The minimum width of quartz and ore is 20 inches, the maximum 95 feet, by measurement in the roof of the stope. This large width constitutes a bulge in the vein about 16 feet in horizontal length. At the bottom of the winze there is a four-foot vein. The average width of the orevein throughout these exposures is 45 feet. At the north end of the opening it is somewhat scattered, but recovers itself beyond and below. At the south end there is a clay seam cutting and heaving the vein. At the time of my visit (September 6) a short crosscut was in progress, to strike the vein beyond this break; and a characteristic band of black rock, which everywhere accompanies the veinwalls, and which has been seen nowhere else in the mine than in that position, had already been struck in the cross-cut, leaving no reasonable doubt of the immediate vicinity of the ore. The vein where it is cut off has its maximum width, and the cross-seam is so thin and smooth. and gives so "clean" a cut, (without broken ground,) as to indicate but a very small heave.

The structure of the vein is perfectly regular and normal in appearance. Vugs and combings occur in it frequently, as well as a banded structure, which promises excellently for both permanence and quality. The clay partings are thin, and the foot-wall is hard and well defined. Although so many stringers are dropping in from the hanging-wall, to swell the dimensions and value of the vein, none have ever been found to penetrate the foot-wall.

The course of this vein by compass is north 11° west by south 11° east. The dip varies from vertical, and in one place, 700 east, to 60° west. The immediate gangue is quartz, and the ore is principally fahlerz and argentiferous zinc-blende. The first-class ore, comprising apparently about 5 per cent. of the whole, is worth from three hundred to five hundred dollars per ton. The second-class ore (judging from its appearance as compared with what I remember of the old Sheba ore) should be worth fifty to seventy-five dollars.* The mill of the Sheba Company, formerly situated at the north of the cañon, was sacrificed and lost during the pecu- | niary embarrassments and confusion of an interregnum; but a small water-mill has been erected in the cañon, containing five stamps and a small number of concentrating-machines, for the purpose of crushing and concentrating the ore thrown aside as unprofitable during the former workings. This mill is run at a small profit, in spite of the great waste of silver involved in the use of wet concentration upon ores containing brittle compounds of silver.

These ores consist of sulphurets of silver, argentiferous fahlerz, and zinc-blende, the last mineral having been found by separate assay to carry a high value in silver.

The true method of treatment would be to roast with salt all the ores, of every grade, in the Stetefeldt furnace, the Brückner cylinder, or the ordinary reverberatory, and then extract the silver by close amalgamation in barrels or pans. I entertain no doubt that the whole mass of the vein described can be thus treated at a handsome profit. The ore extracted during recent prospecting operations has paid all expenses, no assessments having been levied since the re-opening of the mine.

So long as the two real walls (the slate and the quartzite) inclose so wide a channel, there is of course a possibility that the ore-vein may scatter through the intermediate space. But all indications prove that

The lowest assay in quantities of ten tons, of the first-class ore shipped from the mine since re-opening, has been $582 per ton. The second-class ore has run $69 and upward. My figures are, therefore, very low.

this will not be the case at depths below the present tunnel-level. The vein having once regularly formed on the foot-wall, by stringers dropping eastwardly to that wall, may be expected to stay there in depth. The slips of the rock also dip eastward. The clay cross-seam already alluded to courses north 45° west and dips 84° east. From all these indications, as well as from the appearance of the ledge itself, which is far more persistent and regular than anything hitherto discovered in the Sheba ground, it is impossible not to believe that, though there may be outside ore-bodies in the west, there will not cease to be, from present workings downward, a strong vein on the foot-wall.

A decisive corroboration of this view is furnished by the circumstance that the two walls of the wide channel are drawing nearer together in depth. This may be clearly seen in the underground workings, and its effect will be to exclude gradually the barren ground which now occupies so large a space in the channel, and to secure, in all probability, a compact and reasonably uniform ore-bearing vein.

The facilities for working this mine are good. The company owns the whole water-right of Star Creek, and has a wagon-road, constructed at great expense, down the side of the cañon. The distance to Mill City on the Central Pacific Railroad, is twelve miles, and the cost of hauling ore by teams $5 per ton. Little timber is required in the mine, and the extraction of the ore for some time to come may be cheaply carried on through the tunnel and stopes now open. Exact estimates of cost are at present impracticable, since a large portion of the work hitherto has been preliminary, and the era of regular production is but just beginning.

The old works on the east have been worked on tribute by four Cornish miners for three months with good success. The mineral being scattered, is liable to "make bunches;" and this is a safer way for the owners and more profitable to miners of some experience.

The concentrating-mill connected with the mine was run for a short time in the spring. Although the quartz was well separated from the mineral, the result was not satisfactory, the probability being that the fine particles of silver-ores floated away to some extent on the water.

The De Soto was worked but little during the year. About a hundred tous of ore were sent to the Reno Mill for reduction. The mine having been bonded to an English company, this was done to make a trial of the working of the ore. The work gave satisfactory results. It is not known yet whether the sale has been effected.

The Yankee Blade has been worked during the year. The result is not yet very satisfactory. This mine is in calcareous slate..

In Star Cañon fair results being anticipated from gulch-washing, last summer dams were made to obtain a head of water to wash the streamdeposits. The water failed at the end of the summer, before final results were obtained, and the work waits for the wet season.

In the same district, in Bloody Cañon, about four miles south of Star Cañon, an antimony-ledge has been worked this fall, and about 100 tons shipped to San Francisco. The little demand for the metal here, and the danger of an over-stocked market, make the business somewhat precarious.

Central district.-Mining operations have been carried on during the greater part of the year, mostly in prospecting and testing the rock from the different ledges. The ledges contain, in many cases, besides silver, a large per cent. of gold. Those specimens seen by the writer are quartz with galena, a little zinc-blende and antimony, or their decomposed products.

