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 Reprinted from The Scottish Geographical Magazine, vol. xxvii., August 1911. 
 
 GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES 
 AS RESPONSES TO GEOGRAPHIC CONDITIONS. 1 
 
 By GEORGE D. HUBB^RD, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.A. 
 
 GOLD and silver receive different methods of treatment varying with 
 their occurrence and association. All through the story of their mining 
 
 1 This paper is a portion of a thesis presented as a part of the requirement for the Ph.D. 
 degree in Geography at Cornell University. See this Magazine, 1910, pp. 449-466 ; Bull. 
 Amerr. Geog. Soc. 1910, pp. 594-602, and a later number ; and Bull. Geog. Soc. Phil. 1911, 
 pp. 1-22, for other parts. Special thanks are given to Professors R. S. Tarr, W. F. 
 Willcox, and H. Ries of Cornell for criticism and suggestion throughout the whole work. 
 
 255956 
 
418 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 in the West, the responses and adaptations to conditions have brought 
 changes in methods of mining and handling, and have developed 
 mechanical and technical skill and inventive genius. 
 
 GOLD. 
 
 Placers. In most localities in the Western U.S.A. and Alaska, this 
 metal was first discovered in gravels and sands in or near stream-beds 
 whither the stream* had carried it from nearer their head -waters. 
 There they found itXn fragments formed by the disintegration of 
 country rock containing gold in veins and ore bodies. As the rock 
 was carried down stream it was sorted, and much of the lighter and 
 more destructible fragments was swept entirely away, while what 
 remained contained most of the gold. The waste left along the stream- 
 bed was made up of rounded gravel, sand, and the fine pieces of gold, 
 and was deposited more or less uniformly. Such auriferous deposits 
 are called placers, and were very rich in the gulches of the Sierras and 
 common all through the mountains. Because of the ease of detecting 
 the metal in them they were the first forms of gold to attract 
 attention. The process of sorting out barren rock-waste and concen- 
 trating the gold in a much smaller quantity of earth has been of 
 inestimable value to man. He takes up the work where Nature left 
 off, and by further concentration eliminates all but the gold. 
 
 The simplest and cheapest method of mining placer gold is that of 
 washing the auriferous gravels in a pan or even with a shovel or in a 
 short sluice, with water to remove the rock fragments and thus to 
 separate the gold, which, by virtue of its greater specific gravity, 
 remains in the pan or behind cleats on the bottom of the sluice. This 
 method was used because it was simple and effective in the rich, 
 unconsolidated placers, and because its apparatus was at hand or quickly 
 made. Time in those days was gold. Its use continued because it 
 was so effective in the high-grade gravels, and because complicated 
 apparatus was not obtainable and was no more effective. Apparatus 
 that would get the most gold in the shortest time and in the easiest 
 way was the kind used. Bancroft 1 explains that these methods 
 continued in California because the abundance and richness of the 
 deposits lasted, and because miners were relatively few. The same 
 law has held in many placer deposits outside of that State. Owing to 
 these factors, when the amount of gold obtained in one gulch became 
 too small, it was cheapest to move to a new, unoccupied one and 
 continue the use of the simple machine. But because the continuous 
 influx of men, attracted by the gold and the opportunities that gold- 
 mining presented, so increased the competition ; and because the crude 
 but rapid mining so soon compassed the richest beds, less remunerative 
 gravels had to be worked, and improved methods devised to recover 
 more perfectly, and at a single washing, the valuable contents of the 
 earth. The above simple processes, used at first, required little or no 
 
 i Bancroft, H. H., Hist, of Calif., vol. vi. p. 409. 
 
GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES. 419 
 
 co-operation, and hence tended to develop independence of work and 
 thought. 
 
 The less remunerative gravels were simply bars, or deserted stream- 
 beds, which, owing to less favourable conditions for deposition, contained 
 a lower percentage of gold ; or else they were deeper down and 
 required more labour and expense for the same return. Under the 
 impulse of these new conditions, and in order to cheapen the process, 
 a long sluice with more cleats to catch the gold, called a long-torn, 
 also a hand rocker similar to an old-fashioned child's cradle with cleats 
 across the bottom, were used. These machines, called for by the 
 poorer gravels, required two to four men to work in a squad, but made 
 it possible for them to produce about the same values as if working 
 each for himself in better gravels. Royce l shows that the long-torn 
 or long sluice mining meant increased responsibilities of many sorts, 
 and so in the end made for good order. It also had a part in 
 developing that social compact whose factors were called "pards," 
 because of their partnership work with the machine. Then as the 
 business was extended, longer board sluices, and finally, because the 
 boards wore out too fast, long rock-floored ditches came into use, 
 requiring a larger squad, and hence demanding a larger company of 
 profit-sharers or the employment of wage-earners. 
 
