE PANAMA CANAL. 21 
 
 ent corporation, and owing mainly to the impracticability of the 
 route, the enterprise has become handicapped in its infancy with 
 an ever-increasing financial load, already of such formidable pro- 
 portions as to threaten its credit and foreshadow a failure from 
 a business point of view. 
 
 ~Not the least interesting in a detailed criticism of the com- 
 pany's internal affairs would be the unraveling of the contracts, 
 sub-contracts, promoters' and others' commission interests that have 
 swallowed up the large sums of money at Panama and in Paris. But 
 this information is, of course, inaccessible to outsiders. Indeed, 
 much of the complicated network of letting, subletting, check- 
 ing, and settling of contracts on the line will probably never be 
 generally known, even to the insiders. It is said that according 
 to the original agreements, the promoters are to be allowed 15 
 per cent, of the net profits of the canal. For the convenience 
 of allotment and transactions among the numerous participants 
 in this promoting commission, the interest was split into 9,000 
 shares ; and these shares are reported to have sold once as high 
 as 10,000 frs. apiece, and were quoted as late as May, 1887, at 
 8,000 frs. The latter price values the entire interest at 27,000,000 
 frs., while at 10,000 frs. a share (the highest price) the valuation 
 was 90,000,000 frs. 
 
 May the Panama Canal, contrary to all present indications, 
 and the general opinion in the United States, turn out to be a 
 happy disappointment and an unexpected bonanza to the French 
 people. May its credit be preserved, may it be finished with 
 less money and in less time, and may the undertaking bring in 
 greater returns to the original investors, than now appears prob- 
 able, thus once more defeating the skeptical and scoring an- 
 other victory at Panama for De Lesseps only second to his well- 
 earned triumph at Suez. No ultimate result less auspicious will 
 gratify the well-wishes of all who appreciate the vastness of the 
 undertaking. 
 
II. 
 
 THE LAKE OF TITICACA, SOUTH AMEKICA.* 
 
 A journal of South American travel would hardly be com- 
 plete without a chapter on the famous Lake of Titicaca, which 
 is spread out over widely extended table-lands, at a great eleva- 
 tion in the heart of the Andes. 
 
 At this latitude, the boundary line between Bolivia and Peru, 
 the Andes are divided into the Eastern and the Western Cordil- 
 lera, between which ranges the great plateaux are expanded to 
 the enormous width of about two hundred miles. This depres- 
 sion, hanging gracefully between the two Cordilleras, has an oval 
 shape, and with an average width of one hundred miles, its area 
 is about 15,000 square miles, forming one of the most remarka- 
 ble terrestrial basins in the world. It appears to be of volcanic 
 origin ; blocks of lava are scattered along the shores of the lake, 
 while igneous rocks are noticeable traversing the sedimentary 
 strata. 
 
 The marvelous picturesqueness of the region, together with 
 the signs of cultivation, furrowed plains, terraced hill-sides, and 
 the numerous ancient relics of an historic civilization that are 
 met with around the lake, upon arrival at Ptino on its western 
 shore, are refreshing in contrast with the dreary railroad journey 
 of over two hundred miles from Arequipa, Peru, through a deso- 
 late, silent, barren, ashy waste, where the tired traveler pants for 
 breath in chilly altitudes, rising from 8,000 to 15,000 feet above 
 the Pacific Ocean, in full view of the gray volcanic domes of 
 Misti, Urvinas, and Chichani. 
 
 Titicaca is an Ayrnara word, and by some historians is trans- 
 lated catrock ; according to other writers, Titi signifies lead, and 
 caca a chain of mountains. The exact elevation of the lake 
 
 * From The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, Oct. 9, 1886. 
 
THE LAKE OF TITICACA, SOUTH AMERICA. 23 
 
 above the Paciiic Ocean is given at 12,516 feet, according to 
 railroad surveys made from Mollendo, on the coast, to Funo. 
 With an area approximated at 4,000 square miles, it is about 
 100 miles long, and averages 25 miles in width. 
 
 During the rainy season, from December to April, the lake 
 rises about live feet ; and during the dry season, when it sinks 
 to the lowest level, the principal influx of water comes from the 
 ranges of perpetual snow on the eastern shore. Of more than 
 twenty different streams that flow into the basin, the main feed- 
 ers are the Azangaro, the Maravillas, and the Eamis the latter 
 rising near the source of a tributary to the Ucayali. 
 
 The 'Titicaca is partially drained by the Rio Desaguadero, 
 which is the only known outlet ; and after pursuing a southerly 
 course for, more or less, seventy-flve leagues, the river spreads 
 over the marshy flats of Pampas Aullagas, where the waters dis- 
 appear through absorption and evaporation, there being no flow 
 either toward the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. The Indians 
 believe the lake to be in subterranean connection, under the cor- 
 dillera, with the Pacific Ocean, because of the finding on the 
 coast near Cobija of a certain kind of lake-rush peculiar to Titi- 
 caca, differing essentially from salt-water weeds. 
 
 Although the basin is gradually tilling up from the masses of 
 soil and sediment, which are washed down its steep, barren 
 banks, void of vegetation, tending to raise the water-line, never- 
 theless the surface of the lake is slowly but surely sinking. The 
 meteorological conditions are such that the evaporation during 
 the dry season and the precipitation throughout the rainy months 
 are no longer equipoised, and the area of the lake is, in conse- 
 quence, steadily shrinking. As far back as three centuries, the 
 sparkling waters of Titicaca dashed against the ancient monu- 
 ments of Tiahuanaco, standing to-day twelve miles away from 
 the shore, and at an elevation of 130 feet above the surface of 
 the water. But still it is by far the largest lake in South Amer- 
 ica, being about half the size of Lake Ontario, and the largest 
 on the globe at so great an altitude. 
 
 The scenery is not of that miniature type characteristic, for 
 example, of the Koenig's See in Europe or of the Red Fish 
 Lakes in Idaho ; but the attractions of Titicaca consist in its 
 vast expanse and magnificent Andean scale of nature's produc- 
 
24 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 tlons, combined with the poetry of prehistoric art. Looking 
 across its crystal-clear waters over into Bolivia to the east, the 
 snow-capped mountains of the Cordillera Real are seen rolling 
 across the horizon like a succession of foamy waves the loftiest 
 mountains on the 'American continent. Here rise in majestic 
 splendor the Nevado de Sorata and the Illimani, two groups of 
 serrated snow peaks, fringed with glaciers, towering up to 
 heights closely approaching 22,000 feet. 
 
 A scattering of beautiful islands is among the charms of this 
 interesting sheet of fresh water. Of these, the island of Titicaca 
 is full of historic associations and the home of many an Indian 
 tradition. The narrow, winding passages formed by the islands 
 and the mainland, where the blue water is deep and transparent, 
 together with the monolithic monuments and ruins sprinkled 
 over this classic soil of the Incas, lend a fairylike fascination to 
 the scene. 
 
 The shores are dotted with the dingy, dusty huts of the 
 Aymaras, whose past history is far more interesting than their 
 present. Attired in sombre garb, with a silent, sullen disposi- 
 tion, reflecting nature's condition at this altitude and latitude, 
 this strange tribe move about as if mourning their deterioration 
 and fall from ancestral glories. They are indolent and poor ; 
 their occupation consisting in the cultivation of rice, potatoes, 
 and barley. Along the shores of the shoaly coves, the Indians 
 gather the lake-rush, which they suck the juice from or make 
 into salad. This rush, which grows about seven feet high, in 
 places so thick as to appear like a meadow, is known as totora. 
 In this bleak, mountainous region, where timber is unknown, its 
 stalk takes the place of iron, wood, and canvas. Besides being 
 used to make boats (balsas), mats, sails, houses, and beds, this 
 bayonet-shaped rush, it is said, was formerly woven into bridges 
 by the Incas and Aymaras, over which whole armies were passed. 
 But now the Aymaras spend their time chiefly in attending the 
 numerous feasts and religious exercises, a national characteristic, 
 amid the jingling of church-bells from dilapidated cathedral 
 towers and the wild din of Indian music. The dances on these 
 occasions are unique in their grotesqueness. To witness the 
 droll reels at an Aymara^sta, after suddenly awakening from 
 meditations upon the grandeur of South American landscape, is 
 
26 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 to fall from the sublime to the ridiculous. On these carnival 
 days, the Indians wear the most fantastic costumes, showing, 
 however, a decided preference for bright colors. In appearance 
 they might be compared to a high order of scarecrows ; and to 
 see a procession of them rushing out of the church in wild con- 
 fusion and rallying, with an image of their patron saint, for a 
 grand finale, after a day of intoxicating revelry, is to be forcibly 
 reminded of an insane asylum let loose. The favorite sport con- 
 sists of a kind of tournament, in imitation of a Spanish bull- 
 fight, that is carried on for hours at a time in all possible phases. 
 They equip themselves with the heads, horns, and hides of cows, 
 which are to be had at Puno, and, after drying them in the sun, 
 they are suspended by their belts, and then, probably for pro- 
 priety's sake, the animal is clad in skirts that hang modestly to 
 the ground. Some play the toros, while others impersonate the 
 toreros and matador es, and the whole population turns out on 
 the plaza, to pay homage to the celebration. Throughout the 
 greater part of these exercises, the Indians, old and young, are 
 very grave and serious. A funereal solemnity reigns supreme, 
 and no revelry is indulged in until they become too intoxicated 
 to follow the leading chief in proper order. 
 
 The dress, manners, and general appearance of the Aymaras 
 are about the same as those of the Quichua tribe. The women, 
 however, are more thickly set, better looking, and apparently in 
 a more cheerful frame of mind than the Quichuas. 
 
 Altogether, the lake region is healthy, and there appears to be 
 but very little sickness. As night draws on, the cool winds 
 sweep rapidly through the gorges and ravines of the great moun- 
 tain ranges, oftentimes with the speed of a whirlwind, running 
 the dust up into columns of immense height, and drawing up 
 the water from the surface of the white-capped lake in spouts 
 almost equally high. 
 
 At Puno, a Peruvian city of 5,000 inhabitants, the nights are 
 often bitterly cold ; and as llama-dung and tola, a variety of 
 moss, are the only fuels in the land, the luxury of warm hearths 
 is unknown. Early in the evening, the people wrap themselves 
 in shawls and cloaks, or go to bed for comfort. The region adja- 
 cent to Titicaca supports a population of more than one million. 
 Puno, the largest town, is mostly inhabited by Aymaras, although 
 
THE LAKE OF TITICACA, SOUTH AMERICA. 27 
 
 there are a few Quichuas who form a set by themselves. The 
 city owes its origin to the silver mines of Cancharani. in the 
 neighboring hills, which are now comparatively abandoned, al- 
 though claimed by some not to be exhausted. All the dwelling- 
 houses are built of adobe, and are very low and uncomfortable ; 
 but the city boasts of a cathedral that dates back to 1757, a uni- 
 versity (so-called), and several schools. It is the central point 
 
 MONOLITHIC GATEWAY AT TIAHUANACO. 
 
 for the alpaca industry ; cocoa is also largely traded in, while 
 sheep's wool and vicuna robes are among the chief exports. 
 
 The lake, which is the natural highway between Peru and 
 Bolivia, is navigated by two small 100-ton steamers, which were 
 transported from the coast over the mountains in sections, under 
 great difficulties and at an expense far exceeding their cost. 
 Steam is got up with llama-dung as the sole fuel, and the trip 
 across to Chililaya, in Bolivia, is made in about twenty hours. 
 
 Among the intermediate places X)f exceptional interest, at 
 
28 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 which the steamer touches during this memorable passage, the 
 church of Copacabana deserves especial notice. This quaint old 
 church of semi-cathedral, semi- monastic appearance, is to this 
 section of South America in reputation and ecclesiastical import- 
 ance, what Notre Dame is to France. It contains the famous 
 milagrosisima virgencita, or little miraculous virgin, and, al- 
 though the edifice has no definite style of architecture, but in 
 detail is a combination of Doric, Corinthian, and Spanish Re- 
 naissance, it is nevertheless graceful and most picturesquely situ- 
 ated. Its high walls inclose a rare collection of precious jewels 
 and choice gifts, valued at many millions, which have been 
 offered up as grateful tributes to the supernatural powers and 
 astounding miracles of the Virgin. At stated periods, great 
 multitudes come from all parts of Bolivia, and assemble before 
 the sacred shrines of Capacabana, to supplicate spiritual and not 
 unlikely material blessings. It is a fact strange, but none the less 
 true, that the most acceptable and favored prayers are said to be 
 those of the women imploring deliverance from sterility ; for it 
 is well known that in these elevated barren regions and in this 
 rarefied atmosphere of the Andes, people do not multiply in 
 anything like the same proportion as the population of the deep, 
 fertile valleys, surrounded by a greater amount of vegetable life 
 and a more normal atmospheric pressure. And it is the ability 
 to happily reverse this natural law that is claimed as the immac- 
 ulate accomplishment of the milagrosisima virgencita. It has 
 been irreverently suggested, however, by modern scientists of 
 deep penetration, that the credit of effectually alleviating this 
 affection is possibly more justly due to the altogether terrestrial 
 supplications of the priesthood of Capacabana than to the more 
 celestial influences of the viryencita! 
 
 The environs of this romantic and religious spot are strewn 
 with the art relics of imperial Inca glories. These architectural 
 and sculptural relics on the borders of Lake Titicaca are fre- 
 quently cited by scholars as representative examples of what is 
 called prehistoric art, by which we understand all art forms, 
 irrespective of chronological order, that show human faculty at 
 its best in this domain, before it has been touched by civiliza- 
 tion. The extinct tribes that once inhabited this wild region 
 have left to the world a museum of most interesting relics in 
 
30 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 this important field of knowledge, whose lights are few and dim. 
 Indeed, according to Humboldt and others, these innumerable 
 abandoned towns, gigantic monuments, remnants of public 
 works, and scattered cemeteries indicate that the basin of Titi- 
 caca was once the seat of probably the highest and most ancient 
 civilization on the South American continent, whose vast popu- 
 lation, forming an empire greater than that of Charlemagne, 
 swarmed over the laud and has left behind in these stone re- 
 mains of hoariest antiquity, the evidences of superior power and 
 skill. 
 
 According to tradition, the region of Titicaca was not only the 
 home of the Inca race, but also of the great Peruvian law-giver, 
 Manco-Capac, who diffused his influence throughout the land. 
 An appreciation of the remoteness of this era may be had when 
 it is remembered that the ancient Peruvians had only the vaguest 
 ideas concerning the ruined edifices of Titicaca ; and further- 
 more, that the eminence supporting the ruins of Tiahuanaco, to- 
 day twelve miles from the lake and considerably over 100 feet 
 above its surface, was formerly a beautiful island in the midst 
 of deep water. This fact, coming so nearly within the histor- 
 ical period, and on that account of unusual geological interest, 
 warrants the belief that the art-relics of Titicaca antedate all 
 others known on the American continent. Authorities hold 
 that the ruins of this desert island bear the same relation to the 
 aboriginal monuments of South America as do those of Palenque 
 to the old remains of the Central and North American continent. 
 They indicate a much higher order of artistic attainment than 
 existed anywhere in South America at the time of the Spanish 
 conquests. They tell us the story of brave races of men, strug- 
 gling after higher conditions ; and their weird forms stand in 
 the wilderness like the skeletons of prophets who looked far 
 down the track of the centuries and foretold a better time. 
 They are indeed achievements of intellect worthy to be com- 
 memorated in history. 
 
III. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN EEPUBLIC, SOUTH 
 
 AMERICA.* 
 
 THE republic of Bolivia came into existence in 1825, the year 
 of the Declaration of Independence of the region formerly 
 known as Upper Peru. With an area of 450,000 square miles, 
 about twice the size of Germany, more than double that of Cali- 
 fornia, and more than four times the area of Colorado, the re- 
 public comprises the lofty plateaux of the Andes, including half 
 of the basin of Lake Titicaca, 12,505 feet in altitude, the old 
 province of Charcas, and a vast Amazonian region. 
 
 These sections of country lie mainly to the east of the Andes, 
 where Bolivia's greatest length is 1,000 miles near the 68th 
 meridian, and her greatest breadth about YOO miles. 
 
 The climate, in general, is healthy, and, with the exception of 
 terciana, the much-dreaded fevers prevalent on the Isthmus of 
 Panama, in Venezuela, Eucador, and Peru are unknown. For 
 although nearly the whole of the republic is situated within the 
 tropics, not more than two-thirds of her surface possess a trop- 
 ical climate. The remaining area is occupied by high mountain 
 ranges and valleys, table-lands of great elevation, and widely 
 extended slopes, where it is cold and dry, with a clear atmos- 
 phere, similar to the higher portions of Colorado or North Ger- 
 many in the autumn ; while beyond the Cordillera, in the lower 
 regions of the interior, it is disagreeably warm in the daytime 
 and cool at night, in which localities malarial fevers are common 
 during the rainy season. 
 
