CARIBOO AND OTHER DISTRICTS.

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mouth of Catherine Creek, and other localities. In 1871 and 1872 several mining camps or towns sprang

Parallel to it, 60 feet north, was the White Dog, and 60 feet north of that the Lake View, 4 and 6 feet in width, and containing ore similar to the Greyhound. The Patrick Henry vein was 10 feet wide at the surface. The Colonel Bernard, Rufus, and Blue Grouse were of this group.

The Blue Wing silver district, 25 miles east of the Yankee Fork district; Texas Creek silver district, 75 miles north-west of the town of Camas in the northern part of Oneida county; Cariboo gold district in the eastern part of the same county; Squaw Creek silver district, 40 miles north-west of Boisé; Weiser gold, silver, and copper district on Weiser River; Lava Creek silver district, 70 miles west of Blackfoot in Oneida county, and Cariboo gold district, 75 miles north-cast of Blackfoot-all contained mines of a high grade of

ores.

The Cariboo district, when first discovered in 1870 by F. S. Babcock and S. McCoy, was mined as a placer district, and yielded for ten years $250,000 annually. The auriferous gravels were accumulated in what was known as Bilk gulch, which lies immediately under the summit of Cariboo Mountain, and consisted of abraded volcanic and sedimentary materials largely mixed with the red carth derived from the softer shales. The placers were distributed along Bilk and Iowa gulches, to the confluence with McCoy Creek, a distance of three miles, and on several small creeks and gulches in the neighborhood. Quartz was discovered in this district in 1874 by Daniel Griffiths and J. Thompson, who located the Oneida, a mine very rich in spots, and of good average yield; $35,000 was refused for the mine in 1880. In 1877 John Robinson discovered a porphyry belt on the north slope of the mountain, in which he located the Robinson mine at, the head of Bilk gulch. The Austin, on the same belt, was developed along with the Robinson. These mines had a very large outcrop, extending more than 1,000 feet without a break, and having a width of 25 feet. Within 20 feet of this ledge was another parallel vein of great richness, and the intermediate porphyry gold-bearing.

On the southern slope of the mountain is another belt of porphyry, on which were the Northern Light, Virginia, Orphan Boy, Paymaster, and other mines. In the district were about eighty locations, carrying free gold from $10 to $1,200 per ton. Timber was plentiful in the district, and the ledges pronounced by experts to be true fissure veins. Other mines in Cariboo district were the Peterson, Nabob, Mountain Chief, Nealson, Oneida South, Northern Light Extension, N. S. Davenport, and Silver Star, more or less developed. Altitude over nine thousand feet. These discoveries conclusively proved Idaho a mining country. From the eastern to the western boundary, taking a wide swath through the central portion of the territory, the billowy swells and rugged heights were found full of minerals. Add to this central territory the country on the Clearwater, the lately discovered Cœur d'Alêne district, and the Owyhee region, there is but little left which is not metalliferous. It has long been known that gold existed in the Cœur d'Alêne region. A rediscovery was made in 1883, when the usual rush took place. The first eager gold-seekers pushed into the mines, dragging their outfits on toboggans (a kind of hand-sled, sometimes drawn by dogs), over several feet of snow. Eagle City started up with plenty of business; a saw-mill was erected at an enormous expense by Hood & Co., and a newspaper was started, called the Nugget, by C. F. McGlashan and W. E. Edwards. Considerable coarse gold was found and some valuable nuggets, but so far there seems nothing to justify any excitement. S. F. Call, March 31, 1884.

The placer mines of Idaho, as first discovered, were once supposed to be worked out to a degree to warrant only Chinese laborers on the ground. But the newer methods of bed-rock flumes and hydraulic apparatus have compelled the placers of Boisé basin to yield a new harvest, which, if not equal to the first, is richly remunerative. Ben. Willson, the 'placer king,' had 50

up along the river. Thousands of ounces of golddust of the very finest quality were taken from the gravel in their neighborhood in these two years. The placers, however, were quickly exhausted on the lower bars, the implements in use failing to save any but the coarsest particles. The higher bars were unprospected and the camps abandoned. But about 1879 there was a revival of interest in the Snake River placers, and an improvement in appliances for mining them and saving the gold, which enabled operators to work the high bars which for hundreds of miles are gold-bearing. In many places they lift themselves directly from the water's edge, ten, twenty, a hundred, or two hundred feet, and then recede in a slope more or less elevated. At other points they form a succession of terraces, level at the top, varying from a few hundred feet to a mile or more in width.