 More water was needed with these larger machines used in working 
 lower-grade gravels. When it was near, little expense arose even in 
 the use of the more improved methods ; but if the water-supply was 
 insufficient or not permanent, capital and more costly works were 
 necessary. In the first place, ditches or flumes were made to lead the 
 water from external sources to points where it was needed. In the second, 
 as much as possible had to be made of the water that was near, and it 
 had to be so used that it could not destroy the works after storms. 
 This co-operation and the more permanent nature of the plant for water 
 conveyance, gave more permanence to camps, just as have river-bed 
 mining and hydraulicking in other places. 2 
 
 From the washing of the sand in marginal sand-bars to that of the 
 gravel of the stream-bed was only a step. In order to reach the latter, 
 the water had to be crowded off by a wing dam and a portion of 
 the bed exposed. Then to get the entire river bottom the whole 
 stream was diverted, and, to avoid the expense of dam construction, 
 dredging with simple machines was introduced from New Zealand, 
 where it had originated 3 and found rather general use. The dredging 
 machinery, placed on a boat, raised the gravels from the bottom, 
 washed them, recovering the gold, and returned them either to the 
 water or to the land in the rear of the machine. A dredge boat was 
 often launched in the water in an artificial pool made by excavating a 
 hole in the bed of river alluvium, and the boat and pool advanced 
 by digging gravel out in front and piling it in behind the machine. 
 
 1 Royce, Josiah, California ; in Amer. Commonwealth Series, 1886, p. 310. 
 
 2 Royce, loc. cit. , p. 312. 
 
 3 Twelfth Census (1900), Mines and Quan-ies: Gold and Silver, p. 573. 
 
420 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 Owing to ease of handling the gravel, this method was capable of 
 working deposits of very low grade. 
 
 Back from the stream, and usually a little above, occurred the 
 bench gravels; and when these were found to contain ore, specially 
 adapted methods arose to win it from them. Water was led out of 
 the stream above the benches by a wing dam and conducted to the 
 place in a ditch with less fall than had the stream. Then the washing 
 began in rockers and long-toms. The workmen soon learned where 
 to find the richest streaks in these benches or terraces and finally 
 tunnelled for them. In 'Alaska, where the benches are sometimes of 
 glacial origin, the richest streaks are differently distributed, 1 and 
 required different treatment. Owing to climatic conditions, the gravels 
 here are frozen most of the year, and must be thawed to be washed. 
 At first they were thawed by building fires on them, but now this is 
 usually done by driving pipes into them and then forcing in steam. 
 Shafts and horizontal tunnels along rich leads are thus made. 2 Because 
 these deposits are in a land of continuous frost, tunnels need no timber- 
 ing, and shafts no pumps. 
 
 From stream gravels to beach sands was a short step, and in 
 California many devices for working the latter have been tried and 
 left to decay. 3 The difficulties are lack of fall for sluices, and, some- 
 times, lack of water. In California the Oregon torn, a short sluice, 
 has been adopted. At Nome lack of fall declared against all sluices, 
 and the surf against dredging. Eockers were used almost exclusively. 
 
 Still another set of conditions, the deposits of arid lands, has given 
 rise to the process known as dry-washing or dry-blowing. In New 
 Mexico 4 many unsuccessful attempts to utilise the wind have been 
 made; and now a screen set obliquely and ribbed with riffles is 
 supplied with placer material, and air is blown through the screen 
 from behind to remove fine dirt. Coarse material is swept off with 
 the hand, while the gold collects above the riffles. Owing to the 
 absence of water for ordinary washing, many varieties of dry-blowing 
 have been used in Southern California, 6 Northern Mexico, 6 and in 
 Australia, 7 some of which were borrowed from the natives and some 
 devised by the foreign miners ; but all that were successful were adjusted 
 to the highly specialised conditions of no water, dry dirt, suitable 
 winds, and cheap labour. 
 
 All the above processes were used because of a special mode of 
 occurrence of the gold in loose, easily worked placers and were of 
 service only in such deposits. All were adapted to the special conditions 
 
 1 Kemp, J. F., Ore Deposits, 1900, p. 393. U.S.G.S. Professional Paper 15, pp. 52, 
 54 ; Mines and Minerals, 1900, p. 492. 
 