 The aggregate population numbers about 2,000,000, and is 
 composed largely of the Quichua and Aymara Indians, the 
 
 * From The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, Sept. 25 
 and Oct. 2, 1886. 
 
32 PAPERS FKOM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 former being direct descendants of the Incas. Their propor- 
 tionate division 
 
 Quichuas 50 per cent. 
 
 Aymaras 25 
 
 Cholos (a Spanish and Indian mixture) 18 " 
 
 Whites and half-castes 7 
 
 Those constituting the Indian element are of medium size, 
 massive build, thick-set and broad-shouldered, with the body 
 relatively long, the legs short, the feet small, and the face beard- 
 less, with features frequently quite good. 
 
 Their aliment is almost entirely vegetarian, consisting of 
 chuno (frozen, soaked, and dried potatoes), corn (either boiled 
 or roasted), and chalona (dried mutton). In addition to these 
 articles of food, the better-to-do families consume, occasionally 
 and in small quantities, rice, boiled plantains, coffee, cocoa, and 
 pork a diet that would hardly sustain any other race under 
 similar climatic conditions and occupations. 
 
 The Bolivian Indian is a remarkable pedestrian, with legs and 
 lungs of unusual strength and extraordinary powers of endur- 
 ance. He will walk for weeks at the rate of 10 leagues or 30 
 miles per day, playing a reed fife and carrying on his back a 
 weight of 100 pounds, consisting of a carga of from 75 to 80 
 pounds, and from 20 to 25 pounds of coca leaves, corn, and 
 blankets, for his personal requirements en route. He endures 
 surprising fatigue, nourished solely by small quantities of parched 
 corn and coca leaves. In fact, by chewing the latter alone, the 
 Indians are able to travel for days together dispensing with food 
 and sleep, as the coca leaf is not merely a strong stimulant but 
 also nutritious. For instance, the mail-carrier leaves La Paz 
 on Thursday, and arrives in Sorata, ninety miles distant, on 
 Saturday in time for distribution the same evening ; and pro- 
 pios, or messengers, make the round trip of 180 miles in four 
 days, receiving therefor wages at the rate of one boliviano (73 
 cents United States currency) a day. When resting during 
 these long tramps, they have a habit of elevating their feet 
 above their heads, the only national progressiveness I noticed 
 that compares with Yankee invention. * 
 
 The character, temperament, and habits of life of the Boliv- 
 ian tribes are among the most interesting subjects for close 
 
A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC. 37 
 
 study in South American travel. They are strong, bold, stub- 
 born, serious, and reserved, yet harmless, submissive, generous, 
 suspicious, and intensely superstitious. With a contented, un- 
 ambitious disposition, they have few wants, a love for strong, 
 intoxicating drinks being the only general vice. And, notwith- 
 standing a large fraction of the year is spent in grotesque, carni- 
 val-like fiestas, none of which is without religious import, they 
 wear a silent, sad, serious expression, everything about their ap- 
 parel arid manners having the same melancholy cast. 
 
 The Roman Catholic faith is professed, but in reality their 
 religion is the old form of Inca worship, somewhat modified by 
 the worst kind of Romanism. Not the least interesting of their 
 peculiar ceremonies is the sad but none the less festive funeral 
 a procession composed of loud-lamenting, drunken mourners, 
 headed by sprinklers of holy water, continuing a coarse revelry 
 long after the corpse is laid away, as a sympathetic tribute to 
 the departed spirit. 
 
 Travel in Bolivia is comparatively safe ; for the Indians are 
 not dangerous, and although the last trace of maliciousness 
 toward the Spanish race has not entirely disappeared, they are 
 grave and deferential to caballeros. A warm-hearted polite- 
 ness, sincerity, and hospitality are among the national traits; 
 and while there is dishonesty in small things, merchandise, 
 money, and bullion are safely carried all over the country by 
 unarmed, reliable muleteers, without heavy expenses for inade- 
 quate security. 
 
 This strange and interesting race lives in villages called comu- 
 nidades, under a governor or alcalde, who is one of their num- 
 ber. They pay a tribute of from four to ten Bolivian dollars a 
 year, those of age who can read and write, however, being ex- 
 empt from payment and admitted to the ballot. 
 
 On the 25th of May, 1826, the first Bolivian Congress was 
 installed at Chuquisaca. The constitution framed was by Boli- 
 var, and, in conformity therewith, General Sucre was elected as 
 first president of the republic. During the intervening years, 
 she has had her share of tyrannical presidents, who have traded 
 upon their official power for private gain and left behind the 
 records of deceitful, jobbing careers. But fortunately there 
 have been numerous exceptions, and among the men of talent 
 3 
 
38 PAPEKS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 and education whose administrations have been marked with in- 
 tegrity and patriotic aims may be mentioned, besides General 
 Sucre, Santa Cruz, Dr. Linares, Dr. Frias, Adolpho Ballivian, 
 Senor Campero, and the present President, Gregorio Pacheco, 
 whose recent election is regarded with general satisfaction, the 
 feeling prevailing that the prosperity of the country cannot but 
 increase, governed by so able and honorable a man. 
 
 The complications attending the late war between Peru and 
 Chili have deprived Bolivia of coast and sea-ports, and likewise 
 the great wealth of saltpetre and guano in the districts of Cobija 
 and Tarapaca has been forfeited to the growing power of Chili. 
 The exact course of a portion of her southern limit, separating 
 the Bolivian from the Argentine Republic, has likewise been 
 for some time in question. Hence, the main outlets for Bo- 
 livian trade are through Chilian, Peruvian, and Argentine terri- 
 tory. The most accessible port of the former is Arica, which 
 involves a long and tedious land transit of two hundred and 
 forty miles from La Paz to Tacna, which is in railroad connec- 
 tion with Arica a distance of 40 miles. The traffic over this 
 route, however, has of late years become reduced to the trans- 
 portation of a portion of the mining products from the De- 
 partment of Oruro, and to the mule-post from La Paz to Tacna, 
 regularly performed in five days, while the great bulk of trade 
 from the La Paz District is by steamer across Lake Titicaca, and 
 through Peru via the Puno-Arequipa Railroad to Mollendo. 
 
 The third and longer route is southwesterly through the Ar- 
 gentine Republic to Buenos Ayres, and in pursuance of an ex- 
 isting treaty, whereby Bolivia reduces the import duty 50 per 
 cent, on goods coming from the Atlantic, against the Argentine 
 Republic, granting gratuitous right of egress through her terri- 
 tory, the larger part of the productions of the departments of 
 Potosi, Chuquisaca, and Tarija, consisting almost entirely of 
 minerals and metals, is drained through the Argentine in pref- 
 erence to Chili. 
 
 This shifting of trade from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, 
 and the consequent decrease of business on the former coast, 
 promoted in a large measure by political spite, has been felt so 
 keenly that a new impetus is imparted to the project of putting 
 La Paz in railroad connection with the coast, the line running 
 
A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC. 39 
 
 through Oruro to Tacna, thereby recovering and controlling the 
 entire trade from the Pacific side. 
 
 Besides La Paz and Oruro, Bolivia's leading cities and towns 
 are Cochabamba, Sucre (the capital), Potosi, Tupiza, Santa Cruz, 
 Trinidad, Tarija, Sorata, Corocoro, Belechuco, and Apolo the 
 copper of Corocoro, the silver of Potosi, and the gold of Tipuani 
 being among her famous diversity of mineral deposits. 
 
 The republic contains toward the centre vast tropical forests 
 of prolific vegetation, watered almost to an excess of fertility by 
 a wide system of navigable rivers. The head-water tributaries 
 to the Caca, Bern", and Madeira rivers, belonging to this system, 
 have their sources in the extensive watershed lying on the east- 
 ern declivity of the Cordillera. These narrow, rapid rivers carry 
 down the gold from the eastern spurs and foot-hills of the 
 Andes, of which the Rio de Tipuani is the most celebrated for 
 its placer mines. 
 
 This section of country is most picturesque and romantic. 
 Looking into a clear blue sky above the cool shady gorges, where 
 high precipitous walls pass over into steep mountain slopes, the 
 floral boughs draped with fragrant orchids, ferns, tillandcias, 
 and cactuses are seen drooping together from opposite sides, 
 forming hanging -gardens in a natural Gothic arcade of ideal 
 beauty. The hills and valleys are lined with forests of the great- 
 est exuberance and variety of vegetation, whose tropical drapery 
 droops into the rivers amid a brilliant profusion of feathery, 
 fanlike foliage, the branches being often so closely interwoven 
 and vailed with twiners that they appear like green walls shut- 
 ting in the streams. 
 
 These comparatively unexplored virgin lands, shaded by a be- 
 wildering diversity of grand and beautiful trees, draped, fes- 
 tooned, and ribboned with an endless variety of creeping and 
 climbing plants, yield, besides the most delicious fruits, the best 
 coffee and chocolate in the world, of which hundreds of tons 
 decay on the bushes every year, only a small amount being 
 gathered for export. Amid luxuriant flora, of which the broad- 
 leaved palms, bananas, and ferns form the most striking feature, 
 more than sixty kinds of rare cabinet wood stand untouched in 
 these immense forests. Also sugar-canes, cotton, and gomales 
 (rubber trees) grow in abundance, but as yet only the latter two 
 
40 PAPERS FEOM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 have been turned to profit. While farther toward the interior, 
 the plains extending over into Brazil to the east are covered 
 with vast herds of cattle, millions of sheep, alpacas, llamas, and 
 vicunas roam over the high lands and lofty ranges in the western 
 section of the republic. 
 
 The most important pursuit in the tropical or lowland dis- 
 tricts, which has developed into a permanent industry, is the 
 cutting and exportation of cinchona or calisaya bark, notably 
 the richest in quinine, producing the purest and most efficacious 
 fever antidote in the world, But of late years, the most acces- 
 sible trees having become exhausted, the bark is no longer de- 
 rived from the forests, and the business has merged into a sys- 
 tematic, scientific cultivation in plantation form. The credit of 
 bringing this nursery culture to a very high degree of perfection 
 is largely due to Mr. Otto Richter, who, besides being otherwise 
 largely interested in Bolivia, is the leading bark merchant, his 
 .four haciendas or quinales in the Mapiri District, namely, Ja- 
 randillani, Bella Vista, San Agustin, and Santa Rosa, having 
 grown already over 2,000,000 trees. 
 
 The bark business, however, has become very much depressed 
 of late years, on account of the exceedingly low price to which 
 quinine has steadily fallen. 
 
 Not of less importance are the coca plantations, from the 
 leaves of which plants the mysterious cocaine is extracted. The 
 great progress made in modern medicine in the use of this 
 drug, not only in various medicinal forms, but also as an anaes- 
 thetic in severe surgical operations (concerning which subject 
 there is probably no greater authority than Dr. J. Leonard 
 Corning, of New York City, whose recent experiments, dis- 
 coveries, and writings are well known to the medical profession), 
 has created a demand for coca leaves that has lent no small im- 
 petus to the South American coca industry. 
 
 The plant only flourishes in moist climates, and is seldom 
 found in the deep valleys of the Andes. It is cultivated in rows 
 like maize ; and after two years' growth, the bush attains its full 
 height of from five to six feet, bearing green leaves about two 
 inches long, with white blossoms and red berries. The leaves 
 are gathered several times a year, and dried in the sun with 
 great care before being packed for exportation. The bushes 
 
A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC. 41 
 
 produce for many years, when finally the planting of a fresh 
 crop becomes necessary to preserve the good quality of the leaf. 
 
 Besides its local use by the Indians, who masticate it with or 
 without slacked lime, a tea is made from the plant, and the 
 miners also chew the leaf constantly for the soothing effect it 
 produces. These sources of home consumption in themselves 
 sustain many extensive plantation enterprises. 
 
 The development of Bolivia's mineral resources may well be 
 claimed to be the most important of her national industries; for 
 included in her prodigious mineral wealth, which numerous doc- 
 uments in European libraries prove to have influenced the polit- 
 ical and monetary history riot only of Spain, but of the entire 
 commercial world, there are many gold, silver, copper, and tin 
 ores, whose extraordinary richness gives a large profit margin, 
 in spite of the excessive freight costs. 
 
 The name and fabulous riches of Potosi are familiar to every 
 one. Its discovery in 1544 is among the oldest mineral records, 
 and the products up to 1572 amounted to $250,000,000 ; from 
 1572 to 1627, $340,000,000 ; from the middle of the seventeenth 
 to the eighteenth century, the records of Potosi show an annual 
 average production of from $2,500,000 to $3,500,000 ; and, ac- 
 cording to data contained in letters written to the king of Spain 
 in 1627, the compilations of Friar Joseph G-. De Acosta, and the 
 Annals of Potosi, the Cerro Eico de Potosi or Rich Silver Moun- 
 tain, has produced up to the present time upward of 400,000,000 
 sterling of silver. 
 
 Prior to 1825, the industry was erratic, and mining operations 
 were frequently paralyzed by political troubles. Among the 
 earliest interferences was the civil war in Spain in 1623, which 
 extended to Potosi, causing abandonment and ruin. The war 
 of independence in 1809, ending with the peace declaration of 
 1825, caused another suspension in mining and a general impov- 
 erishment of the country. Since the independence of the re- 
 public, however, mining enterprises have never been disturbed 
 through political causes, and the irregularities 'occasioned by 
 revolutionary movements have not extended to the mining re- 
 gions or caused injury to corporations. On the contrary, the 
 production of precious metals has never ceased to be encouraged 
 and fostered ; and while miners are not required to pay taxes, 
 
42 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 the export duty of silver is only one peso or eight reals per 
 mark (58 cents per 0.5065 pound avoirdupois), gold being free, 
 and machinery imported for exploitation entirely exempt from 
 taxation. 
 
 The largest producing mines appear to be concentrated par 
 excellence in the southern part of the republic, namely, in the 
 departments of Potosi, Tarija, Chuquisaca, and Oruro. The 
 former includes, besides the mines of Potosi, the ILuanchaca and 
 Quolquechaca groups, of which the controlling interests are 
 owned by Seiiores Pacheco, Arce, and Ramirez, the bonanza 
 kings of South American mining, who are reported to receive 
 annually in the neighborhood of $3,000,000 as their share in the 
 combined dividends of these properties. 
 
 The growth of Bolivia's leading industry, however, is seriously 
 retarded for want of more roads, proximity to accessible seaports, 
 timber, and a better fuel than taquia and yareta (llama-dung 
 and moss) in the silver lode districts. But these disadvantages 
 under which mining has labored until within late years, of which 
 the difficulty attending the transportation of machinery has been 
 perhaps the greatest, have become somewhat diminished ; for, 
 by means of the Mollendo-Arequipa-Puno Railroad, connecting 
 with the steam navigation on Lake Titicaca, and the stage-roads 
 from Chililaya (or Puerto Perez) to La Paz, and from thence to 
 Corocoro and Oruro, an extensive mineral territory is made 
 easier of access ; while the steady advance of the railroad system 
 now extending westward in the Argentine Republic toward 
 Southern Bolivia, is greatly facilitating the reopening of the 
 Potosi Mining District that has lately been undertaken by a 
 strong English-Bolivian company. 
 
 The gold of Bolivia is chiefly derived from placer mines along 
 the rivers coursing through the section of country embracing the 
 eastern slopes and foot-hills of La Paz Cordillera. At the pres- 
 ent time, gold mining operations are carried on in a primitive 
 way by the natives, who wash the richer gravel deposits in the 
 batea. The "batea is a circular, shallow wooden dish or bowl 
 eighteen inches in diameter, for separating, through continuous 
 use of water, the grains of gold from the dirt, sand, pyritic mat- 
 ter, magnetic iron, etc., and is to the South Americans what the 
 pan is to the California miner. It produces the most accurate 
 
A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC 1 . 
 
 43 
 
 and prompt separation, manipulated in experienced hands, and 
 on many accounts is preferable to the North American pan. 
 The gravity of the gold resists the centrifugal power of the 
 water, and remains near the bottom of the vessel, forming the 
 extreme point of a sector, while the lighter particles move for- 
 ward toward the periphery, arranging themselves according to 
 their specific weights, and spreading over successively greater 
 areas in the sector. Where flat gold predominates (as in Tipu- 
 ani), the batea is far superior to the pan, as the fibres of the 
 
 SECTION OF A BOLIVIAN BATEA. LARGE SIZE 
 
 BOLIVIAN BATEA 
 
 wood exert a maximum friction in contact with the smooth, flat 
 gold surfaces, working against the escape of the metallic particles 
 that adhere tenaciously to the sides arid bottom of the wooden 
 pan. 
 
