a miner, and it should assist him in
prospecting; but it has never yet enabled any body to find a valuable
claim.

_Distribution of Gold in Quartz._--The rich quartz-veins of California
extend from Kern River to the Siskiyou, are found on hills, in _canons_
and in vales. They are at least two thousand feet above the level of
the sea, and not more than ten thousand feet above it. Their course is
generally from north-north-west to south-south-east, and they dip
steeply to the eastward, sometimes being nearly perpendicular. They
differ in thickness from a line to sixty feet. Quartz veins are very
numerous in most of the mining districts, so the task is not to find
the veins, but rather to find those which are gold-bearing. It is
supposed that nearly all large veins come to the surface of the
bed-rock or "country;" but many of them are covered with soil and thus
are hidden. Hidden veins are called "blind;" those plainly visible on
the surface are called "croppings veins," because their position is
shown by the out-croppings. Experience has not ascertained whether
large or small veins are more likely to contain gold. It is found in
both. The porous quartz, or that containing many cavities, is more
frequently found auriferous and richly auriferous, than the very
compact quartz. The best gold-bearing veins are usually yellowish or
brownish in tinge, near the surface at least; but very rich specimens
are found in white and bluish-white rock. Most quartz veins in
California contain a little gold; the metal seems to have been
distributed most lavishly, but unfortunately in nine-tenths of the
veins, the proportion of metal is too small to pay. Most of the large
veins are supposed to run for miles upon miles, though they can rarely
be traced clearly on the surface for more than a furlong. The
auriferous veins vary much in richness. No vein is wrought for more
than a few hundred feet. Beyond that, it is either too poor to pay, or
the vein is hidden. Some persons have supposed that there is one great
gold-bearing quartz vein running along the side of the Sierra Nevada,
from Mariposa to Plumas county, and that many of the richest claims are
really in this one vein; but this a supposition which cannot be proved
now. Sometimes a vein seems to spread out and divide into a number of
smaller veins, all of which afterward unite again. These points of
junction, and the narrower places in the vein, are usually richer than
other parts of it.