nity it would
appear that at one time in the earth's making, a great fissure opened in
forming California and a wedge of Nevada mining country was pushed into
it. North of there the California stratas begin again."

"But it was always my belief that these localities were on the Mother
Lode, as well as the Georgetown and Auburn country."

"Many persons are apparently under that impression, but the geological
surveys of the government place it in the exact location I have given
you."

The "Old Miner, '49er," said: "We hunted most all o' our lives, lookin'
for her! We called her the Mother Lode, because we thought that all the
gold in the state must a' come from her an' washed down the rivers onto
the bars where we found it. We thought she'd be pure gold, an' a hundred
feet wide an' go on, world without end. We looked, an' looked, an' after
quartz minin' come in, we dug an' dug, but we never found the old girl
exceptin' here an' there.

"Joe Dance, that old prospector that died last year, he lost his mind
lookin' for the big lode. Made some rich strikes in his day, Joe did,
but he never could stop to work 'em. He was always waitin' for the
mother of 'em all, he said, who'd put him on the road to the heart a'
molten gold in the middle a' the earth.

"We old fellows tramped all the way through the hills with only a burro
for company most a' the time, an' you'll ride down a broad paved way,
soon, in your automobile. You'll go in days, where it took us months,
an' some brainy young engineer will locate the old girl, most likely, in
new-fangled ways that were unknown in our time.

"Well, the world whirls fast, now-a-days. Guess they'll need all the
gold in the old girl's lap to keep on greasin' the machinery. I take off
my hat to this generation. I hope they'll find it!"

Hittell says: "The Mother Lode is one of the most extraordinary
metalliferous veins in the world. Gold-bearing lodes usually range only
five or six miles, but this can be traced for more than sixty. The rock
is a hard and white quartz, rich in very fine particles of gold, and the
vein varies in width from a foot to thirty feet.

"There are in some portions of its course side branches or companion
veins, as they are sometimes called, making the total width nearly one
hundred feet. Nor is the direction of the lode always in a straight
line. Though usually found within half a mile of what may be considered
its normal course, it is sometimes found as far