 The government records show that the exports consist largely 
 of the precious metals. For example, during 1883, for which 
 year most accurate statistics appear to have been kept, they 
 amounted to $21,988,729, of which $20,970,883.78 fell to the 
 mineral production, $9,086,647 of which product was shipped 
 
44 
 
 PAPERS FKOM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 via the Argentine Republic to Buenos Ayres, the remainder 
 passing over the mountains to Arica. 
 
 At one of the late national conventions, the mining laws were 
 carefully revised, and the new Spanish Code substantially adopt- 
 ed, thus materially simplifying the tenor and title of property, 
 with the view of favoring the development of the industry and 
 inviting the investment of foreign capital. Among its funda- 
 mental provisions are : 
 
 1. On lands belonging to the public domain, and also on uri- 
 fenced private property, minerals and mines may be sought, 
 applied for, granted, and worked. Within fenced ground, the 
 proprietor's permission or judicial license must be first obtained. 
 
 2. All individuals possessed of civil rights may apply for and 
 obtain one or more pertenencias (one pertenencia = 100 m. 
 square = 1 hectarea) in one concession, not, however, to exceed 
 30 pertenencias (or 30 hectareas). 
 
 100 m. 
 
 100 m. 
 
 = 10,000 square meters = 1 pertenencia 
 = 1 hectarea. 
 
 The pertenencias constituting one concession may not be scat- 
 tered, but must border on one another (having common side- 
 lines), forming a right-angular polygon. 
 
 A concession of 10 pertenencias may be : 
 
 or 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 or 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 etc. 
 
 3. Priority of application (" presentacion de la solicitud de 
 concession") has the preference, however slight the difference in 
 time. 
 
A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC. 45 
 
 4. Gold or tin deposits or other metallic minerals occurring 
 in rivers, placers, pockets, irregular deposits, or bedded veins, on 
 public or private lands, are subject to the same law applicable to 
 all mineral concessions. 
 
 5. The claimant is owner of, and may work to an unlimited 
 depth, all the ground, veins, deposits, and mineral occurrences 
 within his surface claim and within the vertical planes passed 
 through all the surface boundary lines of such claim. 
 
 His title and working privilege do not extend, however, to 
 deposits and such portions of deposits, either in direction of strike 
 or dip, or in any other direction, that are situated outside of or 
 have departed from the ground inclosed within such .vertical 
 plane limits. 
 
 6. Parties exploiting in or into such adjoining ground, having 
 passed the surface lines and vertical plane limits of their own 
 claim, are compelled to return the minerals or an equivalent 
 thereto to the party whose claim they have trespassed upon. 
 And in the event of it being proved that such trespassing was 
 carried on knowingly or with malicious intent, the offense be- 
 comes criminal, and the party committing the same is punished 
 accordingly. 
 
 7. The concessions are perpetual in duration as long as the 
 yearly patente of 5 bolivianos (5 Bolivian dollars) per heetarea 
 is regularly paid. 
 
 8. The patente must be paid in half-yearly installments in ad- 
 vance. It may, however, be paid several years ahead if pre- 
 ferred. 
 
 9. In case of failure to pay the patente for a period of one 
 year, the claimant forfeits his right, title, and interest in and to 
 the claim ; and his property is sold out at auction to the highest 
 bidder, when the claimant receives the surplus, after the amount 
 of his indebtedness, plus costs and plus 10 per cent, of the entire 
 amount for which the property was sold are deducted from such 
 amount realized by sale. And in case no bidder appears, the 
 land is returned to and becomes part of the public domain, and 
 is reopened to location and exploitation. 
 
 With all the natural resources, however, that should combine 
 to make Bolivia an extraordinarily rich and prosperous country, 
 it must be acknowledged that, with exception of the calisaya 
 
46 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 bark and coca plantations and the operations of a few of the 
 better regulated mining enterprises, everything is in a surprising 
 state of backwardness. And at first sight, one marvels at this 
 condition of things in the midst of such boundless riches. 
 
 Each new administration has begun with strong endeavors to 
 pursue a policy conducive to business activity and to the eleva- 
 tion of the country from its dull, torpid industrial condition to 
 the rank of a thriving progressive state, commensurate with the 
 variety and exceptional richness of her resources. Liberal and 
 numerous concessions have been granted for roads and other 
 public improvements ; yet, for the greater part, nothing but 
 trails connect the cities, traveled by mules, llamas, and Indians, 
 the beasts of burden of the republic. 
 
 It is true there are navigable rivers to the east, and although 
 there have been ably projected plans for their utilization, still 
 their conversion into efficient fluvial highways remains unac- 
 complished. For instance, in 1868 a navigation company was 
 formed with a large concession from the government, having as 
 its object the opening up of a route down the rivers Mamore 
 and Madeira to the Atlantic. The scheme was promising, and 
 would have given easy access to half a million square miles of 
 valuable land in Bolivia and Brazil, traversed by immense rivers, 
 forming a natural canal system possessed by no other country in 
 the world. But up to the present time there have been no act- 
 ive steps taken toward the realization of these designs, and the 
 traffic in that direction, confined almost exclusively to the ex- 
 portation of rubber and hides, is expensive and tedious, not to 
 speak of danger from the more savage Indian tribes attending 
 the back passage, up the rivers of the interior of Brazil. 
 
 Another project is now discussed, to continue the navigation 
 of Lake Titicaca through Rio Desanguadero to Lake Poopo, and 
 by means of a new railroad line from Chililaya to La Paz, in 
 substitution for the present stage-road, and the navigation of 
 other subordinate rivers farther south, to connect La Paz, Coro- 
 coro, Barca, Oruro, Cochabamba, Colquechaca, Sucre, liuanchaca, 
 etc., with the view of diverting the Argentine-Atlantic and La 
 Paz-Chilian trade northwestward through Bolivia and Peru to 
 Mollendo. But, according to the writer's views, there are obsta- 
 cles in the way of this scheme, to overcome which would involve 
 
A SKETCH OF THE BOLIVIAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 47 
 
 the solution of engineering problems at a cost entirely dispro- 
 portioned to the advantages gained. 
 
 To an American traveling in Bolivia, the question naturally 
 suggests itself : Why this backwardness and general stagnation ? 
 
 SKETCH SHOWING METHOD OF SLUICE WASHING PRACTICED AT TIPUANI. 
 
 From a careful geographico-topographical study of the stupen- 
 dous Andes chain, which has broken up and elevated to great 
 altitudes the western part of the republic, forming a colossal 
 barrier against the coast, it is evident that a peculiarly isolated, 
 inaccessible position and great difficulty in building good roads 
 
48 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 are the main causes that have operated in preserving the coun- 
 try's primitiveness. Added to this, it must be remembered that 
 the development of the country has been in the hands of a peo- 
 ple of whom by far the great majority are remnants of a nation 
 doubly fallen. For even before the advent of the Spaniards over 
 three centuries ago, during which time the Quichuas and Ayma- 
 ras had been enslaved, persecuted, and forced into degeneracy, 
 history tells us that the imperial glories of the Incas were but 
 the last gleams of a civilization of a thousand years' standing, 
 whose massive monolithic monuments, innumerable forsaken 
 towns, ruined public works, terraced mountains, and crowded 
 cemeteries, in the historic ground bordering the mysterious Titi- 
 caca, bear witness to a much higher scale of culture. And after 
 a continued decline and free mixture with the Spanish invaders 
 for more than three hundred years, it is hardly a matter for sur- 
 prise that the resulting Cholos and half-castes should show little 
 or no ambition for advancement, and the white constituency 
 have absorbed in a high degree the phlegmatic, depressed dispo- 
 sition of the controlling Indian element, whose ignorance, utter 
 want of purpose and life, and low standard of comfort, constitute 
 the real secret of the characteristic stagnation not only in Boli- 
 via, but in other South American States. 
 
 In a word, the consideration of the country's situation from a 
 politico-economic point of view leads to the conclusion that, of 
 the five factors that Lord Bacon and Bishop Hall have well said 
 go to make a nation great and prosperous, namely, a fertile soil, 
 busy workshops, easy conve} T ance for men and commodities, 
 knowledge, and freedom, only the first and last are at all repre- 
 sented up to the present time in this beautiful and interesting 
 republic, so appropriately called the Switzerland of South 
 America. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE TIPUANI RIVER, 
 BOLIVIA, S. A.* 
 
 THE growing interest that is being manifested in the mineral 
 resources of South America, and the importance attached to the 
 revival of the mining industry in Peru and Bolivia, may justify 
 the recording of some data concerning one of the historic gold 
 regions of that portion of the continent. 
 
 During the past few years, the successful reopening of old 
 Spanish mines and the discovery of several remarkable bonanza 
 silver deposits in the Cordillera have developed an active but 
 legitimate local boom, backed in its incipient stages almost en- 
 tirely by Bolivian and Chilian resources. 
 
 As a general characteristic of the results attending these ven- 
 tures, it may be said, in contradistinction to many similar enter- 
 prises in Mexico, that, in almost every instance where a lode 
 mining enterprise has been provided with the necessary capital, 
 expended under proper management, its efforts have been re- 
 warded with profitable results; and this, too, in the face of 
 such disadvantages as high altitude (from 13,000 to 14,000 feet 
 above sea level), inaccessibility, scarcity of fuel and labor. 
 
 Among the more prominent of the permanently established 
 paying silver properties may be noted the Huanchaca and Quol- 
 quechaca mines. Of these, the Huanchaca is at once the most 
 celebrated and important enterprise in Bolivia, having already 
 produced about $5,000,000 in silver bullion the final outcome 
 of a deep tunnel development scheme, nearly 3,000 feet in 
 length, and requiring some ten years to complete. At the time 
 of my visit to the republic, the company was paying 2 per cent, 
 monthly dividends on a subscribed capital of $6,000,000, besides 
 
 * From The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, July 24, 
 
 1886. 
 
50 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 adding monthly installments to a surplus fund that is now close 
 on to $2,000,000. 
 
 But in point of historical magnitude, as also in respect to con- 
 tinuous ore-bodies actually remaining exposed to view, according 
 to the mining reports of competent, reliable authorities, the 
 mines of the Cerro de Potosi, Bolivia, are undoubtedly among 
 the most phenomenal silver lodes, not only of South America, 
 but of the world. Of the estimated total silver production of 
 Bolivia, which, according to the Auditor of the Potosi Mint, is 
 given at over $5,000,000,000, the Cerro de Potosi alone is cred- 
 ited with over $2,500,000,000. 
 
 The resumption of operations in these mines, on a large scale, 
 with all modern appliances, has recently been undertaken by a 
 strong English company, whose shares are also largely held in 
 South America. Judging by the conservative policy of the 
 company and its efficient management, it would seem that a 
 successful issue may be anticipated from the exploitation, on 
 modern principles, of these vast bonanzas. 
 
 In Peru, a parallel scheme, having as object the extensive 
 working of the Cerro de Pasco silver deposits, is at present en- 
 tertained by prominent bankers in Lima and New York. 
 
 Such projects as these, not to speak of the regularly announced 
 dividends from the noted El Callao gold mine in Venezuela, 
 which aggregate to date about $9,000,000, have combined to 
 enhance the enthusiasm for South American properties and for 
 their possibilities upon more extensive development under im- 
 proved systems of operation. 
 
 Although silver is the staple metal of Bolivia, gold has been 
 found in considerable quantities. In lodes, it occurs in admix- 
 ture with silver, in sulphurous, antimonial, and arsenical ores; 
 but almost the entire amount is obtained from lavaderos or the 
 washings of alluvial deposits in the beds and along the banks of 
 streams and rivers ; that is, from superficial, shallow, or modern 
 placers of fluviatile origin. 
 
 According to Alexander von Humboldt and Professor Soet- 
 beer, the gold production of Bolivia for 381 years, namely, from 
 1545 to 1875 inclusive, amounted to 41,013,000, which is about 
 equivalent to the yield of the California placers after the first six 
 years' work. 
 
52 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 The Andes, which skirt the bleak shores of Southern Chili, 
 formerly Patagonia, rising higher and higher till they culminate 
 in the gigantic porphyritic peak Aconcagua, and thence continu- 
 ing through to the boundary-line of Bolivia in an undivided nar- 
 row sierra, depart from their meridional direction, and fork into 
 two great longitudinal ranges, running nearly parallel, and 
 known respectively as the Eastern and the Western Cordillera. 
 They inclose the far-reaching table-lands of the Desaguadero 
 and the mysterious Lago de Titicaca, which is at once the largest 
 lake in South America and the highest in the world covering 
 an area of 4,600 square miles, with a surface lying level with 
 the tops of lofty mountains at an altitude of 12,505 feet. 
 
 The eastern chain, locally termed La Paz Cordillera or Cor- 
 dillera Real, separates from the Potosi mountain knot to the 
 north of the Alturas de los Lipez, and includes, in latitude 16 
 10' S., and longitude 68 47' W., the Sorata or Illampu, a group 
 of serrated snow peaks fringed with glaciers, rising in majestic 
 splendor to a height of over 22,000 feet. The entire range shows 
 a succession of sharp, jagged ridges with fiercely contorted strata, 
 in contrast with the conical summits of the coast cordillera. It 
 is built up of an extensive system of Silurian rocks (grouped by 
 Forbes), running almost continuously for TOO miles, of which 
 the principal lithological constituents are clay-slates, grauwacke, 
 micaceous and talcose schists, broken, elevated, and metamor- 
 phosed by intruding igneous rocks, among which granites and 
 porphyries prevail. 
 
 The whole of this geological formation is highly mineral- 
 bearing, and the Sorata region of La Paz or Cordillera Real is 
 eminently auriferous, containing everywhere and at great alti- 
 tudes veins of gold quartz, generally associated with iron pyrites. 
 And it is this section of country, especially on the eastern de- 
 clivity of La Paz Cordillera, where an extensive development of 
 Silurian slates and sandstones faces the Madeira Valley, that has 
 contributed and continues to produce almost all the gold ex- 
 ported from Bolivia. It is everywhere met with on both sides 
 of the mountain chain, although the accumulations on the north- 
 eastern slope are far richer, both in quality and quantity. 
 
 The waters collected between the lateral ridges and high 
 ranges of the Cordillera flowing to the northwest, swell the 
 
^ 
 
 Exhibit N?5 
 
 MAP OF THE 
 
 X RIO TIPUANI 
 
 with itt 
 
 Principal Placer Basins 
 
 to accomany thrRr/tcrt of' 
 
54 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 ITcayali, while the streams flowing eastward and northeastward 
 descend to the foot-hills and plains traversed by the Beni and 
 Madeira and their upper branches. The uncommonly powerful 
 erosion caused by the avenidas or floods during the rainy season, 
 to which the mountain sides and outcrops of auriferous quartz 
 veins are subjected, disintegrates, transports, and deposits in the 
 deep ravines and rivers flowing eastward enormous volumes of 
 detrital material, through which are disseminated the liberated 
 particles of gold. And although all the waters descending from 
 this range that fall into the Beni carry down the precious metal, 
 the Quebrada or Rio de Tipuani, which empties into the Mapiri, 
 situated in the province of Larecaja, department of La Paz, is 
 notably the most productive. 
 
 The Tipuani is best approached from the town of Sorata, 
 which has an altitude of about 8,000 feet, and is 18 leagues (54 
 miles) distant from Chililaya and 9 leagues from Achacashe on 
 the Lago de Titicaca. 
 
 The journey from Sorata to Mapiri, a distance of 32 leagues, 
 is made in three days, namely, the first day, the summit of the 
 main Cordillera spur called Llachisani, from 15,000 to 16,000 
 feet above sea level, is reached in five hours. At this eleva- 
 tion, the view is grand over a vast expanse of country, and one 
 forms some slight conception of the huge scale on which nature 
 has framed her productions in South America " a sublime as- 
 semblage of mountains, plains, forests, and rivers, unparalleled 
 and without rival in the works of creation." The air is so ex- 
 tremely rarefied that those who have not already become accli- 
 mated are likely to be attacked with soroche. The first symp- 
 toms make themselves manifest in the form of rapid breathing 
 and dizziness, followed by palpitations of the heart and a general 
 weakness and faintness the least bodily effort causing complete 
 exhaustion. Then sets in a stinging, smarting sensation about 
 the eyes and forehead, which develops into sick-headache and, 
 if the patient is fortunate enough, ends in violent vomiting, 
 which is the only permanent relief. The general feeling is one 
 of seasick misery, and is only slightly relieved by the smelling 
 of ammonia. 
 
 The barren mountains once passed, the remaining 11 leagues 
 to Mapiri are through the shady woods of the quinales, along 
 
THE GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE TIPUANI RIVER. 55 
 
 the crest of the hills sloping toward the Mapiri River. And 
 here one meets with a novel feature in South American travel, 
 namely, the balsa navigation of the narrow, rapid rivers tributary 
 to the wide system flowing through the plains of the interior. 
 
