e Andes, descending in a northeasterly direction to the river
Amazon, and that their much coveted and enormous productions were the
accumulated riches of the Incas, transferred as spoils of war to their
Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century. And for similar explorations
in the same class of depositions we have the experiences of our own times,
and which explain by comparison all the previous operations alluded to.

Thus in the year 1849, after the cession of the northern portion of Mexico
to the United States of North America, the rich mineral district of
California was at once invaded by hardy and intelligent bands of mining
adventurers from all parts of the world, who, with little other means at
their disposal but pick, shovel, and pan, soon fell on the productive bars
of rivers and rich ravines where the gold was trapped, derived from its
original birthplaces, where it had been sparsely disseminated, to be
dispersed by the subsequent disintegrations and denudations of the
mountains themselves, and deposited in a disengaged form for the first
comer; and so perfect were sometimes these concentrations, in certain
localities where water once streamed, that, divested of its earthy matrix,
the cleansed pure metal was found deposited, detained by its superior
specific gravity, on the bare rock, and only hidden from vision by a
slight covering of vegetable mould. In this manner, as an example of such
concentration, a "pot" or "find" (in mining parlance) to the value of
L10,000 was collected in a space of 15 square yards, or within the limits
of a particular "mining claim," at the foot of Mokulumne Hill, in a
southern county of California, soon after the territorial transfer from
Mexico. And in search of such locations we must account for the numberless
shafts which still exist both in India and Peru, and sometimes sunk within
a few feet of each other, passing through the alluvium to a depth of 40
feet to the bed rock.

These mining adventurers soon extended their explorations over the other
recently acquired territories, and built Virginia City, the capital of
Montana, with the gold derived from the alluvium of a river channel which
they excavated; and its inhabitants were the founders of an institution
called the Vigilance Committee, with "Lynch law," and by it ruled
supremely for many years. But their surface diggings, by the manual
operations alone of multitudes, were soon exhausted in every direction,
and then thei