known, but it is the leading mine in the district, and reduction works have been erected, at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars, at Ruby City, for the extraction of silver from this and other ores in this locality, with other improvements involving a large amount of capital. A concentrator has also been erected at Conconnully, but these helps have only partially relieved the embarrassments of the miners. The cost of transporting ore to Ellensburg, the nearest railroad point by steamboat and wagon-road, is two and a half cents per pound, a prohibitory price for the carrying of any but the highest grade of ores. Nothing like a general development can take place until the excessive cost of transportation is removed.
The other mines in the Okanogan country of the same general character of the Arlington are the Fourth of July, Ruby, and First Thought, in the Ruby district. The Tuff Nut, Mammoth, Lone Star, Home Stake, and Minnehaha, in Salmon River (Conconnully) district, are not so purely silver-bearing, and several in the Galena district carry enough lead for smelting.
The greatest advancement yet made in mining in Washington has been in Stevens County. About fifty miles by rail north of Spokane Falls, in the vicinity of Chewelali, is a mining district producing silver and lead ore which is reducible by smelting. The general character of the country is lime, the walls encasing the minerals being porphyry. These mines were discovered in 1883-84, but were not worked until about 1887. The Eagle Mine ore assayed three hundred dollars in silver and forty per cent, in lead. This property, situated about three miles east of Chewelah, is owned by capitalists who are able to develop it. In the vicinity are numerous mineral locations. The Shamrock is a vein forty-one feet wide, assaying twenty-four dollars in silver and thirty-five cents in gold, and the Pansy is an extension of the same formation, which is in porphyry. The Alpend, one mile east of the Eagle, is a good property, and many others promise well.
On the west side of the valley, seven miles from Chewelah, is the Finley, a vein of gray copper and chlorides, assaying from thirty dollars to six hundred dollars per ton, and there are several well-defined veins of the same quality of ore in the vicinity.