 Twelve hours after departure from Mapiri, gliding and wind- 
 ing continuously over crystal-clear water, through 24 leagues of 
 the most romantic country, lined with forests of the greatest ex- 
 uberance and variety of vegetation, shut in by steep hills whose 
 tropical drapery hangs into the very river, amid a brilliant pro- 
 fusion of feathery, fanlike foliage, Guanay is reached at the 
 junction of the Mapiri and Tipuani rivers. 
 
 The source of the Tipuani River is at an elevation of 17,000 
 feet on the northeast side of the Cordillera Real, about five 
 leagues to the northwest of the Sorata or Illampu, and ten leagues 
 in a northerly direction from the town of Sorata. It pursues a 
 northeasterly course for thirty-five leagues, more or less, meas- 
 ured along its winding path, and empties, ten leagues below the 
 village of Tipuani, into the Mapiri River at Guanay. From the 
 latter town, the combined waters flowing to the east as the con- 
 tinuation of the Mapiri, are known as Rio Caca, which farther 
 down participates in the formation of the Beni River, a tributary 
 to the Madeira. 
 
 The first five leagues of the Tipuani's development are through 
 barren, desolate regions above the snow-line. Lower down, in 
 the vicinity of Tipuani, and continuing to the mouth of the river 
 at Guanay, it forms a tortuous chain of deep, delicious, trans- 
 parent pools, from 200 to TOO -feet in length, and with varying 
 widths of from 30 to 70 feet, linked together by foaming rapids, 
 alternately running between steep hills and through high canons 
 (angosturas), or becoming shallow and opening out into basin- 
 shaped swells in the valley. The latter are the receptacles or re- 
 positories in which the transported placer-forming substances are 
 sifted, spread, arrested from farther travel, condensed and built 
 up in layers, accompanied with a partial bed-rock concentration 
 of the heavier ingredients, and finally carved out into the playas 
 as seen to-day. These benches or terraces of auriferous gravel 
 the placers proper are from five to fifteen feet high, and run 
 with the river for distances of from 200 to 2,000 feet, with width 
 ranging from 100 to 700 feet, extending back toward the slopes 
 
56 
 
 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 of the side-hills. 
 
 Soil -mixed, with 
 GrwcljifragTnertts 
 
 Exhibit N? 6 
 
 Scattered along the banks irregularly and in 
 groves are pine-apple, rice and 
 coffee plants, orange, lemon, coca, 
 cascarilla, rubber, cotton, cane, 
 banana, and divers nut-trees. 
 
 The predominating country- 
 rock throughout the river is hard, 
 non-fossiliferous, slightly ferru- 
 ginous blue clay-slate, the same as 
 observed at great altitudes on the 
 northeast slope of the Cordillera 
 in violently upheaved beds hun- 
 dreds of feet thick. Lower down 
 in the foot-hills, they are over- 
 laid with friable red shales or 
 weathered mica-schist, on which 
 are superimposed conglomerates, 
 red clay, and thick deposits of 
 brown soil of reddish hue. And 
 although this order of superin- 
 cumbent strata, which, collect- 
 ively taken, is the gold-contain- 
 ing formation, is only noticeable 
 in places, along the river, the 
 slates appear often reaching prom- 
 inently above the water. Here 
 the formation is exposed to view 
 in the canons and narrow pas- 
 sages, where the contorted strata 
 are abruptly elevated, presenting 
 perfect stratification and the most 
 varied structural forms. The 
 'aLRock Deposits beds maintain either a nearly ver- 
 tical position, or incline with 
 heavy dip toward the north and 
 northeast, constituting with their 
 upturned edges the bed-rock of 
 the auriferous alluvial 
 
 Gold Stratum, 
 
 "GtngcML " 
 Conglomerate. 
 
 Bed Rock 
 
 . 
 
 And this country formation is>ot.only traversed by gold quartz 
 
THE GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE TIPUANI KIVER.- 
 
 57 
 
 veins in the Cordillera watershed of the Tipuani, but must likewise 
 be ribbed and seamed with auriferous lodes throughout that por- 
 tion forming the side-hills ; for, besides the actual river deposits, 
 there are accumulations of gold-bearing alluvium in the side val- 
 leys of the main quebrada, and also high up in gullies and on 
 
 Chuchiplaya 
 
 Iscasivi 
 
 EXHIBIT NO. 7. IDEAL SECTION THROUGH " CHUCHIPLAYA. 
 
 Auriferous 
 
 1, Top soil. 2, Soil and fragments covering gravel. 3, Playa and top gravels. 4, Aurife 
 blue clay stratum on slate bed-rock. 5, Reacbed by working-pit at depth of 36 feet. 
 
 shoulders of the bordering mountains, folders whose genesis is 
 quite independent of the riverine agency below. Owing to this 
 probable occurrence of gold in place in the immediate vicinity, the 
 source of the Tipuani play as is not alone to be looked for in the 
 region of its headwaters, but also in the country adjacent to the 
 deposits. Vast quantities of soil from these steep slopes have 
 
 EXHIBIT NO. 10. IDEAL CUT THROUGH " ANCOTA. 
 
 1, Top soil. 2, Soil and gravel. 3, Falder gravel. 4, Top gravels proper. 5, Gold bed-rock 
 concentrations. 6, Slate bed-rock. 
 
 been emptied into the river through land-slides along the valley, 
 as well as by torrents entering through cross-ravines. And at 
 such points of combined gold contribution, some of the richest 
 ground is found. 
 
 The periods of greatest geological activity at the present time 
 re during the rainy seasons, from November 15th to March 
 
58 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 15th, when rushing waters and a succession of powerful floods 
 tear their way through the lode-incasing formations, gathering 
 material from a wide area, conveying and subjecting it to the 
 influence of the swollen river. 
 
 The ancient bed of the Tipuani lies from 20 to 60 feet below 
 the present waters, and has been filled either gradually, or more 
 probably spasmodically, by sudden flood-installments, as indi- 
 cated by the strati tications of the ancient gravels, which appear 
 to record different periods of deposition. And on the other 
 hand, there is the strongest possible evidence, in the form of 
 " pot-holes," as high as ten feet above the surface of the water, 
 that the river has operated at higher levels with great power for 
 long periods of time. 
 
 During and subsequent to the process of formation, the free- 
 ing of the gold, by attrition and disintegration of the auriferous 
 vein-rock in transportation, has been succeeded by a sinking and 
 concentration of the precious metal in the vicinity of the bed- 
 rock or plan, as it is locally termed, in which zone the richest 
 ground has always been found. 
 
 Resting on the slate plan or true bed, called in Tipuani pena, 
 there is in many places a layer of "cement gravel," a hard con- 
 glomerate cemented with oxide of iron, termed cangaUi, which 
 forms apparently a new bed or false bottom. Deposited on the 
 latter, is a rich pay stratum of gold sands and gravel, varying 
 from one to four feet in thickness, and containing in places from 
 one-eighth to one ounce of gold to the Itatea (two-thirds of a 
 California pan). 
 
 The value and thickness of the cangalli stratum are not defi- 
 nitely known, as the records of workings that have sunk through 
 to actual bed-rock are contradictory. It is highly probable, how- 
 ever, judging from the character of similar deposits, that not 
 only the "cement" itself is pay material, never having been 
 turned to profit for want of mining, crushing, and amalgamating 
 machinery, but that below it, lying on the slate, there are de- 
 posits as rich as, if not richer than, the cangalli pay-streak. 
 
 Imbedded in the partially stratified top-gravels, lying in depths 
 of from 20 to 60 feet over the cangalli plan, are found inter- 
 mediate " false beds" of impure chalk or marl, which, like the 
 cement gravel, are overlaid with thin strata of rich gold soil. 
 
THE GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE TIPTJANI EIVER. 59 
 
 A section through the river formations shows the following 
 geological order : 
 
 Dark and red surface soil from 3 to 5 feet. 
 
 Soil mixed with broken fragments and gravel from 1 to 2 feet. 
 
 Playa or auriferous gravel above river level from 5 to 15 feet. 
 
 Continuation of playa-gravel with partial stratifica- 
 tion, extending below river-bed, and inclosing rich 
 streaks from 20 to 60 feet. 
 
 Gold stratum (bed-rock pay-seam) from 1 to 4 feet. 
 
 Cangalli bed or cement ? / fi f f 
 
 T- i i 1 1 j. f) f o iee t 
 
 Bed-rock gold stratum I j 
 
 Besting on slate bed-rock (or pena.) 
 
 The detrital accumulations below the river-bed, and also com- 
 posing the adjacent playas, consist of slate, syenitic granite with 
 plain hornblende crystals, fine-grained granite, white quartz, and 
 rusted cellular vein-quartz containing partially decomposed pyr- 
 ites which occur in irregular fragments, but principally in lense 
 and oval-shaped stones and small boulders. And the minera- 
 logical constituency dispersed through this debris in small gravel, 
 sand, and finer particles, consists of quartz, feldspar, hornblende, 
 mica, hematite, titanite, magnetite, gold, and occasional grains 
 of platinum. 
 
 The precious metal is diffused through the mass largely in the 
 form of coarse flat scales, thin lenses, and oval-shaped leaves 
 and angular plates of deep yellow color, which is the general 
 character of Tipuani gold. Accompanied by magnetic and ti- 
 tanic sands, it also appears in small grains, fine particles, and 
 dust. The coarse pieces are always flat, except the gold from 
 the folders, or hill-slope deposits, which is more granular in ap- 
 pearance. Nuggets and wire gold are rarely met with. It is 
 remarkably pure and constant in fineness, running not less than 
 22J and generally 23| carats, or about 980 fine. It is bought in 
 La Paz at the rate of 27 pesos (21-60 Bolivianos, or $15.12 
 United States) per onza. 
 
 Besides the cangalli occurrence, the gold is distributed in rich 
 and poor patches throughout the upper gravels, in accordance 
 with the interruption of the current of the stream by diminu- 
 tion in its fall, by the entrance of tributaries, or by bars, reefs, 
 eddies, etc. 
 
 Thus the gold deposits of the Tipuaui may be divided into 
 the following classes : 
 
60 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 1st. Congolli bed-rock, ancient or deep deposits. 
 
 2d. Kiver-bed deposits, occupying the present wet and dry 
 channels, and extending below to the rich pay-streak. 
 
 3d. Playas or placer benches above the water level in point 
 of origin the same as the latter. 
 
 4th. Folders or hillside deposits, which occur (a) in more or 
 less well-defined auriferous strata ; and (b) in thick hilly masses 
 of alluvium, through which the metal is irregularly dispersed. 
 
 A long-continued, extensive system of batea sampling result- 
 ed in finding that the river-beds and upper gravels of the Tipu- 
 ani formation may be counted to contain about 50 cents per 
 cubic yard ; while the bed-rock deposits, ranging from 25 to 40 
 feet below the river level, contain the precious metal in a much 
 higher degree of concentration. This pay-seam varies in thick- 
 ness from 3 inches to 3 feet, and is also variable in gold contents. 
 But it has been made the basis of remunerative mining, in a 
 small way as compared with the California scale of operations, 
 under disadvantageous conditions in point of climate, location, 
 and working methods. The records of Tipuani gold washings 
 date back as far as 1533, and in those remote days thousands of 
 Inca Indians were sent periodically to gather the gold as best 
 they could, which was placed at the disposal of their heroes. 
 Imbedded deep in the alluvial strata below the present river- 
 bed, have been found gold ornaments, copper relics, hard- wood 
 picks and hatchets of stone, bearing witness to the ancients' 
 presence and equipment. 
 
 The remnants of these historic exploitations are quite numer- 
 ous in places. The folder, or hillside gulch deposits, were 
 worked par excellence in those periods, probably because the 
 richer beds below the Tipuani were either unknown or of neces- 
 sity neglected on account of the technical difficulties attending 
 their working. 
 
 Later in the history of the country, the Spaniards, who ap- 
 pear to have been in sole possession of the river, carried on ex- 
 tensive workings of the hillside deposits at elevations of from 
 50 to 600 feet above the river level, where stone pits, basins, 
 aqueducts, ground sluices, water-worn surfaces, excavations, and 
 boulder dumps yet remain in comparatively perfect preservation. 
 
 The system they followed, known as cochea, was a variety of 
 
THE GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE TIPUANI KIVER. 61 
 
 booming or gouging ; that is, the application of water in sudden 
 rushes, in opposition to the use of continuous streams in ground 
 sluices. The required quantity was conducted in an acequia 
 from some convenient stream, and stored near the terminal point 
 in a capacious reservoir, at a suitable height above the soil to be 
 washed. The dam or side of the receptacle was provided with a 
 flood-gate, through which the whole contents could be poured out 
 in a torrent at pleasure, and the previously loosened soil carried off 
 in the rush, while the gold remained behind in a concentrated 
 product, arrested by the larger stones and boulders. The latter 
 were thrown to one side, and the path of the stream successively 
 shifted, until a large amount of ground was caved, and a certain 
 patch washed, when a clean-up was made of the remaining gold 
 sands, which were subsequently treated in stone sluices, and the 
 metal finally separated after this long, laborious, wasteful pro- 
 cess. They do not appear to have had any bed-rock floors or 
 apparatus at the end of the flood in which to save the tailing 
 gold, and the force of the flow must have been so sudden and 
 powerful that more metal was carried into the river than was 
 saved in the channels formed by this method of surface de- 
 nudation. 
 
 Many millions' worth of gold from the Tipuani region are 
 accounted for by the numerous legends so commonly associated 
 with the records of old Spanish mines. 
 
 The most conspicuously successful of the more modern en- 
 terprises, however, distinguished for intelligent, energetic man- 
 agement and methodical working, plans, are the operations of 
 the late Don Ildefonso Yillamil, who devoted himself with great 
 perseverance to the development of Tipuani property for many 
 years previous to his death in Sorata, some seventeen years since. 
 The records of his estate show that over $2,000,000 were gained 
 by his mining operations in and below the Tipuani river-bed. 
 The system he followed was the excavation of a large open pit 
 with sloping sides, pushed vigorously to bed-rock, where the 
 rich gold stratum was rapidly mined and washed. In sinking, 
 great numbers of Indians were employed, who conveyed both 
 dirt and water to the surface by passing in leather aprons and 
 buckets from one tier of men to the other. 
 
 Although Yillamil a'nd others have already worked, with more 
 
62 PAPEES FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 or less thoroughness, many placers for miles along the Tipuani, 
 there still remain relatively large playa tracts that could be 
 mined profitably. Since the suspension of the more extensive 
 operations, the natives alone continue the to<?#-panning of the 
 upper gravels, producing annually not to exceed $20,000. The 
 causes operating against the success of some of the attempts to 
 work these deposits more continuously and systematically, be- 
 sides consisting in the natural peculiarities of location, that is, 
 concealment and depth below the drainage level, are also to be 
 found in the crudeness of the methods followed in mining and 
 washing. Owing to a very limited familiarity with the me- 
 chanics of mining, the main obstacles water and exploitation 
 in gravelly formations were only partially overcome, and suc- 
 cess, in consequence, oftentimes curtailed. The Quebrada, 
 abounds in timber suitable for purposes of placer mining ; but 
 for want of the necessary tools and machinery to convert it 
 cheaply into lumber, it has not been used to secure and acceler- 
 ate drifting in loose ground, nor to construct effective sluices. 
 Thus the Bolivian miners were debarred from working through 
 shafts and drives, substituting therefor the open pit-stripping 
 method, which required much more time, labor, and expense, its 
 chief drawbacks consisting in the large surface offered to the 
 percolation of water, the reduced bottom area caused by the 
 sloping sides, and a constant danger of filling up, by slides, 
 floods, and silt. And as the pumping plants were extremely 
 deficient, the draining of a comparatively shallow excavation 
 was a formidable undertaking of doubtful success. The grade, 
 topography, and dumpage facilities of the river preclude the 
 possibility of applying the principles of hydraulic mining on a 
 large scale, or of driving a bed-rock tunnel to tap and drain the 
 lower pay zones. The only feasible method is the mining of 
 the bed-rock deposits through shafts and drifts, and the careful 
 washing of the wash-dirt and gravel in comparatively short, 
 properly adjusted sluice systems, for which sufficient grade can 
 be secured along the banks, and in these operations, water-power 
 can be utilized to operate the necessary pumps. Mines of simi- 
 lar character are known in California, Victoria, and Western 
 Australia, where millions of tons of wash-dirt have been profit- 
 ably mined, the pay-streak underlying the top strata having 
 
THE GOLD DEPOSITS OF THE TIPUANI KIV EE. 63 
 
 been in many instances much lower in grade than in the Tipu- 
 ani region. 
 
 In view of this fact and the results already attained, and in 
 view of the advantages of richness and cheap labor to compen- 
 sate for the disadvantages of a somewhat remote situation and 
 occurrence below the drainage level in a wet formation, the 
 Tipuani field may be pronounced one in which, with the appli- 
 cation of the improvements indicated, profitable operations on a 
 limited scale could be carried on for some years to come. 
 