3

miles of ditches on Grimes Creek, costing $150,000. Elliott's Hist. Idaho, 175. The Salmon River placers, in Lemhi county, which gave rise to Salmon City in 1866, paid from five to seventeen dollars a day to the hand. Working them by the old methods they were practically exhausted in five years, but by the new method the same yield was obtained as at first. Shoup's Idaho Ter., MS., 4. Ward and Napius discovered these mines. Loon Creek was discovered by Nathan Smith, a Cal. pioneer. In 1862 he came to Idaho, and was one of the discoverers of the Florence diggings. In 1869 he prospected Loon Creek, which he named from a bird of that species found on the stream. A thousand men were mining there at one time, and the town of Oro Grande was built up as a centre of trade. When the white men had taken off the richest deposits, the Chinese purchased the ground, and were working it, when in the winter of 1878-9 the Sheep Eater Indians made a descent upon them and swept away the whole camp, carrying off the property of the slaughtered Mongolians to their hiding-places in the mountains, from which Capt. Bernard had so much trouble to dislodge them the following summer. Bonanza City Yankee Fork Herald, Oct. 18, 1884.

2 Mudbarville, Spring Town, Waterburg, and Dry Town were their euphonious appellations.

3 The deposits were of various depths, the upper bed being from 25 to 50 feet deep, and lying on a hard-pan of pseudo-morphous rock from a few inches to three feet in thickness, beneath which is another deposit generally richer than the first. Or, in some places, the hard-pan is represented by a soft cement, found at a depth of from three to nine feet. The cost of opening a claim, and putting it in good order for working is about $5,000; and the receipts from it from $10 to $50 a day. Careful estimates, based on actual yields and measurements of ground, give the amount of gold obtained from an acre of ground as being from $5,000 to $10,000, at the rate of from $20 to $100 a day, with the gold-saving machines, which are furnished with an amalgamator.

The greatest hinderance to be overcome was the hoisting of water for mining purposes from the bed of the river, where there are no streams entering. The most feasible solution of this difficulty would be the construction of a

Coming to the actual production of the mines of Idaho, I find that, according to the annual report of the director of the mint of the United States, Idaho in 1879, when it was beginning to recover from the misfortunes of the previous decade, produced $1,150,000 in gold and $650,000 in silver, while the estimate in the tenth census is $1,944,203. In 1882 the product in gold and silver was $3,500,000, divided among ten counties, of which Custer, or the Wood River mines, produced more than one third. But the report of the mint director is no more than a guide to the actual amount of gold produced, the larger part of which is shipped out of the territory by banking firms or in private hands, and goes to the mint at last without any sign of its nativity. The total gold product of Idaho down to 1880 as deposited at the mints and assay offices has been set down at $24,157,447, and of silver $727,282.60. But some $60,000,000 should be added to that amount, making the yield of precious metals for Idaho $90,000,000 previous to 1881, when the revival of mining took place. Strahorn estimates the output of 1881 in gold, silver, and lead at $4,915,100.5

canal taking water out of the river above, and carrying it to all the mines below. This device, besides making mining a permanent business on Snake River, would redeem extensive tracts of land which only need water for irrigation to change them from sage-brush wildernesses to gardens of delicious fruits and vegetables, or fields of golden grain. The principal claims were on the upper Snake River, at Cariboo, and above in Wyoming, and also at Black Canon, where the Idaho Snake River Gold Mining Company had some rich ground, $100 a day to the man having been taken out with a rocker, a copper plate, and a bottle of cyanide of potassium. The average yield was $25 a day over 80 acres of auriferous gravel. The Lawrence and Holmes Company had a claim near Blackfoot paying from $19 to $50 a day to the man. Lane & Co., near the mouth of Raft River, obtained $25 a day to the man; and Argyle & Co., near Fall Creek, owned placers that paid $100 a day to the man. Other rich placers were mined in the vicinity of Salmon Falls. The best seasons for working, in reference to the stage of water in the river and the state of the weather, was from the 1st of March to the middle of May, and from the 1st of September to the 1st of November.