 2 U.S.G.S. Bull. 225, 52-53. 
 
 3 Scientific American Supplement, 1900, p. 20,381. 
 
 4 Mines and Minerals, 1899, pp. 397-8. 
 
 5 Bowie, A. J., Hydraulic Mining in California, p. 79. 
 
 6 Kng. and Min. Journ. (1897), vol. Ixiii. pp. 257-8. 
 
 7 Am. Inst. Min. Eng. Trans. 1898, vol. xxviii. p. 490 f. ; also Eng. and Min. Journ. 
 vol. Ixv. (1899), p. 37. 
 
GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES. 421 
 
 in which the gold was found. Some had been used, in principle at least, 
 in the foreign countries from whence many of the miners had come ; but 
 their introduction and improvement in the West was a direct response 
 to the influence of the geographic conditions in which the gold occurred, 
 and under which the men were obliged to work. 
 
 Amalgamation. A modification of several of the above methods 
 greatly raised their efficiency. Mercury had been discovered in California 
 five years prior to the gold discoveries, 1 so that its use was possible as 
 soon as conditions made it necessary ; and now small quantities were put 
 behind the riffles in the sluices to form an amalgam with the gold and 
 thus recover many minute fragments formerly lost. Amalgamation 
 processes had been used in Potosi, South America, near where mercury 
 was mined, since 1571 ; also to some extent in Mexico, although the 
 long distance to its source, Huancavelica or Spain, was almost prohibitive. 
 By taking advantage of the presence of mercury, an advantage due to 
 the geographic distribution of mercury, the South American miners and, 
 later, those of California greatly increased their output and cheapened 
 their processes. In the absence of mercury Mexico must have mined in 
 the old wasteful way or have paid heavily for imported mercury. 
 
 Hydraulicking. Men continued to come into the gulches and 
 valleys, and the gravels and sands were becoming exhausted; hence 
 prospectors and miners pushed farther up the streams to find new or 
 better deposits, and, in 1851, discovered the fossil stream-beds high up 
 on table mountains. The gravels and sands of these beds were stream- 
 laid ages ago, and then overlaid with lava. Subsequent erosion had cut 
 these deposits lava, gravel, and sand in two and removed a part of 
 the gold-bearing beds, and after sorting and rewashing the gravels, and 
 concentrating the gold, transferred them to the present valley floors. The 
 remaining portions were rich and extensive, but could not be worked in 
 the ordinary ways. The lava cover prevented beginning at the top. 
 Most of the gold was at the bottom of the channels, and to get it required 
 either moving the entire filling, or the construction of tunnels and the 
 removal of the pay gravel. Tunnelling was expensive because continuous 
 timbering was necessary. Then no water was near for washing. To 
 develop these supplies of gold required capital and labour, and here began 
 the first extensive systematic hired mining. 2 An adaptation of the long- 
 torn sluicing with men shovelling gravel into the feed boxes was the initial 
 device. In 1852, a man desirous of economising labour made a raw- 
 hide hose and with water under head washed gravel into his sluice. His 
 neighbours followed, and then improved by using first canvas hose, stove 
 pipe, sheet-iron, and then heavy wrought-iron flumes, thirty inches in 
 diameter and furnished with an elaborate nozzle. Some of these flumes were 
 thousands of feet long, 3 and being connected with ditches or tunnels 10-100 
 miles long, 4 led water in large quantities from some higher level, often 
 from beyond a divide, down to the partially cemented gravels with such 
 
 1 Hubbard, G. D., Bull. Geog. Soc. Phil, (1911), vol. ix. p. 7. 
 
 2 Bowie, A. J., Hydraulic Mining in California (1885), p. 48. 
 
 3 Bowie, A. J., loc. cit. p. 49 f. 4 Eissler, Manuel, Metallurgy of Gold (1900), p. 51. 
 
422 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 force as to tear them down and break them to pieces and then wash them 
 into long sluices. Here their gold contents were sorted and caught in 
 mercury behind the riffles. Sometimes the gravel was so firmly cemented 
 that dynamite was exploded to aid the water in breaking it down. This 
 new, elaborate process, called hydraulicking, could not be used success- 
 fully in other kinds of deposits, but was ultimately closely adapted to the 
 requirements of these ancient gravels. Thus the cost of handling the 
 gravel was reduced from dollars per cubic yard in the rockers of 1848 
 and 1849, first to $.35 in the long sluices, and then to half a cent in the 
 hydraulicking process. Those who had resisted the temptation to spend 
 all as fast as it was acquired usually became the capitalists in this new 
 form of co-operation, while those who had wasted all, or who had been 
 the victims of hard luck, became the labourers or withdrew to other 
 occupations. 1 
 
