The sight of these treasures naturally caused great excitement, and gave the owners hope of fabulous riches. A quartz- mill and saw-mill were purchased and set up in the district; but, like the Gold Hill mine in southern Oregon, which, indeed, it resembled, it suddenly failed, the pocket being exhausted. Afterwards the mill was burned. A second effort to make something out of this mine by other parties was also a failure, and a second mill was burned. It is believed, however, that with different methods and concentration, this mine might be made to pay, and recent developments go to confirm it.
Another mine in this district,—the Canal Fork,—carries free gold at the surface only. By working-test it yields from nineteen dollars to thirty dollars per ton. Lower down the ore becomes very base with galena, and assays from two hundred dollars to five hundred ounces per ton of silver. There is a mill on this mine which produced from two hundred tons five thousand dollars, or twenty-five dollars per ‘ton. The cost of the mill and other expenses were twenty thousand dollars. Even at this amount the mine could be made, with good management, to
Pay-
Other mines in the adjoining district of Galena assay w T ell, and quartz leads charged with lead; copper, iron, and zinc sulphides, the galena carrying silver, are frequent. One galena lode, four feet in width, assays forty ounces of silver to the ton, with no minerals prejudicial to smelting accompanying it.
The Bonanza mine, owned by the Albany Mining and Milling Company, is in the Quartzville district of the Santiam. The ore is free gold in- decomposed quartz, and resembles the product of the White Bull mine, assaying, in some instances, twenty-six thousand dollars to the ton. At present this mine promises to hold out for a year or more of milling, in which case the company will secure an ample fortune for all.
Why these mines are not more developed may be owing to several causes. Primarily, a heavy expense attends quartz- mining anywhere, and in a country so difficult of access it is increased. Again, these locations have not been made by practical miners, but by merchants and farmers, who have an assured living out of other pursuits, and who have neither the knowledge nor the capital to make a success of mining, b