That every county but four should be quoted as gold-producing shows a very general diffusion of precious metals. The proportion was as follows: Alturas $945,000; Boisé $310,000; Cassia $25,000; Custer $1,250,000; Idaho $240,000; Lemhi $210,000; Nez Percé $5,000; Oneida $35,000; Owyhee $430,000; Shoshone $50,000.

5 See Strahorn's Idaho Ter., 61. The Virginia and Helena Post of Jan. 15, 1867, makes the output of the Idaho mines in 1866 $11,000,000. When

Turning from the precious metals to the baser metals and minerals, we find that, besides lead, Idaho has abundance of iron, copper, coal, salt, sulphur, mica, marble, and sandstone. Bear Lake district contains copper ore assaying from 60 to 80 per cent, and also native copper of great purity. Galena ores 78 per cent lead with a little silver are found in the same district. Bituminous coal exists in abundance in Bear Lake county, where one vein 70 feet in thickness is separated from other adjacent veins by their strata of clay, aggregating a mass 200 feet in depth of coal.

Near Rocky Bar, in Alturas county, is a vein of iron ore seven feet in thickness, and fifty-six per cent pure metal. Near Challis, in Custer county, is a large body of micaceous iron, yielding 50 to 60 per cent metal. At a number of points on Wood River rich iron ores are found in inexhaustible quantities. In Owyhee county, a few miles east of South Mountain, is the Narragansett iron mine, an immense body so ncarly pure as to permit of casting into shoes and dies for stamp-mills. A mammoth vein of hematite in the neighborhood carries thirty dollars a ton in gold. Deposits of iron ore are found not far from Lewiston, which yield seventy-five per cent pure metal; and similar deposits exist near the western boundary of Idaho, in Oregon, in Powder River Valley.

The Oneida Salt Works, in Oneida county, manufacture a superior article of salt from the waters of the salt springs, simply by boiling in galvanized iron pans. The demand has increased the production from 15,000 pounds in 1866 to 600,000 in subsequent years, and to 1,500,000 in 1880. A mountain of sulphur, eighty-five per cent pure, is found at Soda Springs, on Bear River. It has been mined to some extent. The same locality furnishes soda in immense quantities. Mines of

Ross Browne made his report to the government on the gold yield of the Pacific states and territories he omitted Idaho, which had produced from $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 annually for 4 years. Silver City Avalanche, Feb. 9, 1867.

This salt analyzed yields, chloride of sodium, 97.79; sulphate of soda, 1.54; chloride of calcium, .67; sulphate maguesia, a trace. Strahorn's Idaho Ter., 63.

AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES.

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mica exist in Washington county, near Weiser River, from which thousands of tons are being extracted for the market. Other deposits of mica have been discovered in northern Idaho, as also white and variegated marbles, and beautiful granites and sandstones of the most desirable colors for building purposes, as also a quarry suitable for grindstones. There is little that a commonwealth needs, in the way of minerals, which is not to be found in Idaho.

But no matter what the wealth of a mineral country may be, it is never looked upon with the same favor by the permanent settler or home-seeker as the agricultural region, because there is always a looking-forward to the time when the mines will be worked out, while to the cultivation of the earth there is no end. Were Idaho as dependent upon its mines as in the days of its earlier occupation it was thought to be, it would be proper to treat it altogether as a mineral-producing territory, which with the better understanding now had it would not be proper to do.

The conditions necessary to agriculture are those pertaining to soil and climate. Of the former there are four kinds, and of the latter a still greater variety. Taking the valley lands, large and small, they aggregate, with those reclaimable by irrigation, between 14,000,000 and 16,000,000 acres. The soil of the valleys is eminently productive, containing all the elements, vegetable and mineral, required by grains, fruits, and vegetables. It is of a good depth, and lies upon a bed of gravel, with an inclination sufficient for drainage. Springs of water are abundant, both warm and cold. Wood grows in the gulches of the mountains which enclose the valleys. The climate is mild, with little snow in ordinary seasons. This phenomenon in so elevated a region is accounted for by the theory of a river of warm air from the heated table-lands of Arizona, the Colorado Valley, and the dry valleys of Chihuahua and Sonora passing through