 Placers of Sierras and Rockies Contrasted. Much the larger proportion of 
 the placer-mining in the West per unit area has been in California. The 
 Cretaceous rocks of the Sierras with their ledges of free milling ores, 
 disintegrated into good placers with gold of a high degree of purity ; but 
 the propylitic rocks of the Rockies with their complex associations have 
 not furnished so much placer gold nor such good quality as that in 
 California. This geographic distribution of placers and their parent rock 
 has had a beneficent influence on the development of the mining industry 
 of the West. The native gold or gold in simple associations was found 
 first, and where it could be easily worked, hence the industry flourished 
 from the start. Had the two kinds of bed-rock deposits exchanged 
 places, it would not have been so easy to find the first placers ; and if 
 the Eastern placers had been found first, they would hardly have been 
 able to furnish capital for the later development of veins and lodes. 
 And had the Sierra kind occurred in Western Colorado and Idaho, many 
 of the hardships incident to reaching and developing the region would 
 have been increased. Neither men nor provisions could have reached 
 the place by sea. The long land journey from the East would remain, 
 although much shortened, but there would have been added to the sea 
 route a long difficult land route, from the coast far inland. 
 
 Vein Mining. As gravels became exhausted, prospectors, followed 
 by miners, pushed on up the ravines and discovered the quartz veins 
 from which the gravel had come ; and then there arose a different kind 
 of mining. In these auriferous ledges as found in most of the Western 
 States and even in the Southern Appalachians, the gold was intimately 
 associated with other minerals, and the whole mass had to be broken out 
 of the country rock and crushed before the precious metal could really 
 be claimed. This required time, expensive machinery, mechanical skill, 
 and withal a deal of adjustment to the conditions in order to operate the 
 mines successfully. But, as shown above, capital was not wanting, and 
 experiments began. By a normal process of selection a method of mining 
 and reduction was perfected, but not until many fortunes had become 
 exhausted and companies dissolved. Beside the exhaustion of the richer 
 
 1 Bancroft, H. H., Hist, of Calif., vol. vi. pp. 416, 418. 
 
GOLD AND SILVEE MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES. 423 
 
 placers, another factor aided in the development of the quartz-mining. 
 Hydraulic mining, discussed above, had been entered into by multitudes. 
 By 1858, in California alone, six thousand miles of water-ditches had 
 been built. About this time the waste from hydraulicking began to 
 interfere with agricultural interests, and by 1884 the interference had 
 advanced to such an extent that prohibitive legislation checked its further 
 operations, 1 and capital and enthusiasm turned to quartz-mining, thus 
 still more increasing the latter form which had now become well 
 developed. 
 
 In the early days of quartz-mining the ore was crushed by stamps 
 or rollers, and the rock flour washed as in the placer works. This pro- 
 cess in its most perfect state did not save all the gold, so others were 
 devised to meet the difficult combinations presented by the ores. A 
 method known as the chlorination process has now come to be used 
 extensively. The crushed ore before or after concentration, and some- 
 times after roasting, is treated with chlorine gas, which forms chloride of 
 gold, soluble in water and removed by washing. From this solution the 
 gold is easily recovered by precipitation with iron sulphate. Stamp mills 
 customarily accompany chlorination plants, and smelting works are some- 
 times associated to handle special ores. This process is especially adapted 
 to rather high-grade ores and those practically free from iron. A second 
 chemical method probably more used than the above is known- as the 
 cyanide process, and is most serviceable in the treatment of low-grade 
 ores. It finds its special field in the reduction of ore carrying iron and 
 copper sulphides. The crushed ore in a " slime " condition is treated 
 with a strong solution of potassium cyanide, usually strongly aerated, and 
 the gold is thus brought into solution and separated from its refractory 
 native compounds. Furnaces often follow the cyanide tanks, where with 
 suitable fluxes the reduction to metallic gold of specially rebellious ores, 
 by means of chemical reactions requiring heat, is effected. Had the ore 
 occurred in small or more scattered deposits, even these processes would 
 probably fail to extract the metal economically; but since large quantities of 
 ore, even though of low grade, can be obtained within a limited area and be 
 treated simultaneously, the expensive plant with its trained men, technical 
 skill, valuable apparatus, altogether a costly equipment, can be operated 
 at a profit. Illustrations of the failure of extensive plants to remain in 
 operation are common ; and usually they go out of business because the 
 deposits are not as large as supposed, or because their contents are found 
 to change character in the course of development, or because some 
 resource, water, fuel or timber, has failed. 
 
