cated, were confined to a
field not over five or six miles in extent, the center of which was
Mountain City, now Central City. There were fifty or more mills already
up and in running order. They varied in capacity from three to twenty
stamps. Some were running day and night crushing quartz that was
apparently rich in gold; some were running a part of the time,
experimenting on a variety of quartz taken out of different lodes and
prospect holes, and generally not paying, and some were idle, the owners
discouraged, "bust," and trying to sell, or else gone home for the
winter to get more money to work with.

[Footnote 2: "Prospecting" included the searching for
gold in almost any way that was experimental. Going off
into the unexplored mountains to hunt new fields of
gold, whether in gulches or lodes was prospecting.
Digging a hole down through the dirt and loose stones in
the bottom of a gulch to see if gold could be found in
the sand was prospecting. Sinking a shaft into the top
dirt of a hillside in search of a new lode, or into the
lode when discovered to see if gold could be found there
was prospecting. And manipulating a specimen of quartz
by pulverizing and the use of quicksilver to see if it
contained gold was also prospecting.]

The most of these mills were located about Mountain City and Blackhawk
and in Nevada and Russell's gulches. The rest of them were scattered in
other small gulches or mountain valleys in the vicinity. The richest
mines being worked were the Bobtail, Gregory, and others, in Gregory
gulch between Mountain City and Blackhawk. The other principal gold
diggings were some seventy miles further south, near the present site of
Leadville. These I did not then visit. Nearly all of these mills had
been brought out and located during the year 1860. Ours was about the
last one to arrive that season. It was evident that the business was not
generally paying. The reasons given were, that the mills did not save
the gold that was in the quartz, and that those at work in the mines
were nearly all in the "cap rock" which was supposed to overlie the
richer deposits below. The theory was that the deeper they went the
richer the quartz. There were just enough rich "pockets" and streaks
being discovered and good runs made by the few paying mines and mills to
keep everybody hopeful and in expectation that fortune would soon favor
them. So they worked away as long as they had anything to eat, or tools
and powd