perfect manner, to a trader at Walla Walla, who with others attempted, on information given by the Indians, to reach the mines, but, failing, joined the gold-seekers then rushing into Idaho through the Grand Rond Valley, and it was not until 1884 that the locality so long ago sought was discovered. The mines lie in granite, in granite and slate, and sometimes in the plane of contact between the two.
The Contact Silver-Mine, sixty or seventy miles northeast of Baker City, is an example of the latter vein. It is accessible only from Cornucopia, from which place it is distant three miles, and two thousand feet higher. The vein runs along the south side of the mountain, one thousand feet above the stream, and parallel with it. It has an average width of four feet, and lies upon granite, with the slate above,'dipping into the mountain at an angle of forty-five degrees. The rock is easily mined, and said to be rich.
The Whitman Mine has been worked more than any other in the district. It is owned in Louisville, Kentucky, by a company with capital sufficient to develop whatever riches it may contain. They have at least found geological eccentricities enough to confound the scientists.
Several claims opened only by prospect holes are located on the mountain, of which Red Jacket, Robert Emmet, Union, and Companion mines are most prominent. On the middle fork of the Irnnaha River, graphic tellurium has been discovered in Silver Tongue Mine, owned by private parties. The ore assays from two hundred and twenty-five dollars to twenty-one thousand dollars per ton, in gold. A large country remains unprospected in the Pine Creek region, on the Wallowa County side, where argentiferous galena and gold-bearing ores are known to exist.
The ores of this district are base, and smelting will be a necessity. The free gold which appears on the surface is owing simply to the decomposition of sulphurets into oxidized compounds of the other accompanying metals, which, being friable and loose, have been w'ashed away, leaving the gold free; but this, although highly gratifying at first, cannot go below a certain depth.
Metallurgical works have been established at Allent