 As already shown, the geographic conditions favoured the great 
 development of placer-mining in the early days and called for little 
 development of bed-rock ores. Table I. shows that there has occurred a 
 great change since 1880 in the relative importance of quartz and gravel 
 as sources of gold. In the early days of California and of most of the 
 other States and Territories, including the Carolinas, Georgia, and even 
 Alaska, a very large percentage of the metal came from gravels. No 
 
 1 Hubbard, G. D., BuU. Geog. Soc. Pkil., vol. ix. (1911), pp. 14-15. 
 
424 
 
 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 reliable statistics on this point dating back farther than 1880 have been 
 found. In 1905 only 17 per cent, of the total gold production came 
 from gravel. Alaska, the youngest gold producer, supplied over one-half 
 of that amount, and she is also the only one with more than a handful in 
 its total production that recovered more metal from gravel than from 
 quartz. Owing to increased Alaskan placer-mining during 1906 and 
 1907 the total percentage of placer gold has gone up during these two 
 years. Alaska is still in the placer stage of her gold-mining. If this 
 territory with its relatively large placer production be taken out of the 
 figures in Table I., the change in the source of gold will become much 
 more apparent. This change occurred partly because the placers were 
 insufficient to employ the men who had been attracted by them, partly 
 because the placers were becoming exhausted, and there was no other 
 mining but quartz to which the men might turn. The wealth accumu- 
 lated from the early forms of mining was ready to go into the more 
 expensive and complex processes, and the conditions required it. 
 
 TABLE I. DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD AND SILVER AS TO 
 SOURCES OF PRODUCTION. 
 
 
 GOLD (Fine Ounces). 
 
 SILVER (Fine Ounces). 
 
 Year. 
 
 Quartz. 
 
 Placer. 
 
 Quartz Ores. 
 
 Lead Ores (b). 
 
 Copper Ores. 
 
 1907 
 
 3,034,609 
 
 1,192,890 
 
 19,038,042 
 
 19,038,449 
 
 14,200,348 
 
 1906 
 
 3,374,639 
 
 1,328,361 
 
 16,792,799 
 
 21,011,464 
 
 19,288,709 
 
 1905 
 
 3,568,724 
 
 697,018 
 
 13,990,008 
 
 25,147,252 
 
 16,964,340 
 
 1904 
 
 3,245,097 
 
 647,383 
 
 15,113,401 
 
 26,973,843 
 
 15,595,556 
 
 1903 
 
 3,062,762 
 
 591,219 
 
 16,835,528 
 
 25,682,882 
 
 13,844,232 
 
 1902 
 
 3,315,717 
 
 597,964 16,988,647 
 
 28,035,620 
 
 12,812,291 
 
 1901 
 
 3,243,248 
 
 609,974 16,064,208 
 
 27,018,344 
 
 14,790,934 
 
 1900 
 
 3,269,794 
 
 597,850 16,496,711 
 
 30,593,763 
 
 13,121,912 
 
 1899 
 
 3,062,286 
 
 450,958 15,861,230 
 
 29,000,609 
 
 11,859,334 
 
 1898 
 
 2,812,579 
 
 372,215 13,716,882 
 
 31,312,676 
 
 10,457^75 
 
 1897 
 
 2,525,387 
 
 390,858 12,233,429(c) 
 
 32,244,341 
 
 11,637,395 
 
 1893 
 
 
 27,641,100(c) 
 
 24,713,100 
 
 7,645,800 
 
 1880 1 
 
 l,74l',654 
 
 580,478 (a) 
 
 ... 
 
 ... 
 
 (a) Excluding Alaska with 288 ounces. 
 
 (b) Colorado lead and copper ores, amounting to about one-half of this item each year, 
 are not divided but are placed under lead together. 
 
 (c) Quartz and free milling ores combined. 
 
 Methods that are used with some kinds of ore are worthless in the 
 treatment of others, and processes profitable under certain conditions 
 would cease to be remunerative under others. In each locality a method 
 of extraction and reduction capable of handling the ore in its mineral 
 associations, and also adapted to the conditions of water, fuel, and trans- 
 portation, must be devised. Because of the relation of mining and 
 
 Twelfth Census (1900), Mines and Quarries : Gold and Silver, p. 547. 
 
GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES. 425 
 
 reduction processes to the vicinal geographic conditions, the latter may 
 seem in cases to control the output ; and so they do. But herein occurs 
 an excellent measure of the influence of the metals. They are sometimes 
 able to combat and overcome very gigantic obstacles. Many shaft and 
 tunnel mines in California successfully met the conditions, because in the 
 midst of timber. Had they with the same gold values been located in 
 places where timber is so scarce as around some working surface mines 
 in Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada, the output of the mines could not 
 have borne the expense because of their moderate values. But many 
 mines in these more arid, forestless States are so rich that they can 
 sustain the long timber hauls, the struggle (and often great expense) to 
 obtain water, the difficulties of costly transportation, or the flooding of 
 the mines with water, and have prospered for years against the heavy 
 odds. The almost fabulous wealth or other special advantage of certain 
 districts has enabled them to surmount the greatest obstacles and to 
 produce enormous quantities of the precious metals. The Comstock 1 
 lode mines suffered because of excessive heat and of flooding with under- 
 ground water, as well as through being in a desert with nothing near that 
 was needed. 
 
 The Treadwell 2 mines on Douglas Island, Alaska, situated on a very 
 low-grade ore body, in high latitude, and one thousand miles from 
 Seattle, are able to run very satisfactorily because of abundance of water, 
 sufficient water-power during the seven open months, plenty of fuel, 
 cheap sea transportation, ore fairly uniform, constant as depth increases, 
 abundant, and easily gotten out of the ground ; and again easily reduced, 
 because a large part of the values can be recovered by amalgamation. 
 The average cost of operation here for nine years was $1.73 per ton, and 
 the yield $2.18 per ton. 3 It is in the ability of these gold deposits to 
 overcome such enormous difficulties that their influence is most clearly 
 manifested. 
 
 Effects on Scenery. The influence of some of the above processes on 
 the surrounding features, landscape, forest, and stream, is very appreci- 
 able. Gulches once as beautiful as a picture have been dug over, washed 
 out and refilled with debris, upon which vegetation has not yet obtained 
 a footing. In many places desolation is the only word. Scarred hill- 
 sides and pillaged ravines are seen at almost every turn in extensive 
 mining regions. Of course gold-mining is not very different from other 
 mining in this respect, but the speed with which ends have been reached 
 and destruction wrought will compare favourably with any other mining 
 operation. The early California days, however, 4 did not witness damaged 
 forests except where these were cut for building houses (rare structures 
 at first), because timber was not needed to support tunnels and shafts 
 so long as placer-mining continued ; but later the axe worked havoc, 
 gathering material to timber the shafts and tunnels in the quartz seams 
 and to build mills, roads, and railroads. The same sequence may be 
 
 1 U.S.G.S. Monog. iv., pp. 56 f., 389 f. 
 
 2 U.S.G.S. Bull. 225, pp. 28, 42. 
 
 3 Twelfth Census (1900), Mines and Quarries: Gold and Silver. 
 
 4 Bancroft, H. H., History of California, vol. vi. p. 416. 
 
 b 
 
426 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 noted in many places in other States. Where smelters producing 
 noxious fumes are being used, their influence on the vegetation is 
 appalling. It is stated l that there are no trees in Butte and Anaconda, 
 Montana, although formerly there were plenty. Sulphurous acid gas is 
 produced by roasting sulphide ores, and this gas is destructive to vegeta- 
 tion. It is also a disinfectant, killing disease germs. Through special 
 efforts recently to check the nuisance, its destructiveness had been so 
 reduced that a few small gardens and some house plants are now 
 growing. 2 
 
 1 Correspondence with H. V. Winchell, April 1905. 
 
 2 Correspondence with W. H. Weed, March 1905. 
 
Reprinted from The Scottish Geographical Magazine, vol. xxvii.. September 1911. 
 
 GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES 
 AS RESPONSES TO GEOGRAPHIC CONDITIONS 
 
 By GEORGE D. HUBBARD, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.A. 
 
 ( Con tinned from p. 426.) 
 
 SILVER. 
 