 The reputation of the Quebrada for unhealthiness is not alto- 
 gether undeserved, as tertian fever prevails at times. And al- 
 though I have no personal experience to relate as to its fre- 
 quency and gravity, having enjoyed better health while examin- 
 ing the river than at any time in my South American travels, 
 and having only noticed one case in Tipuani, I was told that 
 terciana was common during the wet season. 
 
 These intermittent* are confined, however, to those portions 
 of the river where, besides a glowing midday sun, preceded and 
 followed by a chilliness of air mornings and evenings, accumu- 
 lations of decaying vegetation are hidden by dense masses of 
 foliage from the ventilating influence of the breezes, which 
 cannot penetrate at a sufficiently low level to carry away the 
 malarial emanations from the rank grounds and their occupants 
 adjacent to the river. 
 
V. 
 
 THE GOLD QUARTZ MINES OF GRASS YALLEY, 
 NEYADA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.* 
 
 THE name of Grass Yalley has become classic in the history 
 of American gold mining. For some thirty years, remunerative 
 operations have been quietly but continuously carried on in that 
 famous region, until finally, the economic merits of its phenom- 
 enal belt of auriferous, pyritous quartz lodes, and the conserva- 
 tism of management and business success that have attended 
 mining in that part of California, have won for Grass Yalley a 
 reputation as a permanent, legitimate gold mining centre, second 
 to none of the mineral districts, either in the United States or 
 in foreign countries. 
 
 Besides being situated in the midst of the largest, the most 
 important and prosperous gold quartz mining district in Califor- 
 nia, in the heart of the great auriferous zone extending along 
 the western flank of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the town of 
 Grass Yalley numbers about 7,000 inhabitants, and a healthy 
 activity pervades all business, with every indication that the 
 place has come to stay, and has yet to reach the zenith of its 
 growth. It is most picturesquely nestled in the fertile, fruit- 
 grown foot-hills of the beautifully wooded range, distant from 
 San Francisco about 160 miles by rail, of which 144 miles are 
 on the Central Pacific, from San Francisco to Colfax, and 16 
 miles on the Nevada County Narrow-Gauge, from Colfax to 
 Grass Yalley. 
 
 It would be hard to find a " camp " (if indeed this term be at 
 all applicable to that pious old rural town) that, in proportion to 
 its size and importance, has been freer from the speculative craze 
 and disasters that are sometimes connected with the working of 
 
 * From The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, Dec. 11, 
 
 1886. 
 
THE GOLD QUARTZ MINES OF GRASS VALLEY. 65 
 
 claims adjacent to ore-deposits of exceptional value in our West- 
 ern States and Territories. Nor would it be easy to find in the 
 annals of American quartz mining a group of mines whose work- 
 ing has been rewarded with more gratifying, more regular, and 
 longer continued returns, and whose profitable operation is more 
 assured for many years to come, than the Idaho, North Star, and 
 Empire mines, which are at present the leading producers and 
 dividend-payers of the Grass Valley belt. 
 
 The discoveries of gold quartz in place in this section of Ne- 
 vada County in the year 1850, following the extensive opening 
 of important placer mines that had begun at an earlier date, are 
 among the first in California. This county contains in a marked 
 degree every form of gold deposit known in California ; and as 
 an annual bullion producer of about $4,000,000 in gold and 
 some $60,000 in silver, the latter contained in the sulphuret 
 concentrates from the milling process, it outranks every other 
 county in the State, with Amador, Placer, and Sierra following 
 next in order. 
 
 The known lode-bearing area of the Grass Yalley District is 
 comparatively small for the number of veins it contains. Its 
 outside limits are not over seven miles in length by four in 
 width, which region is joined by the Nevada City Mining Dis- 
 trict to the north. But the most noted tract of great developed 
 veins belonging to the Grass Yalley District proper is embraced 
 within a radius of about two miles, in which the number of 
 lodes, and the qualitative and quantitative uniformity of the ore 
 they carry, are peculiarly favorable to great productiveness and 
 permanent prosperity. 
 
 For numerous reasons of business policy, the publication of 
 mineral records and statistics of production have in many in- 
 stances been only fragmentary ; for it is notable that the miners, 
 much to their credit, avoid the customary advertisement and de- 
 vote their energies rather to the mineral resources of the region, 
 trusting to their actual merits to earn for the mines the deserved 
 
 O 
 
 celebrity. This loyalty to and belief in the Grass Yalley lode 
 system are amply attested by the numerous subscriptions of 
 miners and local residents to the stocks of companies formed to 
 reopen temporarily suspended and mismanaged properties ; for 
 Grass Yalley, like all mining districts, has had its " ups and 
 
66 
 
 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 downs," its tribulations and set-backs, which, however, it should 
 be noted, were owing more to irregular and unsystematic mining 
 and milling and to an imperfect knowledge of local vein phe- 
 nomena than to any other cause. But leaving the details of 
 these subjects for later consideration, the following list of prom- 
 inent mines, with their gold outputs, recently compiled from 
 reliable sources, is deserving of mention as illustrating the rich 
 productive character and possibilities of Grass Valley lodes : 
 
 Mine. 
 
 Depth on 
 plane of lode. 
 Feet. 
 
 Gold 
 production. 
 
 Idaho ) -D . ( 
 
 2 500 
 
 $9 000 000 
 
 North Star I f re f ent \ 
 
 1 600 
 
 3 000 000 
 
 Empire leaders " ( 
 
 1 700 
 
 5 500 000 
 
 Eureka 
 
 1 200 
 
 5 700 000 
 
 Allison Ranch 
 
 700 
 
 4 500 000 
 
 Gold Hill 
 
 400 
 
 3 000 000 
 
 Rocky Bar 
 
 1 000 
 
 2 500 000 
 
 Massachusetts Hill 
 
 700 
 
 2 000 000 
 
 Pittsburg 
 
 
 1 500 000 
 
 New York Hill 
 
 1 200 
 
 1 300 000 
 
 Other smaller mines 
 
 
 3 000 000 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 $41,000,000 
 
 A much larger estimate has been reached by including other 
 mines not specified in the foregoing table, besides allowing for 
 the large amounts of precious metal that have been wasted and 
 stolen ; but these figures will answer in support of other testi- 
 mony embodied in this article as to the prosperity and lode 
 wealth of this already celebrated district, and the inducements 
 it offers for the further investment of capital under conservative 
 guidance. 
 
 The lodes traverse various formations, occurring on the plane 
 of contact between two dissimilar rocks, and also cutting inde- 
 pendently against the planes of bedding. They run as parallel 
 or companion veins, and also in cross systems. The Idaho- 
 Eureka lode occurs on the contact between a metamorphic shale- 
 slate (of coarse, schistose structure) and serpentine, while the 
 Empire and the North Star cut through the slate ; the Allison 
 Ranch, through a granite formation ; and the New York Hill 
 courses in diorite (said to be !). The veins, as a whole, are ex- 
 ceedingly regular, only small, insignificant faults having been 
 
THE GOLD QUAKTZ MLNES OF GRASS VALLEY. 67 
 
 observed as yet in the principal mines. They are subject to 
 violent waves on the strike and dip, which cause the drifts to 
 twist and bend considerably. These waves, in certain mines, 
 have a tendency to swing the ore-bodies into the hanging coun- 
 try, but they almost invariably come back into their normal 
 courses, and are encountered in. the drifts and inclines, which 
 are regularly continued. 
 
 The ore occurrence is of the chute, channel, or chimney form, 
 and throughout the mass of average grade ore (from $12 to $25) 
 are sprinkled pockets and rich streaks of specimens, which are 
 collected and disposed of as a separate division of mining. The 
 feather edge or contour limits of the chutes form irregular, wavy 
 lines, so that the point at which a new level running from the 
 shaft toward a chute will come into ore does not always corre- 
 spond with the calculation based on the average trend of the 
 chute and the angle that such line of trend makes with the main 
 incline-shaft. Frequently a chute will appear to be leaving the 
 line of dip so fast, owing to the drift running into a concavity 
 in its boundary, that as much as 200 feet will have to be drifted 
 through practically barren ground, past the normal line of inter- 
 section, before the pay-ore is encountered. 
 
 But no anxiety is felt on this account ; for sooner or later, the 
 chute is surely met with, and the drift continues in ore across 
 the same for the usual width. Indeed, so persistent are these 
 ore-channels that, once the direction and width are clearly deter- 
 mined, by a series of levels at regular intervals, a new level run 
 at a lower point in the mine when coming into the chimney at 
 JT, for example, puts practically the whole stripe A, B, C, D in 
 sight, so infallible is the continuity of the ore ground in such 
 mines as the Idaho, the North Star, and the Empire. 
 
 The gold is inclined to occur finely disseminated through the 
 milk-white lode quartz, and is closely associated with pyrites and 
 occasional spots of galena. The presence of the latter indicates 
 rich ore, as does also the arrangement of the ore constituents in 
 banded, ribbon structure. The proportion of pyrites is such as 
 to yield three and a half tons of sulphuret concentrates in one 
 hundred tons of milled ore. Where the pyrites occurs, however, 
 impregnated in the fresh or stained country-rock adjoining the 
 lode-filling proper, it becomes impoverished in gold contents. 
 
68 
 
 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 The presence of calcite is likewise unfavorable to the quality of 
 ore. In places, the metallic constituents disappear almost en- 
 tirely, leaving the quartz in compact, pure white masses. Such 
 apparently barren bodies will frequently mill from $8 to $12 per 
 ton. Owing to the improvement that quartz mining has under- 
 gone within the past two years, much better results are now T at- 
 tained at Grass Yalley in milling these grades of ore than was 
 formerly possible. This closer working of the ores has been 
 brought about by a reduction of mining and metallurgical costs, 
 in consequence of 1st, the extensive application of water-power 
 for hoists, for milling, and lastl} 7 , but not less important, for air- 
 
 drills ; 2d, the building of mill plants with a greater regard for 
 gravity handling and automatic action throughout, combined 
 with a multiplicity of stamps. The gains resulting from these 
 changes have begun to tell, and the bullion-producing industries 
 in this section of California will now be steadier and longer sus- 
 tained, backed by the large amounts of ore, formerly considered 
 low grade, that are now susceptible of profitable exploitation. 
 The appreciation of the advantages offered under the new stand- 
 ard of mining and milling is showing itself in the work of re- 
 habilitating old and partially deserted mines in numerous parts 
 of the State ; and in certain districts where the size of the lode 
 
THE GOLD QUAETZ MINES OF GRASS VALLEY. 69 
 
 is favorable to a large scale of operations, gold-bearing quartz is 
 profitably worked with a yield as low as $5 a ton. 
 
 The career of the Idaho has, since its first opening, been fol- 
 lowed with interest by the mining community ; and its long- 
 continued dividend record has come to be a matter of standard 
 reference in government and other reports. Some of the salient 
 features of this great gold property are always worthy of notice, 
 even at the risk of monotonous repetition. Its gross yield ap- 
 proximates $9,000,000, of which about $4,000,000 have been 
 paid in profit, in regular monthly dividends extending over a 
 period of eighteen years. This is equivalent to nearly $1,300 a 
 share on the 3,100 shares of capital stock of a par value of $100. 
 The claim embraces 3,100 feet of the apex of the lode, which 
 has a northeasterly and southwesterly course, a southerly dip of 
 70 degrees and a width of from three to six feet, being the first 
 extension east of the old Eureka mine. The latter was an ex- 
 ceedingly rich, profitable property for many years, until the ore- 
 chute finally pitched into the Idaho ground. This remarkably 
 productive ore-chimney, which varies in width and value, trends 
 downward to the east, ranging from 500 to as high as 1,200 feet 
 across, and is the only paying one known in the Idaho lode. Its 
 western edge, in the lower levels, feathers into a barren spar zone 
 that runs for several hundred feet and appears to be unfavorable 
 to the deposition of gold ore. The hanging- wall of the Idaho 
 vein is marvelously even and sharply defined. It shows fre- 
 quent striations, and is so smooth and straight that it presents 
 the appearance of having been worked to order by some skilled 
 stone-cutter. The foot-wall, though also quite regular, is given 
 to swelling, which necessitates much heavy timbering, and in- 
 creases the cost of mining as compared with the conditions pre- 
 vailing in other neighboring mines. But this swelling peculiarity 
 of the foot country is only found in the ground incasing the ore- 
 chimney ; outside of that zone, strange to say, the foot- wall does 
 not show this tendency. Below the seventh level, all the levels 
 are run to the east, to catch the main chimney that, in the lowest 
 workings, is making rapidly toward the Maryland claim, in which 
 property, it is generally believed, the chute will eventually be 
 found to continue, but at a depth that may render its rapid, 
 economical working greatly dependent on the right of way 
 5 
 
70 
 
 PAPEKS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 through the Idaho, or other arrangements with that company. 
 As the Idaho, like most other Grass Yalley mines, has not been 
 worked or trimmed to sell, it has happened once or twice in its. 
 career that, in consequence of the development-work having 
 fallen behind, temporary exhaustions have set in, which, in con- 
 junction with the encountering of lower grade bodies, and un- 
 usually heavy expenditures in the improvement account, have 
 caused decreased earnings for a few months at a time. Thus, in 
 1883, the profits ran down to $34,100, as will be seen in the fol- 
 lowing table : 
 
 Year. 
 
 Tons. 
 
 Yield 
 of rock. 
 
 Cost of 
 mining and 
 milling. 
 
 Product. 
 
 Dividends. 
 
 1881 
 
 27 945 
 
 $22 95 
 
 $9 51 
 
 $640 000 
 
 $271 250 
 
 1882 
 
 27 639 
 
 20 64 
 
 9 83 
 
 627 000 
 
 263 300 
 
 1883 
 
 28 572 
 
 12 76 
 
 8 70 
 
 362 000 
 
 34 100 
 
 1884 
 
 31,143 
 
 18 04 
 
 7 86 
 
 561,895 
 
 271,250 
 
 Bat from that year, the mine improved rapidly and returned 
 in 1884 to its old-time prosperity. Since then it has continued 
 to improve, until now, at a depth of about 2,400 feet on the in- 
 cline plane of the lode (about 1,800 feet vertical measurement),, 
 the mine is producing a most satisfactory quantity and grade of 
 quartz, considerably above the average, although not quite up to 
 the highest of former years. 
 
 A great saving in running expenses has been effected by the 
 substitution of water-power for steam. The Pelton wheel, of 
 the " hurdy-gurdy " class, designed for relatively small supplies 
 of water under high heads, is in general use, and gives most sat- 
 isfactory results. This change cost the Idaho Company about 
 $55,000 ; but the actual saving in fuel, labor, and repairs amounts 
 to at least $30,000 a year, so that the interest accruing on the 
 amount invested in this plant is all that could be desired. 
 
 At the present time there are some 220 men on the company's 
 pay-roll, of which ninety are stopers (equal 45 men on ore in 
 each shift) ; and the daily output, being about 95 tons, gives a 
 little over one ton of ore per stoper per day, and something* 
 over two men on the pay-roll to the ton of ore mined and milled. 
 Sinking at present depth costs from $25 to $32 a foot, and drift- 
 ing $9 a foot ; wages, from $2.50 to $3 a day. 
 
 The 35-stamp mill of the Idaho Company, with the exception 
 
THE GOLD QUARTZ MINES OF GRASS VALLEY. 
 
 of the addition of self-feeders, has hardly been changed or im- 
 proved since the early days, and belongs to the antiquated type. 
 The stamps weigh 850 pounds ; number of drops, 72 ; height, 
 9 inches ; capacity in twenty-four hours, 95 tons ; proportion 
 of sulphurets, one per cent. 
 
 While the Idaho is perhaps the most renowned mine in Grass 
 Valley, there are other properties that in earning capacity are 
 following closely in its wake, although, for various reasons, less 
 has been openly said concerning their affairs. The Empire and 
 North Star mines belong in this category. These are in some 
 respects twin mines, having many features in common in point 
 of vein geology and methods of working, besides being under 
 the same administration ; and as the Empire is the oldest work- 
 ing mine in California, it is, perhaps, entitled to first considera- 
 tion. The claim embraces two companion veins only 100 feet 
 apart, both carrying rich ore, so that the property is practically 
 a double mine ; and having only an average dip of about 30 de- 
 grees west and a north-northeast and south-southwest strike, it 
 represents the flat veins of the Grass Valley region in opposition 
 to the Idaho, which is a type of the practically perpendicular or 
 straight veins. 
 
