ttle pockets of nuggets, sometimes spattered by the intense heat of
old into all forms of wires and spangles.

Quartz mining is yet in its rudest form. The gold is buried in solid
rock, and requires heavy crushing-mills and cumbrous machinery, which
must be built and transported at immense expense by capitalists. It is a
question with such capitalists how certain is the promise of returns.
The uncertainty of mining, as shown by the results of ventures in
Colorado, has naturally deterred them. Under the old process of crushing
the quartz to powder by stamps, and then separating the gold by
amalgamation with quicksilver, but twenty-five per cent of the gold is
saved. After the amalgamation a practical chemist could take the
"tailings" of the Dacotah ore, and produce almost the full assay of the
original rock. Very much depends in the mountain territories upon the
success of experiments, now in operation, with the various new
desulphurizing processes. This success established, the wealth of the
territories is incalculable.

All the mining of Montana is now confined to the placer or gulch
diggings. There are many of these, but probably none to compare in all
respects with those at Virginia. At Bannack is found purer gold, at
Biven's are larger nuggets, and many diggings at McClellan's yield
larger amounts per day. But these are lotteries,--some claims paying
largely to-day and nothing to-morrow, or one yielding enormously, while
the next, after all the labor and expense of opening, gives nothing.
They are called "spotted," while nearly every claim at Virginia has
yielded with great regularity. How the gold came into these gulches is
of little consequence to the miner. It suffices him to know that it is
there, and his practical experience enables him to point out its
location with great accuracy, though without any scientific knowledge of
its origin. Most probably, far away in the Preadamite periods, when
these mountains were much loftier than to-day, they were cloven and
pierced by volcanic fires, and then into their innumerable vents and
fissures infiltrated the molten quartz and the base and precious metals.
Afterwards followed the period of the glaciers, and all the working of
the seasons and chemical decompositions. Traces of the glaciers and the
rotten burnt quartz of the volcanic periods exist everywhere. Thus
washing and crumbling away in the waters and suns of untold springs and
summers, the gold has come down the