 INASMUCH: as silver is rarely found in gravel and never abundant 
 there, the amount of placer silver-mining is negligibly small. For this 
 reason there is little single-handed mining. Although silver was known 
 in California almost as soon as gold, it was never much worked. It was 
 found in other States nearly as soon as was the gold, and its mining 
 usually followed that of gold. Bancroft 1 thinks that silver-mining was 
 largely prevented in California for several decades because of the abund- 
 ance and accessibility of the richer metal. It has been suggested that 
 Califoruians, having worked in gold so long and so successfully, did not 
 care to mine the less noble metal. This may have some weight even yet 
 with the average Calif ornian. It would certainly have had more weight 
 in earlier days. But whatever the mental attitude of the California!! 
 toward silver-mining, it would not interfere with others from the East 
 conducting silver-mining operations there. It is true, however, that 
 California's silver production is very small compared with that of several 
 Western States, and there is probably a good reason for this in the 
 occurrence of the metal. Silver is usually obtained with other metals 
 which bear the expense of mining, but in California, Shasta, the leading 
 county, is the only region where metals other than gold are extracted 
 from the silver-mines. Here copper practically pays expenses, and the 
 silver may be counted as profit. In other places, as far as known, the 
 silver is alone or with gold, and does not occur in rich deposits. It 
 may be said, then, that the mining of silver is not generally profitable, 
 and hence not carried on, in California, because of its mode of occurrence. 
 Deposits other than superficial, are the chief sources of the metal in 
 the West, hence mining operations and appliances are such as are best 
 adapted to that kind of ore working. The contents of the vein are 
 removed, crushed by stamps or rollers, and passed on to the separating 
 devices. If no other metals occur, the silver is separated from the waste 
 by amalgamation or smelting. But the ore with copper is smelted with 
 its gangue and then separated by subsequent chemical processes. In a 
 similar manner the separation from lead ores is accomplished. When 
 zinc occurs the problem is a difficult one. At Canyon City and Pueblo, 
 Colorado, there have recently been constructed plants for the conversion 
 of such rebellious ores. The process converts the zinc into white oxide 
 for which there is a strong Eastern market. This rises from the roasting 
 ore as a fume having the appearance of white smoke, and is condensed 
 by cooling, after which the ore may be treated for the silver content. 
 
 1 History of California, vol. vii. p. 651. 
 
471 GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES. 
 
 These silver reduction processes are all expensive and more or less 
 involved, requiring capital, labour, fuel, apparatus, and technical skill ; 
 but large quantities of ore render their operation both possible and 
 economical. 
 
 Special Types. Two or three special types of silver occurrence and 
 associated reduction plants may well be examined to discover the relation 
 of plant and process to the ore and its surroundings. First in order of 
 time was the Comstock lode, 1 whose development and twenty years of 
 startling history began in 1858, and from which the first silver in 
 Western United States was taken. The metals in this lode occur in 
 quartz along a contact of two igneous rocks where there has been some 
 slipping. The lode is hundreds of feet broad in the widest portion, 
 while it tapers out and divides before disappearing at the ends. Mines 
 have been located along it for two miles. Nothing short of a bonanza, 
 however, could have survived the litigation and physical difficulties in 
 the way of its development. A rocky, parched, barren mountain slope, 
 over a mile above sea-level, deserts all around, only meagre brooks in the 
 main ravines in spring, all of which were dry in summer ; water gotten 
 only from lakes twenty miles distant ; no timber for buildings or mine 
 support within at least as many miles, and this all to be hauled over 
 sandy or stony roads, and no fuel but scrub nearer than this distant 
 timber ; roads cut and blasted through canyons and along ledges and 
 mountain precipices, and out over high Sierra passes, always snow-filled 
 in winter ; severe winters, deep snows and high winds ; no crops, and 
 very difficult and expensive transportation of food and all supplies from 
 San Francisco ; peculiar, irregular, and unfamiliar distribution and occur- 
 rence of ore resulting in great loss in developing ; inadequate laws and 
 regulations, conflicting claims and confusion of titles leading to enormous 
 and ravaging lawsuits ; the mine, as it deepened, flooded with alkaline 
 waters, and hampered with temperatures of 100 to 140 F. and great 
 humidity, these constituted some of the difficulties. It seemed as if 
 nothing could be accomplished. But so great was the power of glamour 
 and the actual wealth, that many difficulties were overcome, and others 
 were borne while a city sprang up on the site. The population of the 
 territory increased by immigration, attracted by the marvellous reports, 
 until statehood was granted in 1864. Nothing else known in that 
 barren region would have called people thither. Not only did the 
 development of this great lode attract the attention of miners and 
 scientists, but its output disturbed the world's monetary system.' 2 When 
 its prime was reached in 1877 and its total production of gold and silver 
 had mounted up to about $300,000,000, its decline came rapidly ; for in 
 four years the annual production fell from $36,000,000 to $1,000,000,* 
 then rose to two, three, and even seven millions, but fell off again through 
 the last decade to less than $200,000. The cessation of operations at the 
 
 1 U.S.O.S. Monogr. iii., pp. 3, 6; U.S.G.S. Monogr. iv., pp. 56-76, 86, 190, 203- 
 205, 331-3. 
 
 2 Tarr, R. S., Economic GeoL, p. 182 ; Watson, D. K., History of Amer . Coinage, pp. 120- 
 238 ; Ries, H., Econ GeoL, pp. 494-6. 
 