 For about thirty years the Empire has been worked nearly 
 continuously, although for many years after its first discovery it 
 was operated in a most desultory manner. But, notwithstanding 
 the former crudeness and waste, the mine has always paid, as the 
 ore is of high grade and exceedingly abundant. Several years 
 ago the mill was entirely reconstructed and has since been en- 
 larged, until now forty stamps, with self-feeders, are constantly 
 in operation, and the mine is working to better advantage and 
 yielding more regular and larger monthly dividends than ever 
 before. The Triumph concentrators, used entirely by this com- 
 pany, give great satisfaction ; and although the mill plant is not 
 as perfect in detail as the new mill of the North Star, which is 
 now nearing completion, nearly all of the latest and best im- 
 provements for convenient and economical working have been 
 introduced by the manager, so that the cost of milling is only 
 64J- cents a ton. The sulphurets are much higher in grade than 
 those from other Grass Valley mines, running from $100 to $250 
 a ton. They are sold to custom works at a reduction of $18 a 
 
72 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 ton for working charges. It is claimed that the mill saves 95 
 per cent. ! 
 
 At the North Star, an east and west lode, with a dip to the 
 north of from 12 degrees to 21 degrees, ore averaging $20 (higher 
 in places) is extracted from the east 5th, llth, and 12th levels, 
 and from the east and west 13th, 14th, and 15th levels, with 
 large strips of stoping ground opened up ahead and the mine 
 improving daily. The property will continue for a few weeks, 
 pending the completion of its new 40-stamp mill, to supply the 
 10-stamp custom mill where its ores have been treated for the 
 past year or two. The mine is so extensively opened that three 
 times as many stopers as are at present employed can be put on 
 ore without straining the property. Everything that expert de- 
 signing and solidity of construction can do has been lavished on 
 the North Star mill. It is being built by the Risdon Iron- 
 Works, of San Francisco, and will be second to none in Califor- 
 nia. It will be operated by three turbine-wheels, which alone 
 will save $1,000 a month in fuel. In general and in detail, the 
 North Star plant will be the model mill of the State. It will 
 reduce manual labor even more completely than the Empire, 
 and the cost of milling will not exceed fifty cents a ton. In 
 addition hereto, these two mines are soon to have their own 
 chlorination- works, which will prove to be a further source of 
 economy to both the Empire and North Star companies. 
 
 It is to be regretted that working maps are not generally kept 
 up in the Grass Yalley mines ; for among other things, it would 
 be interesting to compute the stope area corresponding to the 
 production of a certain tonnage extending over a period of years ; 
 and from this to estimate the productive capacity of a given lode 
 per square fathom. Such a unit would often serve, in one and 
 the same mine, as a basis from which to gauge the sight tonnage 
 of the irregularly blocked-out reserves, which, under the present 
 circumstances, is a difficult problem. Also the compilation by 
 the United States Geological Survey, for instance, of a general 
 underground mining chart of the entire district, accompanied 
 with a series of sections and a survey of the surface topography, 
 would disclose many important relations existing between the 
 lodes of the Grass Yalley belt, in addition to solving many prob- 
 lems of extension-claims, lode parallelism, apex continuity, etc., 
 in relation to surface claims. 
 
THE GOLD QUARTZ MINES OF GKASS VALLEY. 73 
 
 As above intimated, the Grass Yalley industry, as a whole, 
 since the early days, has been somewhat erratic in character. At 
 first, one property would loom into prominence, and, through 
 the continuation of its profitable operation for a long period, an 
 impetus would be imparted to the development of other ledges, 
 which, in turn, would become paying properties. Then, after 
 combined activity for a number of years, some irregularities 
 would set in and cause one or more mines to suspend. Almost 
 all of these stand-stills, however, may be traced to a change of 
 ownership or administration, or to the encountering of water or 
 some misunderstood and much exaggerated freak of vein geology ; 
 but these crippled enterprises were almost immediately succeeded 
 by a new group coming into the field of active producers, until 
 now the Idaho, the North Star, and the Empire happen to be 
 the dividend leaders. And while the Idaho and the Empire 
 have been almost continuously worked with large profits to the 
 owners, the former for over eighteen years and the latter for 
 nearly thirty years, each having paid several millions in divi- 
 dends, the North Star mine remained, until within two years, 
 inactive for quite a long period, notwithstanding its working has 
 always been rewarded with gratifying returns. Lately this mine 
 has been developed into a permanent paying property of greatly 
 increased value, with ore-reserves surpassing in extent those of 
 any other property in the district, thanks to the sagacity and 
 able management of Mr. John Hays Hammond, the well-known 
 expert of the Pacific coast. The other mines are either operated 
 on a small scale or are lying idle. But the strong fact remains, 
 significant of their prospective value, as well as bearing favora- 
 bly on the economical nature of Grass Yalley quartz lodes in 
 general, that those mines that are properly worked are earning 
 handsomely, while those that are now shut down and filled with 
 water are known to have paid. Hence, many of these dormant 
 enterprises were not disastrous failures, nor did their working 
 incur losses to the owners ; but, on the contrary, a number of 
 them yielded profits, notwithstanding the crudeness, the waste, 
 and the great expense attached to early mining and milling 
 methods. Oftentimes, indeed, merely a lack of the necessary 
 capital to put in suitable pumping and hoisting machinery was 
 the sole reason for shutting down intended at the time to be 
 
74 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 only temporary. In other cases, the exploratory and develop- 
 ment work was hardly carried a foot in advance of stoping, nor 
 a dollar contributed from the profit account toward a fund to 
 maintain a healthy proportion between the exploitation of ore 
 and the opening up of new ground, to thus insure the mine's 
 prosperity from year to year. Indeed, this hand-to-mouth sys- 
 tem has only recently been radically changed by the advent into 
 the district of Mr. Hammond, whose energy and influence have 
 played an important part in the resuscitation of Grass Valley 
 mines, and whose efficient management of the famous Empire 
 and North Star have brought about a greatly needed reform, 
 for which he has received much credit in San Francisco mining 
 circles. 
 
 The most conspicuously favorable features of the Grass Valley 
 belt are found in the facts that, first, the bottoms of all the active 
 properties are in good ore, some quite above the average grade, 
 which has given rise to claims of increasing richness in depth ; 
 secondly, that the occasional accidents arid interruptions in the 
 past working of the mines were not brought about, in most in- 
 stances, by a giving out of the ore either in depth or in the 
 direction of the strike (measured across the chimneys), for many 
 of the at present inactive claims named in the foregoing list are 
 known to have faces of pay-ore exposed in the extremity work- 
 ings, on the strike and dip, and also standing in some of the 
 stope contours. Some of these apparently forsaken ex-dividend 
 properties combine, therefore, the elements that go to make good 
 mines and insure for them an important part in the future, when 
 a more general and vigorous development shall be resumed a 
 new era in Grass Valley that may be confidently predicted as 
 not far distant. Then, too, it should here be considered, as hav- 
 ing an important bearing on the future possibilities and proba- 
 bilities of these properties, that many of their good records were 
 made at a time when labor was $4 and $5 a day, instead of $3, 
 as now, the thorough saving of the sulphurets on an economical 
 scale undreamed of, and the standard of systematic mining, as 
 well as the principles and practice of milling, much lower than 
 nowadays, when ores of considerably lower grades are profitably 
 worked. 
 
 The basis of the long-continued remunerative mining at Grass 
 
THE GOLD QUARTZ MINES OF GRASS VALLEY. 75 
 
 Valley, which has stood up against many extravagances of man- 
 agement, lies in the remarkable continuity and persistency of the 
 ore proper in the ore-bearing ground and in the liberal propor- 
 tion of such ore ground to the total vein area. This ideal lode 
 development in respect to the quantity of pay-ore, which is fa- 
 vorably distributed in chutes or chimneys of unusual width, as 
 compared with the ordinary proportion of the width of a chim- 
 ney to its extent on the trend, fairly assumes, in such properties 
 as the Empire and the North Star, the appearance of continuous 
 ore zones or sheets of ore running through the entire claim, and 
 broken alone by occasional spots of lean ground ; that is, the 
 chutes appear to be about as extensive in a horizontal as in a 
 downward direction. And this exceptionally liberal ore-deposi- 
 tion stands out so prominently in comparison with the average 
 lode structure of quartz mines that it suggests some reflections 
 in regard to mining experiences in general. A survey of the 
 iield shows that there is no scarcity of ore-deposits from which 
 specimens and small lots of mineral can be obtained, which, in 
 respect to grade and quality, are " pay -rock"; that is, the factor 
 of quantity is found less frequently than quality of ore, in a 
 degree sufficiently favorable to constitute a basis for a pay mine. 
 And hence in the greater number of the failures of mining ven- 
 tures, an insufficient quantity, rather than an inadequate grade 
 of ore, is at fault, although it is not denied that a fading away 
 of the precious metal contents and a transition into ore-bodies of 
 too low a grade to work protitably are also frequently met with. 
 The overlooking, in the examinations of developed mines, of the 
 relations between these natural essentials, is at the bottom of 
 many mistakes in mining judgment, and has caused not a few of 
 the lamentable disappointments in the industry. Indeed, it 
 seems almost impossible for some people to distinguish between 
 vein and ore, which words, to the uninitiated, are practically 
 synonymous. They do not stop or care to think that veins, 
 even " true fissures" (!), exist without any ore in them, or that 
 a vein may be true and satisfactory in all geological and ininer- 
 alogical particulars with the sole exception as to the amount and 
 dimensions of the ore-bodies it contains, the latter being often so 
 aggravatingly distributed and limited as to always keep the mine 
 in a most promising appearance for dividends, which, alas ! are 
 
76 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 doomed never to be earned, and assessment upon assessment is 
 substituted. 
 
 The Grass Yalley mines are not sustained by huge chamber 
 bonanza ore-bodies, in point of thickness between walls, neither 
 do they depend for their life on a thin, high grade, sensational 
 pay-streak ; for there is an abundance of lodes with as rich ore ; 
 but the district is supported by a lode system containing exten- 
 sive, never-failing, and generous ore-channels, of which class of 
 ore-deposits these mines are typical representatives. 
 
 Taking collectively the records of all forms of gold deposits in 
 Nevada County, it is highly probable that no mining district of 
 equal area exists that has produced as much gold. And while 
 it is true that the annual production has recently become dimin- 
 ished, owing to the depression in placer mining following the 
 sweeping legal decisions on the debris question, yet the flourish- 
 ing condition of the quartz mining industry justifies the asser- 
 tion that no known region has the promise of greater mining 
 permanency. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE MILL OF THE NORTH STAE GOLD MINE, 
 GEASS VALLEY, CALIFOENIA * 
 
 THE recent erection of a 30-stamp mill and the introduction 
 of water as a motive power for both the mill and hoi sting- works 
 give the North Star Mining Company in respect to design, 
 equipment, and economical working one of the most complete 
 and perfect plants on the Pacific coast. 
 
 The plant, which was built almost entirely by the Eisdon 
 Iron and Locomotive Works, of San Francisco, consists of the 
 following machinery : 
 
 1st, hoisting engine ; 2d, pumping plant ; 3d, compressed air 
 and drill plant ; 4th, 30-stamp mill of the most approved Cali- 
 fornia pattern ; 5th, water- works and pipe system affording 
 water power under 250 feet head to all the foregoing ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 With the exception of the mill, the entire plant can be run 
 either by steam or water, and can be changed from one to the 
 other in a few minutes' time. 
 
 The mill in particular, which is described in the following, is 
 as near perfection as money and experience can make it. The 
 buildings are of the most substantial nature, and are fitted with 
 separate turbine wheels, thereby enabling each department to 
 run independently of the other. 
 
 The tail water of the " original Empire mill and mine," the 
 oldest going gold mining enterprise in California, is conveyed 
 through a line of 24-inch wrought-iron pipe 10,000 feet long to 
 the North Star mine, with a pressure of about 250 feet head. 
 At the latter place, near the hoisting-works, the 24-inch pipe 
 branches into one line of 16^-inch pipe running to the mill be- 
 low the hoisting-works, while a 14^-inch branch runs into the 
 hoisting- works. 
 
 * From The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, June 4, 
 
 1887. 
 
78 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 The pipe line is constructed of the best material, and is hy- 
 draulic riveted throughout. It is carefully coated with asphal- 
 tum and coal tar, and, with a little attention, should be as good 
 in twenty years from now as it is to-day. Heavy material is 
 used throughout, to allow for deterioration, and the working 
 strain on no part exceeds 12,000 pounds per sectional inch. 
 The line is provided with air valves, blow-off and stop valves, 
 and also with air chambers near the works to prevent shock or 
 jar in the pipes. 
 
 The branch running into the hoisting-works conveys the 
 water for the motors of the hoisting and pumping machinery. 
 These motors consist of one five-foot Pelton wheel for the hoist- 
 ing machinery, equipped with deflector nozzle and a Moore's dif- 
 ferential hydraulic gate (both being operated from the engineer's 
 platform), and two Pelton wheels, of six feet and eight feet di- 
 ameters respectively, both of which are mounted on the same 
 shaft in a substantial framework, for the pumping machinery. 
 This latter arrangement facilitates the changing of the pumping 
 capacity at the shortest notice by increasing or decreasing the speed. 
 
 Below the hoisting-works and connected with the same by a 
 substantial bridge is the thirty-stamp mill. The bridge referred 
 to is on a level with, and is the extension of the landing plat- 
 form of the hoisting-works, from which the ore is dumped into 
 the upper part of the mill. 
 
 The ore, as it comes from the mine in cars, is trammed across 
 the bridge and dumped over grizzlies into an ore-bin of 2,000 
 tons capacity. The coarse raw ore which passes over the griz- 
 zlies accumulates in a separate bin, and is fed to two improved 
 Blake crushers. The ore thus crushed joins the fine ore which 
 passes the grizzlies and accumulates in the main bins which sup- 
 ply the stamp batteries. The latter are six in number, carrying 
 five stamps each, with single discharge mortars, and are fed au- 
 tomatically by six Challenge ore feeders. The dies, shoes, tap- 
 pets, and cams are made of the best Pittsburg steel ; and the cam 
 shafts, each of which carry ten stamps, are of the best hammered 
 scrap iron. Weight of Stamp, 870 Ibs. Drop, 8 inches. Screen 
 Frames, 56f // x25", outside, with openings opposite each stamp. 
 No. 30, Brass Wire Screen. One Iroji Sluice Apron, 57' / x54/ / . 
 Two Iron Sluices, 25 // x77 // . 
 
ffl 
 
THE MILL OF THE NOETH STAB GOLD MINE. 83 
 
 Provision has been made for ten additional stamps, for which 
 the necessary space, power, and foundations are at hand. From 
 the batteries the ore pulp passes through cast-iron sluice-boxes, 
 provided with amalgamated copper plates, and thence on to 
 shaking-tables. These shaking-tables, of which there are six 
 (one for each battery), are 4 feet wide by 12 feet long; they are 
 constructed entirely of wroaght-iron, and are also provided with 
 copper plates. From here the pulp is run through pipes on to 
 twelve "Triumph" concentrators. 
 
 To facilitate and expedite cleaning up, the mill is furnished 
 with a cleaning barrel, a batea, and a clean-up pan. 
 
 Extensions of the main mill building form the sulphuret and 
 retort room on one side, the turbine and compressor room on an- 
 other side, and a clean-up room on a third side. The clean-up 
 room contains cast-iron cleaning tanks, covered with marble 
 slabs, wash - stand, and clean-up pan. The compressor room 
 contains a 14-inch by 24-inch duplex compressor and air-re- 
 ceiver, the latter being connected by pipes with an air-receiver in 
 the hoisting-works, which supplies the compressed-air drills in 
 the mine. The wheel-house contains the water-wheels (vertical 
 turbines) which drive the different departments of machinery as 
 follows : 
 
 One six-foot Pelton wheel, giving motion to battery line shaft 
 by means of four two-inch hemp ropes; 
 
 One four-foot Pelton wheel, giving motion to rock breaker 
 counter-shaft by one 5|--inch wire rope ; 
 
 One three- foot wheel of the same pattern, giving motion to 
 concentrator counter-shaft by one 1^-inch hemp rope; 
 
 One six-foot Pelton, driving 14 inches by 24 inches duplex 
 compressors by four 2-inch hemp ropes with sheaves of different 
 diameters for changing the speed. 
 
 The water-wheels driving the batteries and concentrator 
 counter-shaft are each provided with hydraulic governors that 
 are so necessary in securing the uniform operation required for 
 efficient stamp mill and concentration work. Revolution coun- 
 ters are attached to the batteries and concentrators, and a hy- 
 draulic pressure gauge indicates the variations of pressure in the 
 pipes. 
 
 The necessary mill water is drawn from a tank on the bridge 
 
84 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 level. The water from the tail race in the hoisting-works is 
 lifted to this tank by a centrifugal pump and heated to a tem- 
 perature of about 100 degrees by the introduction of a jet of 
 steam from the boiler. From the tank, a 4-inch pipe leads the 
 water to the mill, where it is distributed by a series of smaller 
 pipes and valves to the batteries, concentrators, and clean-up ma- 
 chines. The roofs of the buildings are covered with corrugated 
 iron plates and with a number of 2^-inch fire hydrants, thus af- 
 fording an excellent protection against fire. 
 
