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Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company entitled the "Wide West."
A red splotch high up on the side of this gulch promised "water formation" as prospectors have a way of putting it. They had found the water, else adventure would have turned to tragedy. Near the water they had also found a promising outcropping of silver-bearing quartz. Barney's blowpipe had this very day shown them silver in castle-building quantities.
It was their discovery in 1572 or thereabouts which brought Ocampo and the first Spanish settlers to this valley. Raimondi says that he found here cobalt, nickel, silver-bearing copper ore, and lead sulphide. He does not mention any gold-bearing quartz. It may have been exhausted long before his day.
"Try again, my boy, for there is ample store in the mountains if we can find it." "Yes," he said, as they walked back, "this is going to be a disappointment." He picked up a piece of rock as he went along between the rocks; "this stone does not look like silver-bearing stratum. But we'll wait till the morning, Bart, and see."
In Guanajuato is found the richest vein of silver-bearing ore in the country, known as the Veta Madre, and though the most primitive modes of mining and milling have always been and still are pursued here, over eight hundred million dollars in the argentiferous metal have been realized from this immediate vicinity since official record has been kept of the amount; and with all this Mexico is still poor!
Out of a hillside toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company entitled the "Wide West."
Marie, the Bruce copper mine on Lake Huron, the gold-bearing quartz veins of Madoc, the Gatling gold vein of Marmora, the Acton and the Harvey Hill copper mines of Canada, the copper veins of Ely, Vermont, and of Blue Hills, Maine, the silver-bearing lead veins of Newburyport, Mass.; most of the segregated gold veins of the Alleghany belt, the lead veins of Rossie, Ellenville, and at other localities farther South; the copper bearing veins of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; the veins carrying argentiferous galena in Central Kentucky and in Southern Illinois; the silver, copper, and antimony veins of Arkansas; and the lead and zinc deposits of Missouri and the Upper Mississippi.
The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such important proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines. By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. "Prospecting parties" were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and taking possession of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of quartz.
Behind the town is a high spur of the mountain range of Lepaterique, covered with pines, and veined with silver-bearing quartz. We visited the abandoned mines of Marqueliso and Potosí, but the shafts were filled with water, and only faint traces remained of the ancient establishments.
The amount of gold yielded in the reduction of copper ores was about $5,500,000. It is probable that this amount will be gradually increased, and can be relied on to last many years. From the lead ores a little over $2,000,000 worth of gold was taken. This will probably slowly decrease for the next ten or twenty years. From gold and silver-bearing quartz mines $55,000,000 was taken.
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