titled to one hundred feet on a quartz ledge or
vein; the discoverer shall be allowed one hundred feet additional. Each
claim shall include all the dips, angles, and variations of the same."
The remaining articles related to the working, holding and recording
of claims. This law was incorporated in the raining legislation of the
State of Nevada and has formed the basis of the mining laws of each
territory of the United States. Thus we have a proof not only of
the intelligence of the early miner, but also of his capacity for
self-government. It must be remembered that the miners came from all
over the United States, but principally from the West and the South.
Probably none had seen a quartz ledge before coming to California, yet
the necessity for extending a claim as far as the ledge dipped was
soon perceived, as also the taking into consideration a change in the
direction or course of the lode. Commenting on these laws and the causes
leading to their adoption, Mr. Muslin became emphatic. He said:

"No body of rough, uncouth, pistolled ruffians, such as Bret Harte
depicts the miners, would have formed such a group of benevolent,
far-reaching and comprehensive laws. The early miner represented the
best type of American character. He was brave, undeterred by obstacles,
enduring with patient fortitude the perils and privations of the
long journey of half a year by land, or a tempestuous voyage by sea;
undaunted alike by the terrors of Cape Horn or the insidious diseases of
the Isthmus of Panama. He met the, to him, hitherto unknown problem of
the extraction of gold and solved it with the wisdom and vigor which
distinguish the American. Observe that the provision against throwing
dirt on another man's claim anticipated by many years the famous
hydraulic decision of Judge Sawyer. It is another way of stating the
maxim of law and equity: 'so use your own property, as not to injure
that of another.'"

Mr. Maslin agrees with Ben Taylor that the hangings and shootings of the
period following the discovery of gold have been grossly exaggerated.
On this point he said: "I will venture to assert that in certain of
the Mississippi Valley States, in their early settlement, more men were
killed in one year than in ten of the early mining years in California."
Of lynching, he said: "There were few lynchings in California, and
those mostly in the southern tier of counties, of persons convicted of
cattle-stealing." In connection with lyn