VII. 
 ANOTHER CONCENTRATOR* 
 
 THE process of ore-dressing or mechanical concentration, in 
 the United States, is gradually reaching proportions only com- 
 parable in economic importance with the scale of operation and 
 perfection of that art in almost all of the great mining regions 
 of European countries. 
 
 Until within the past four or five years, the receiving-floors of 
 sampling, milling, and smelting-works in the West have been 
 stored almost exclusively with raw ores, coming directly from 
 the mines, where waste-dumps were accumulated, rich in the 
 lower grades of mineral ill-adapted in the natural state to profit- 
 able transportation and metallurgical treatment. 
 
 But of late years, the products of concentration make up a 
 formidable proportion, sometimes the bulk, of the smelters' ore 
 supply; and the reduction-works at Leadville, Denver, Pueblo, 
 Durango, Omaha, Salt Lake, Wood River, and other metallurgi- 
 cal centers are now filled with the " concentrates " of ore-dress- 
 ing mills, testifying to a greatly increased efficiency in the ex- 
 ploitation and turning to profit of ore-deposits. Indeed, the 
 maintenance of many lucrative mining operations in such thriv- 
 ing districts as Leadville, San Juan, and Wood River is solely 
 dependent upon the successful dressing of the lower grades of 
 ore, which fact of itself goes to prove the growing importance 
 of that branch of mining engineering. 
 
 But before we shall have completely attained in American 
 mining the thoroughness and technical completeness character- 
 istic of the industry in the old country, a broader appreciation 
 must be had of the benefits to be derived from an extensive ap- 
 plication of concentration, carried to a finer degree of economy 
 
 * From The Engineering and Mining Journal, New York, August 
 
 28, 1886. 
 
86 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 in point of a more general dressing of sands, coarse pulps, and 
 slimes, which are too often inefficiently treated or allowed to go 
 to waste. 
 
 The process of concentration, sometimes ultra-expertly termed 
 "dynamical metallurgy," has been vaguely construed and im- 
 perfectly understood in certain mineral regions of the West. 
 This is, perhaps, in large measure, owing to the perplexity grow- 
 ing out of the fact that concentration belongs among the arts in 
 which practical experiences often differ materially from the theo- 
 retical results of complicated computations developed under as- 
 sumed ideal conditions ; and on this account it is highly prob- 
 able that, among the branches that command the attention of 
 the specialists in the profession, there is none requiring so com- 
 plete an understanding of both the theory and practice, and a 
 familiarity with the business conditions involved in the various- 
 problems at issue, as does the concentration of ores. And w r hile 
 the value of the theoretical studies is not intended to be under- 
 rated, yet it is evident that if the ore-dressing specialist cannot 
 be expert in all three requirements, he may better sacrifice the 
 higher mathematical knowledge of the behavior of different sub- 
 stances in various mediums, under variable conditions, than be 
 deficient in the experience and practical business sense necessary 
 to a successful solution of the problems coming within the prov 
 i nee of the art. 
 
 Ores are not infrequently met with in which the specific gravi- 
 ties of the valuable and worthless ingredients, although favor- 
 able to a fairly good separation, act, on account of other phys- 
 ical peculiarities, so nearly alike, subjected to mechanical treat- 
 ment, that separation is rendered practically impossible. Hence 
 the necessity for exhaustive experimentation as a preliminary in 
 deciding upon the concentration properties of an ore. 
 
 However, not alone a neglect in making such preliminary 
 tests is the cause of many of the failures of concentration 
 schemes ; for it has happened that all the laboratory work has 
 been carefully done and the plant properly appointed ; but alas t 
 a thorough mining examination was not undertaken, and, after 
 a few days' run, the source of the ore supply has proved inade- 
 quate to the capacity of the mill, and the prime requisite to the 
 success of a formidable concentration enterprise is found want- 
 
ANOTHER CONCENTRATOR. 
 
 87 
 
 ing, namely, large masses of suitable low-grade ore exploitable 
 at a cost sufficiently below its net metal value to leave a margin 
 for profit over and above the expense of hauling, dressing, and 
 the unusually heavy losses involved in the mechanical process, be- 
 
 Pfy.l. 
 
 THE CORNING CONCENTRATOR. 
 
 sides the pro rata cost of transportation and treatment of the 
 concentrates according to the concentration proportion attain- 
 able. 
 
 The investigation of this fundamental requirement is quite as 
 much a matter for underground inspection and mining judg- 
 
PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 ment as it is a question demanding the subjection of the ore to 
 panning and other decisive tests ; and as a general rule, which, 
 truth to tell, is too little adhered to by enthusiastic Eastern com- 
 panies, the erection of costly plants should invariably be pre- 
 ceded by satisfactory developments insuring a constant ore sup- 
 
 Among the conditions under which Western mines are opera- 
 ted, in mountainous and somewhat inaccessible localities, the ex- 
 pense of transportation is an important item in swelling the 
 cost of production. And in such districts, other things being 
 favorable, the chief advantage of dressing is to be looked for in 
 the saving of freight consequent upon effecting a certain con- 
 centration proportion of the valuable metallic constituents. 
 Here it may be mentioned that the disasters of custom ore- 
 dressing works are frequently to be traced to the placing of mills 
 at points, perhaps central as far as accessible situation goes, but 
 at such distances from the mines that yield the bulk of the min- 
 eral that the cost of hauling the raw ore to the works is just 
 heavy enough to absorb all the protit of the process and defeat 
 the main object of mechanical treatment. Owing to this mis- 
 take and to the unsuitable, scattered occurrence of low-grade 
 mines in one and the same district, custom concentration, gener- 
 ally speaking, has not proved very successful. 
 
 The most difficult part of ore-dressing is notably the washing 
 of the sands, coarse pulps, and slimes. The processes followed 
 in the mechanical treatment of these fine products involve at 
 once a disproportionate amount of time, trouble, expense, and 
 loss, besides an intricacy of management, as compared with the 
 concentration stages of coarser-grained material. 
 
 The realization of these complexities and of the imperfections 
 attending the treatment of the pulverized products, which sug- 
 gest the necessity for improvements in the automatic action 
 and capacity of buddies, percussion-tables, and vanning machines 
 with the object of increasing the purity and efficiency of pulp- 
 washing, is evidenced by the many machines and devices toward 
 the patenting and introduction of which inventors are directing 
 their efforts. 
 
 The vanning principle, in its various modifications, has ap- 
 parently predominated, and earned the most important position 
 
ANOTHER CONCENTRATOR. 89 
 
 in the United States among the machines that handle crushed 
 products below a fineness suitable for concentration on jigs. 
 
 Although it must be acknowledged, practically if not theo- 
 retically, that a complete separation cannot be continuously pro- 
 duced in one operation (for, in attempting to make pure " head- 
 ing concentrates" free from the worthless gangue material, 
 " tailings" there will always be a transitional zone of intermedi- 
 ate richness, " middlings ": and in general any attempt to elimi- 
 nate the latter product will result in either making lean head- 
 ings or rich tailings]^ still the most popular of the modern 
 dressing-tables have in view the effecting of a perfect, continu- 
 ous separation, that is, to do clean work with a minimum loss ; 
 and in the construction and operation of such vanners, little or 
 no account has heretofore been taken or provision made for the 
 middling grades of material. 
 
 The concentrator that is the subject of this article, recently 
 patented by the writer, not only separates the heavy and valu- 
 able metalliferous particles contained in ore pulp and mill tail- 
 ings from the gangue or waste material, which is the light and 
 worthless portion, but the concentration is carried to a finer 
 grade of perfection in that the machine also effects a separation 
 of the several kinds of valuable ore particles into different 
 classes, according to the metalliferous-mineralogical constituency 
 of the ore under treatment. 
 
 The peculiar advantages derived from the operation of this 
 machine are the following : 
 
 1st. Middling products can be made. 
 
 2d. Such intermediate or transitional zones can be regulated 
 as may appear necessary to preserve the purity of the headings 
 and the leanness of the tailings. 
 
 3d. The middlings from these machines can be continuously 
 and automatically drawn off and subjected jointly to another 
 dressing on a " middling " vanner, to extract the remaining 
 valuable product, from which second operation the tailings and 
 middlings will be sufficiently impoverished to be thrown away. 
 
 4th. The subdivision produced by this vanner, in certain zinc 
 and pyritous ores, renders the compositions of the several classes 
 of concentrates better adapted to subsequent metallurgical treat- 
 ment. 
 
 6 
 
90 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 In ore-dressing parlance, this machine might be termed a 
 Rittinger side-percussion vanner. Its superiority over the old 
 Rittinger table consists in the banded shape of the apron, name- 
 ly, the shortness of the table, measured in the direction of the in- 
 cline, which is made possible to use under the peculiar order of 
 arrangement and combinations of the machine. By means of 
 the movement imparted to the pulp particles by the traveling 
 belt, in addition to the forward propulsion characteristic of the 
 Rittinger percussion, the parabolic zones are elongated and their 
 respective discharges from the table are more easily regulated 
 by variable quantities of clarifying water led on to the apron 
 in flows of varying width and power. These ore parabolas on 
 the old Rittinger table, with fixed, solid bottom instead of a 
 comparatively narrow belt, whose line of travel is horizontal as 
 peculiar to the machine in point, are more closely crowded to- 
 gether ; and from their shape and narrow course down the table, 
 with only small diversion from the line of the table's dip, these 
 parabolic stripes are exceedingly sensitive and easily diverted 
 from their normal paths by slight irregularities in feeding and in 
 the pulp composition. 
 
 The modification of these features and the more advantageous 
 drawing out of the pulp are among the distinguishing marks of 
 this concentrator. 
 
 Fig. 1 is a plan view of my vanner, showing the parabolic 
 curves formed on the traveling apron or belt by the particles of 
 the ore-pulp fed thereon and separated in the order of their 
 specific gravities during the progress of concentration and sepa- 
 ration, fig. 3 is a plan view of this side-percussion vanner, 
 showing the rollers over which the traveling apron is carried 
 and also the roller for tightening the same. Fig. 4 is a cross or 
 end view showing the lateral inclination of the belt with a pulp- 
 mixer. 
 
 In the preliminary working out of this machine, which was 
 experimented upon by the writer for a long time prior to its 
 publication in patent form, a very complex ore in one of the 
 celebrated mining districts of Europe, consisting of galena, 
 arsenical pyrites, iron pyrites, and zinc-blende, with a quartzose, 
 calc, and fluor-spar gangue, was successfully worked. 
 
 The pulp from this ore, which passed through a one mm. 
 
ANOTHER CONCENTRATOR. 91 
 
 starnp-battery screen, was first graded into five classes in an as- 
 cending stream classificator. The first class, or coarsest pulp, 
 was worked on a continuous four-compartment jig, while the 
 remaining classes of the pulp were dressed on plain, longi- 
 tudinal percussion-tables involving much hand-labor and many 
 w r ashings before a marketable product was produced. The di- 
 version from these percussion-tables and the treatment of the 
 second, third, fourth, and fifth divisions of the pulp on my ma- 
 chine gave, continuously, pure market products, corresponding 
 to the grades of concentrates produced by the automatic jigging 
 of class ISTo. 1, referred to above. 
 
 The extreme delicacy of this concentrator, and the striking 
 perfection with which the comparatively speaking infinitesimal 
 amounts of the different minerals were actually made to walk 
 out from the impure pulp mass, were thoroughly proved, and 
 should insure a successful future for this machine. 
 
VIII. 
 
 UNPROFESSIONAL OFFICE AND LABORATORY 
 MINING REPORTS* 
 
 A PRACTICE injurious to the mining engineering profession, 
 or, more collectively expressed, to all those professing to be 
 mining engineers, has long existed in the United States. 
 
 Not to become too personal, some recent manifestations of 
 these malpractices have appeared in various forms in our Eastern 
 cities, which deserve to be strongly denounced through the in- 
 teresting and influential columns of your valuable journal. This 
 frequently recurring evil consists substantially in the writing of 
 reports and indorsements of mining and metallurgical proper- 
 ties and ventures, based, not on direct personal investigation of 
 fact in the field, but on such indirect, incidental evidence as 
 hearsay reports, designing correspondence, friendly corrobora- 
 tion of represented facts, census statistics, specimen assays, etc. 
 
 All these sources of information, not to speak of being gen- 
 erally unreliable and misleading, are at the most only of second- 
 ary importance as compared with conscientious, expert sam- 
 pling, surveying, thorough investigation of the actual qualitative 
 and quantitative ore occurrence, conditions of commercial situa- 
 tion and all other essential economic features which are only to 
 be ascertained on the ground and capable of being judged in 
 their bearing on the questions at issue, after careful detailed 
 inspection and weighing, from a business and expert point of 
 view. 
 
 During periods of prosperity when a better, or at least a more 
 charitable, feeling toward mining operations prevails in business 
 circles, and the failures and disappointments so frequently at- 
 tached to ventures of this class begin to be forgotten, the public, 
 
 * From The Financial and Mining Record, New York, July 10, 1886. 
 
UNPROFESSIONAL REPORTS. 93 
 
 waking up to the money-making inducements afforded by legiti- 
 mate mining, and considering the numerous schemes which are 
 at short notice created to meet the first indication of a revival 
 of the speculative interest, are at once confronted with document- 
 ary recommendations of this worthless kind. And strange to 
 say, these so-called " Reports " are over the signatures, not alone 
 of men of pretended engineering qualifications ; but the names 
 of well-known assayers, chemists, metallurgical and mining en- 
 gineers, who might naturally be expected to have reputations at 
 stake, are sometimes found as willing expert indorsers. 
 
 Whether intentional or not, the style in which such documents 
 are written, is calculated to deceive the casual reader into believ- 
 ing that the writer is submitting a verdict based upon individual 
 examination and experience, i. e., an unbiased, final, and authori- 
 tative judgment to the best of his' professional ability. 
 
 The superficiality of such reports is often so daringly disguised 
 that there is not even a slight reference to the source of the in- 
 formation, much less an admission of inadequate evidence on cer- 
 tain salient points. Indeed, the wording is so cleverly arranged 
 that the detection of their true character and worthlessness is 
 difficult even to other engineers subjecting the documents to 
 close analysis. Everything is stated in most positive language, 
 and no encumbering " ifs " or conditional clauses are allowed to 
 enter in to weaken the style and force of these convincing reports. 
 
 While the casual observer, however, may not detect their 
 emptiness, a second reading by one on the alert discloses the fact 
 that the author is only giving the gist of some one else's pre- 
 tended belief, and as a matter of fact, has not thoroughly investi- 
 gated into the conditions of the case under discussion, but merely 
 indorses blindly a second party's opinion who, by the way, has 
 almost always a pecuniary interest in the ultimate results gained 
 by his " expert's affidavit." 
 
 It is self-evident that the great defect in this kind of office 
 work is the fact that the element of individual mining and busi- 
 ness judgment, which should be the pith and main object of a 
 professional report, is almost wholly excluded from opinions ren- 
 dered under these circumstances. It naturally follows, however 
 plausible the tenor of the document, that owing to the uncer- 
 tainty of the accepted premises, the recommendations will be 
 
94 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 one-sided and theoretical worthless as a decisive basis for 
 action. 
 
 Now in regard to exporting and what is ordinarily meant by 
 that much-abused term, no claim is made to clairvoyance and 
 kindred fanciful accomplishments, sometimes erroneously claimed 
 by, and more commonly expected of, the profession. But it is 
 firmly believed, whatever be the proper appellation, that there 
 is such a thing as successful discrimination and choice in the 
 recommendation of mining properties and metallurgical projects ; 
 and moreover, other things being equal, that the best judgment 
 to follow as a guide for the promotion and prosecution of such 
 industries is that of a man educated in the scientific branches in- 
 volved in the finding, exploitation, and treatment of ores, bal- 
 anced and rounded off with business and professional experience 
 in the field. With honesty and the ordinary amount of natural 
 adaptation and talent necessary to achieve success in other de- 
 partments of professional life, the work of the expert mining 
 engineer is entitled to a high position of authority, and is just as 
 valuable and safe to follow as is the advice governing the ventures 
 and operations in other lines of industry. 
 
 It is not denied that in consulting practice, questions will be 
 asked and information must be given concerning certain import- 
 ant points, forming part of the main problem ; but the adviser 
 in such cases should be cautious in committing himself, and not 
 be deluded into twisting and broadening his work to an unwar- 
 ranted limit, merely to further the ends of his enthusiastic client. 
 