The little stamp-mill of Philip Muller, in the district, has been at work when necessary to make trials of a few tons of rock at a time for prospectors. The owner has also been experimenting on a little roasting-furnace of his own make during the year, with varying results.

Sierra district.-A mill has been put up for dry amalgamation, according to A. B. Paul's patent. The first experiments are said to be very satisfactory by the superintendent of the mill, Mr. Charles D. Smyth. People await the final result with much interest. The mill has been placed in Dun Glen Cañon, above the town, where the Old Lang Syne mill used to be. The Lang Syne mine has been worked for a few months to extract the necessary quartz for the new mill. The Tallulah mine also has been running its tunnel to reach the ledge about 150 feet below the old works. The Auburn mine has also been worked in a small way. For want of means to work their quartz, rich in gold, the owners, who work the mine themselves, have stamped and extracted by hand the gold from the rich pieces to obtain the means to prosecute their work.

Echo district.-The Butte mine was worked until last September, when the mill of the company at Rye Patch was burned down. The work done during the first part of the year was on the incline, sinking deeper on the ledge, besides the removing of the ledge between two drifts run north of the incline. This was the main source from which the mill was furnished with ore. Last July the company, after purchasing a tunnel about 500 feet in the hill, well located to reach their ledge, began work on it. They will be about 130 feet vertically below the present mouth of the mine when the ledge is reached by the tunnel.

The work on the old Alpha mine was also resumed last fall, and a good deal of ore picked from the dumps has been shipped to the Reno mill for reduction.

The mill at Rye Patch was burned, by accident it is supposed, last September. A new one, stronger and better adapted to the wants of the place, has been built, and will probably be ready to run early in 1872.

Antimony in Nevada. For the following interesting description of some remarkable antimony-mines, I am indebted to Mr. William L. Faber, a metallurgist of scientific training and practical experience.

The mines are situated in Humboldt County, twelve miles south of Battle Mountain, a station on the Central Pacific Railroad, five hundred and forty miles east of San Francisco, and three hundred and sixty miles west of Ogden and Salt Lake City.

There are two parallel veins, about 100 feet apart, one of which has been prospected. Both crop out for over a mile, commencing at the top of a ridge, where the Mountain King shaft has been opened, running downward about 1,000 feet in a distance of 1,500 feet north, where they cross a cañon or gully, and thence rise on the opposite ridge, where another shaft, the Columbia, has been sunk to a depth of 93 feet, at a point about 80 feet above the cañon.

The Mountain King shaft is 15 feet deep, and exhibits, from surface to bottom, and in the bottom, a continuous vein, two feet thick, of solid sulphuret of antimony. The vein is perpendicular, and has welldefined, regular walls, clearly cutting the country-rock.

In the Columbia shaft the vein is not so regular or well defined, but still contains, in a width of four feet, fully two feet of solid ore, sometimes in a body, sometimes divided in two or three strings by intervening horses. From the excavation 3,750 cubic feet of rock were removed, which furnished 150 tons of clean ere, being at the rate of one ton per 25 cubic feet. Of this ore 50 tons have been removed and sold or used, while 100 tons are on the dump.

The ore from the Columbia shaft is an intimate mixture of sul-. phuret and oxide of antimony, quite free from any other mineral or metal. A careful analysis of a fair average sample of the ore, roughdressed, resulted as follows:

A specimen from near the surface, at the Columbia shaft, assayed 3 ounces of silver per ton; one from the bottom of the shaft, 20 ounces; and one from the Mountain King shaft, 19.5 ounces.

Mineralogically, the ore consists of

Blue sulphuret of antimony.

Yellow oxide

Quartzose gangue.

56.71

These mines are peculiarly interesting on account of the singular purity of the ore, since the absence of lead and copper greatly facilitates the production, by the simplest reduction process, of an excellent quality of regulus of antimony. This was fully proved by an experiment which I made at the works at Battle Mountain Station, smelting the ore in a reverberatory, with native alkali as flux, and fine coal as the only reducing-agent, and thus producing, in one operation, from crude ore, metallic antimony, several tons of which were shipped to New York and sold to consumers for various puposes. All who have used it pronounce it equal to the imported refined regulus; although some of the pigs were not quite free from sulphur.

The details of the smelting process Mr. Faber does not wish to make public, but that it is inexpensive appears from the following facts: The furnace, of a capacity to hold only a ton of melted ore, could work this off in twelve hours, producing 800 to 1,000 pounds of metal from 2,000 pounds ore. Fifty percent. was the best yield obtained, and this only when the furnace worked to perfection. The consumption of coal was 1 ton in twenty-four hours, the fine coal sifted from which was used as the reducing-agent, mixed with the melted ore.

The loss of metal by volatilization was quite insignificant, and nearly the whole loss was due to the difficulty of keeping the antimony out of the slag. Several times, from an error in the working or in fluxing, nearly all the metal was scorified, nor could it be reduced again from the slag, at least in the reverberatory.

Mining the ore costs, by contract, $2 per ton. Hauling from the mines to the station, by job teams from a livery-stable, costs $4 per ton. Freight to San Francisco, $10 per ton; to England, via Cape Horn,

say $15 per ton, meaning always the short ton of 2,000 pounds. The ore is worth in England from £12 to £15 per miners' ton, of 2,352 pounds, equivalent to about $50, to $62 for 2,000 pounds. The regulus is worth from 12 to 14 cents per pound.

From these figures it is apparent that a mine of base metal exclusively for the silver in these antimony-ores is too insignificant to be regarded-in the Pacific States, may return quite handsome profits, and be more desirable property than mines of silver or gold not strictly first class.

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