 The intensely speculative character of the people by whom 
 mining engineers are often employed, brings to bear many influ- 
 ences to warp professional judgment. And it behooves engineers 
 to guard against such a disposition on the part of promoting em- 
 ployers ; and in avoiding the pernicious phases of expert work, 
 the profession will become elevated to the dignity becoming its 
 importance and requirements in point of capacity, training, and 
 education. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE CHOICE AND LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF 
 
 MINES.* 
 
 IN replying to " Subscriber's " request for some enlighten- 
 ment on the question of selecting mining property and the possi- 
 bility of profitably operating desirable mines on legitimate prin- 
 ciples, I take pleasure in supplementing my last communication 
 with the following brief remarks : 
 
 The consideration of this subject is especially appropriate in 
 relation to mines of the precious metals which, for the most 
 part, are made the bases for the irregularities and abusive specu- 
 lative transactions which so frequently cloud the mining indus- 
 try of the United States ; while, on the other hand, the opera- 
 tions of coal, iron, and copper properties have, generally speak- 
 ing, long since settled down into comparatively steady enter- 
 prises, and are no more questioned as to their legitimacy or 
 classed among the so-called " extremely hazardous gambles." 
 
 But it should be noted that the exhaustive discussion of these 
 questions might properly constitute the subject for an entire 
 volume, for the publication of which it is not to be presumed 
 your valuable journal could allow the necessary space. Such 
 elaborate treatment would involve at once a review of precious- 
 metal mining in the United States, and would also embrace a 
 somewhat comprehensive synopsis of mineral deposits and vein 
 phenomena, in their bearing on economic mining more espe- 
 cially with respect to the influences of such natural conditions 
 on the business chances of mining ventures. 
 
 A mere cursory analysis, however, of the records, facts, and 
 ultimate issues of various mining operations, from the stand- 
 point of their pertinency to the theme under discussion, leads 
 
 * From The Financial and Mining Record, New York, July 24 and 
 31, 1886. 
 
96 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 undeniably to the conclusion that the accumulated data of ex- 
 perience in the United States, from the early working of the 
 famous Comstock lode in Nevada down to the present time, 
 constitute a store of practical field knowledge inestimably valu- 
 able to those administering the gold, silver, and lead interests of 
 the Western States and Territories, in furthering the accuracy 
 of professional decisions upon the numerous questions pertaining 
 to the degrees of valuation to be placed on mineral properties 
 during progressive stages of their development. 
 
 On the other hand, mines that pay to work are characterized 
 by certain favorable features in the qualitative and quantitative 
 mineral occurrences, in the distribution and continuity of ore 
 bodies, proportion of stoping ground to barren vein matter, de- 
 gree of profit yield or the credit balance under a given scale of 
 operation, i. e., with the maintenance of a fair, healthy propor- 
 tion between dead work and stoping ground, the returns left 
 after deducting the total expenditure and interest involved in 
 such exploratory development work and exploitation from the 
 revenue accruing from the ore or bullion production, are a crite- 
 rion of the remunerative capacity of the property under the pe- 
 culiarities and conditions of location. And on the other hand, 
 the characteristics of unremunerative properties, considered as a 
 whole, are equally pronounced to the educated engineer of 
 capacity and experience, the chief distinguishing mark being 
 generally the absence of all the principal features essential to 
 pay mines ; and if such qualities are not totally missing they are, 
 at most, present in a very weak, indefinite, and unsatisfactory 
 degree, precluding, if not the possibility, at all events the busi- 
 ness probability, of paying. 
 
 It is not claimed that the dividing line between these two ex- 
 treme groups of mines is sharply defined ; nor is it denied that 
 there is a gradual transition or merging into one another of the 
 economic and uneconomic features ; for, broadly speaking, Na- 
 ture has created mineral deposits of all degrees of worthlessness 
 and profitableness. 
 
 But to the intelligent capitalist, who operates on conservative 
 principles and avoids dealing with mere mineral indications and 
 other prospects of uncertain character, a classification of mines 
 into three kinds presents itself, namely : 
 
CHOICE AND LEGITIMATE OPEKATION OF MINES. 97 
 
 1. Pay Mines of determined character and computable value. 
 
 2. Transitional Mines, in an unrenmnerative condition, but 
 bidding fair to develop into paying properties. 
 
 3. Undeveloped Miscellaneous Claims and Prospects of un- 
 economical nature. 
 
 The first of these divisions comprises only rare exceptions, 
 while classes 2 and 3 include the bulk of all mineral discoveries 
 and claims ; and their indiscriminate, blind development on ex- 
 aggerated representations largely for speculative purposes, has 
 caused the frequent lamentable losses and disappointments in 
 mining enterprises. 
 
 But infallible success can no more be expected of mining than 
 in other lines of industry ; for in the same measure that Nature 
 has irregularly, and, it must be acknowledged, somewhat disap- 
 pointingly, distributed ore bodies of variable grades and dimen- 
 sions, there will be in mining ventures, even when conducted 
 under fairly favorable auspices, corresponding uncertainties and 
 failures. While, therefore, the masses during periods of infla- 
 tion and wild speculation on the apex of a cycle of prosperity 
 must necessarily lose, as will also be the experience in all lines 
 of industry for those "buying in recklessly at the top," never- 
 theless, the efforts of corporations equipped with an honest, able 
 guidance, can meet with success, if operating alone with first- 
 class mines; and under these circumstances, the capitalist will be 
 found to win in the average of his ventures and reap a profit, 
 if not on the par capitalization of his company, at least on the 
 actual cash investment, far greater and less hampered by the in- 
 fluences of competition than in any other business. 
 
 This selfish policy of only choosing the " cream " in mining, 
 it may be argued, would lead to a dangerous stagnation in the 
 development of the country's mineral resources ; and in conse- 
 q_uence of such a serious limitation, many good mines would go 
 undiscovered for want of the co-operation of capitalists in sus- 
 taining vigorous prospecting. To this it may be replied that 
 the intoxicating fascination, almost inseparably associated with 
 mining, will, in a country like our own, whose people are fairly 
 saturated with speculative enthusiasm to the extent of being nat- 
 ural risk-takers, always prove an irresistible attraction to vision- 
 ary people who, with a superficial knowledge of mining and an 
 
98 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 erroneous conception of the real nature of a " mining risk," will 
 spend their time and money romancing through the mountains 
 and " assessment holes " in search of the inuch-dreamed-of Bo- 
 nanza mines. These prospectors are a good-natured, warm- 
 hearted class of mining adventurers ; but in face of the fact that 
 only in very rare instances are their efforts crowned with finan- 
 cial success, it is self-evident that a most imaginative, sanguine 
 temperament is necessary as an incentive to such a vocation. 
 And after much weary labor and repeated disappointments in 
 "hunting for a lead," serious disputes, conflicts of title, and not 
 infrequently the total expenditure of hard-earned savings, the 
 prospector, with his restless, roving disposition, is wont to be- 
 come discouraged, sometimes when his claim is on the point of 
 developing into a property of merit. 
 
 This crisis in the affairs of the discoverer and early worker of 
 mineral claims, is the most propitious time for the entrance of 
 capital into the field of mining, because the primary risks having 
 already been taken by the original owner, and " generous " ore 
 exposures of profitable grade and dimensions having been "put 
 in sight," it is a matter of common mining experience that such 
 a valuable find has much better chances of continuing good and 
 even improving, than a poor showing has of ever opening out 
 into a paying mine. And at such a period the prospector, who 
 has not the means, skill, and executive ability to conduct syste- 
 matic operations under organized labor, can be treated with on 
 terms favorable to both seller and purchaser. 
 
 How, then, is it that so much money has been lost in mining? 
 
 In answering this query, many unprofitable expenditures may 
 be traced to one of the following sources: First and foremost, 
 the inevitable losses ; these are inherent in the nature of the 
 mining business and are largely to be accounted for in the extreme 
 phases of the eccentricities and irregularities of mineral deposits, 
 such as faults, unexpected limitations of ore chutes, pinching, 
 treacherous occurrence of the pay ore, pockety formations, etc. 
 The latter class of anomalous deposits includes a great variety 
 of mines, among which are found some of the most noted per- 
 manent and profitable properties in the history of the industry ; 
 although, as a whole, enterprises based on the working of a 
 pocket property, as ordinarily understood, are wanting in con- 
 tinuity and have generally resulted disastrously. 
 
CHOICE AND LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF MINES. 99 
 
 The more conspicuously successful of these irregular pockets 
 or so-called abnormal mines, however, are distinguished for a 
 bonanza form of ore occurrence, consisting either of one body of 
 unusually large dimensions, or they are made up of a continuous 
 chain of pockets and ore chambers more or less connected and 
 traceable by lode material and stringers along a certain geologi- 
 cal plane or mineralized zone. The Leadville and Eureka de- 
 posits may be cited as types of this more regular and reliable 
 class of pocket mines. 
 
 The undesirable variety of irregular properties, the working 
 of which has caused many of the notorious losses connected with 
 this group, consists of those deposits which are made up of ore 
 bodies of limited extent occurring almost entirely disconnected 
 with one another, or totally isolated ; and in these mines the 
 discovery of new ore-reserves is a pure gamble, with the chances 
 against the miner, as there is no lead or other indication to fol- 
 low as a guide to new ore ground. 
 
 But a second and most prolific source of disappointments and 
 losses in the ventures of mining companies is to be looked for in 
 what may be termed the inexcusable or avoidable causes. Here 
 may be mentioned the purchase and working of uneconomical 
 properties, under inferior advice and poor mining judgment ; 
 also the conducting of mining operations on bad financial princi- 
 ples, over-capitalized and in efficiently managed. 
 
 Every engineer and experienced mining operator knows that 
 for years past the Eastern markets have been deluged with pros- 
 pectus reports of properties which never warranted the attention 
 of capitalists, much less being incorporated into companies of 
 heavy capitalization under the guise of valuable mines. In in- 
 numerable cases groups of such mines (so-called), while hardly 
 meriting the risk of further expenditure in their development, 
 are not even entitled to the rank of fairly promising prospects. 
 
 It is one thing to open a prospact in an inexpensive way to 
 the extent of a few thousand dollars, but quite a different busi- 
 ness venture to work the same property under an expensive sys- 
 tem involved in a corporate scale of operations. The first case 
 may not result in material losses or great disappointment, because 
 the " prospect risk " is fully understood ; but in the latter case 
 the community at large suffers serious financial losses combined 
 
100 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 with dissatisfaction and a general cry against mining. Claims 
 of this kind should not be presented to capitalists or placed on 
 Eastern markets as " mines." In any event, if worked under 
 corporate management, the risk attached to their development 
 should be thoroughly understood to be a prospect chance and 
 not a mining venture in the best sense, while the capitalization 
 under which they are incorporated should be reduced to a 
 minimum. 
 
 The method followed in promoting mining companies is also 
 to a considerable extent responsible for many of the mistakes 
 and failures in the prosecution of mining enterprises. The pol- 
 icy of the management is too often controlled by motives of 
 personal interest, and the directors' efforts instead of inuring to 
 the benefit of their company, in making ample provision for a 
 liberal working capital and surplus fund, are frequently directed 
 toward securing and disposing of bonus stock. 
 
 It is eminently proper that liberal interests should be allowed 
 and commissions paid to parties through whose facilities and 
 good judgment valuable mining interests have been acquired at 
 prices which render their purchase exceptionally safe ; and for 
 similar reasons, under these circumstances, it is proper that a 
 mine should be capitalized at a greater rate than the actual cash 
 price paid in consideration for the property. Bat the promoters' 
 commission interests, as well as the stock capitalization with which 
 the property is loaded, should be consistent with reason and 
 with the mine's value and business probabilities upon more ex- 
 tensive development. 
 
 There is a peculiar obscurity about mining which cannot be 
 fully comprehended or judged by the public at large, in the 
 same sense that other industries, admitting of more thorough 
 investigation, can be grasped. Hence it becomes necessary that 
 promoting firms and syndicates, who make a specialty of the 
 business, shall be intrusted with the floating of good mines and 
 with the financiering and management of mining companies. 
 The position of these firms and parties is one of trust, and mutual 
 confidence and good faith should be the foundation of their rela- 
 tionship with the speculative class of investors. 
 
 The elimination of many of the false methods of incorporation, 
 inflation, and management, injurious to the successful prosecu- 
 tion of mining, rests with the promoters to effect. 
 
CHOICE AND LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF MINES. 101 
 
 But it sometimes happens that mines which have proven fairly 
 successful are spoken of as " failures," when in reality they have 
 returned the entire purchase price and working capital expended 
 plus a speculative profit of, say, fifty per cent, or more ; and as 
 there is, perhaps, no market for the stock, owing to a temporary 
 exhaustion as far as dividends are concerned, the ventures are 
 described as swindles by a class of lambs who bought the shares 
 at high prices during the dividend stage of prosperity. 
 
 And this leads to some erroneous conceptions of the nature of 
 mining dividends with which the public mind is imbued. Mines, 
 generally speaking, are not permanently paying producers ; but 
 frequently the profit return is so sudden and large that, although 
 the dividends only extend over a few years, their aggregate 
 amounts to as much, if not more, than in certain lines of indus- 
 try which yield a smaller and more regular interest on the money 
 invested. In so far, however, that mineral deposits are exhaust- 
 ible, and the careers of mines are limited to a variable number 
 of years, every dividend produced is in reality the subtraction of 
 just so much value from the property ; and on this account min- 
 ing profits are not to be regarded as dividends in the ordinary 
 manufacturing and railroad acceptance of the term. We may, 
 therefore, properly speaking, regard a mine as a " big specimen," 
 whose exploitation will yield a probable aggregate product which 
 may be considered as a varying annuity lasting a certain number 
 of years. Graphically represented, a mine's life is something 
 after the fashion of a crescendo with a corresponding decres- 
 cendo : At first a small product, increasing to a maximum as the 
 mine becomes extensively developed, and finally decreasing as 
 the point of exhaustion is approached. These variations must 
 be allowed for and will naturally influence the stock quotations. 
 Too commonly, however, no account is taken of the fast ap- 
 proaching decline in the property's prosperity ; and the divi- 
 dends, though they may have been declared to the extent of 
 several hundred or a thousand per cent, on the first subscription 
 price of the stock, have been spent as liberally and with as much 
 assurance of continuance as the proceeds from the coupons of 
 Government bonds. Apparently, at the brightest moment, a 
 decline sets in which carries the price of the stock, relatively 
 speaking, out of sight. Dividends are spent and the capital 
 
102 PAPERS FROM THE NOTES OF AN ENGINEER. 
 
 originally invested has disappeared, and mines in consequence 
 are strongly denounced. 
 
 To counteract this disparaging influence the stockholder should 
 set aside regularly a share of the accruing dividends to eventually 
 reimburse himself to the amount of his investment. Or, mining 
 companies might, after first devoting their earnings to the accu- 
 mulation of a surplus fund for bridging over periods of tempo- 
 rary exhaustion, cut down their rate of dividends say one-third, 
 devoting only two-thirds of the mine's earning capacity to stock- 
 holders and depositing the remaining one-third in trust to be 
 eventually divided out pro rata on the stock in amounts equal to 
 the original subscriptions, so that each certificate would carry a 
 right to a share in such a subscribers' sinking fund. Stripped 
 of all incumbering defects in the methods of acquiring and man- 
 aging mines, by compassing exact facts through honest and intel- 
 ligent investigation and the devotion of the same careful atten- 
 tion as is necessary in other departments of business, mining 
 "becomes a most attractive and relatively safe speculative pursuit. 
 
 Already signs of improvement are discernible. The number 
 of mistakes and wild-cat schemes is yearly diminishing ; at the 
 same time, all divisions of the precious-metal industries are fast 
 settling down into legitimate employments. 
 
 The West is no longer dependent upon Eastern resources for 
 the development of its mineral lands to the same extent as for- 
 merly, as the capitalists of San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Omaha, 
 Denver, Leadville, and other prominent commercial centres, hav- 
 ing implicit faith in their home industry, deal in mines at cash 
 prices and work them liberally and intelligently. The regular 
 profitable operations of many companies, never heard of on the 
 Eastern markets, attest the success of Western ventures, and 
 their regularly divided profits would be a matter of surprise to 
 some of our skeptical business men of the East. 
 
 This steady progress and improvement at the fountain head, 
 practically uninfluenced by long periods of depression in general 
 trade, is bound to make itself felt in the near future ; and the 
 signs of the times point to a growing belief in the recognition of 
 mining in its proper position. It is fair to presume that in the 
 next boom mining enterprises will be better thought of and more 
 intelligently conducted than has been their reputation in the past. 
 
CHOICE AND LEGITIMATE OPERATION OF MINES. 103 
 
 Since historic time mining has never ceased to occupy an ex- 
 alted position in foreign countries where it has been favored 
 with marked disposition to foster its interests in every way ; 
 and, moreover, those who are officially identified with the pros- 
 ecution of the industry are envied in their positions of trust and 
 authority. 
 
 In our rich and prosperous country the mineral resources, in 
 their vastness and adaptation to economical working, are in pro- 
 portion to all other natural advantages of this wonderful conti- 
 nent. And, being at the disposal of an energetic, rich, and ven- 
 turesome people, there is every reason why the development of 
 the mining interests of the United States should rank among the 
 most legitimate and inviting pursuits. 
 
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