 3 Lord, Eliot, U.S.G.S. Monogr. iv., p. 416. 
 
SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 472 
 
 great Comstock lode was due to a failure of the company to master 
 certain geographic conditions viz., the mines filling with water faster 
 than the ruahinery was able to pump it out, and the encountering of 
 high temperature. Thus the water and the excessive heat made further 
 development impossible. The population of the State declined to a 
 point below the statehood limit, and the region reverted to its former 
 wilderness condition. In this mine, some two hundred miles of tunnels 
 have been opened, and wide galleries where the lode was wide and rich. 
 These tunnels are supported by timbers, and the galleries were literally 
 filled with blocks of wood and stone as the ore was removed. All the 
 wood came from the forests some twenty miles to the west over a barren 
 waste of sand and without a railroad. When the mine was apparently 
 approaching prosperity, the supporting timbers caught fire and burned, 
 which necessitated the added expense of replacing them or abandoning 
 parts of the workings. Probably more has been spent in the Comstock 
 region than the total output of the mines would replace. Efforts are 
 now being made to revive the big mine. New pumps and new and 
 repaired machinery are increasing the yield, until in 1901,. 1902, and 
 1903 each the production was over $1,000,000. Since 1903 it has 
 again fallen off to less than 8250,000, but has been gradually rising in 
 the last two or three years. 
 
 Since the ore is native silver and gold with some argentite, in a 
 gangue of quartz, stamp mills or other ore crushers, and adapted amalga- 
 mating pans, are all that is necessary for its reduction. Before the end 
 of 1861, companies to operate such mills to the number of eighty -six, 
 capitalised with an aggregate sum of over 860,000,000, had been 
 organised in the region ; and many others followed soon after. 1 The 
 mills were far in excess of the needs of the mines in their best days, and 
 now scores of them are rotting down on their flimsy and too hastily 
 constructed foundations. This enormous waste was due to men under 
 the influence of the glamour and the possibilities of the great lode ; 
 and now, sobered by thirty to forty years, we look back and wonder and 
 smile at their delusion. 
 
 Leadville, 2 Colorado, forms a second type. Work in this region 
 began in a gold placer in 1860, to which miners rushed from many 
 quarters, and from which was taken several million dollars worth of gold. 
 A flourishing mining town, Oro, sprang up ; but when the gold became 
 exhausted its creation, the town, declined. In 1874 the lead carbonate, 
 carrying silver, a weather product of the deeper-lying sulphides, was 
 recognised : and in five or six years its enormous development again gave 
 the region a good rank as a mining centre. The new town, Leadville, 
 grew from a few log-houses, a 10x12 grocery store and two saloons, with 
 a population of one or two hundred in 1877, to a city of 15,000 with 
 $8,000,000 to 830,000,000 assessable property, twenty-eight miles of 
 streets, waterworks, gasworks, schools, churches, hospitals, and fourteen 
 smelters in 1880. The lead carries good values in both gold and silver. 
 
 1 Lord, E., loc. cit., p. 126. 
 
 - C.S.G.S. Monogr. xii., pp. 1-16, 375-6, 614, 636-47. 
 
473 GOLD AND SILVER MINING AND REDUCTION PROCESSES. 
 
 The ore really is an argentiferous galena bearing native gold and, deeper 
 down, zinc in a gangue of barite, chert, and calcite within a vein along 
 a limestone-porphyry contact. Copper, manganese, bismuth, iron, anti- 
 mony, molybdenum, and others have been recovered from this hetero- 
 geneous deposit ; but zinc, silver, lead and gold, usually in the order 
 named, are the best payers. 1 This region contains a greater assortment 
 of metals and more complex associations than almost any other in 
 America. Placer-miners were troubled with the lead carbonate, 
 commonly called heavy rock, in their sluices from the start ; and their 
 process was modified to avoid difficulties and dispose of the unknown 
 rock. When its nature became known, and the bed-rock sources were 
 discovered, shaft-mining and mill reduction began. But these carbonate 
 and associated sulphides could not be worked by crushing and amalga- 
 mation as were the ores of Comstock ; hence, smelters using the dolo- 
 mitic limestone of the vicinity and the coke from coal-fields a few miles 
 distant were constructed. Crushers were associated with the furnaces to 
 reduce the coarser pieces of ore, but their work was only a minor part of 
 the process. 
 
 This second type of silver ore is characterised by its complexity and 
 by large values in lead and zinc, and the reduction plant to be successful 
 must respond to the conditions and become itself more complex. Lead- 
 and zinc-mining are profitable here, because the silver and gold occur 
 with them and may be added to the output with little expense. The 
 decline in the price of silver recently aided in closing a number of the 
 Leadville plants. So intimate is the relation of ore and process that 
 neither lead nor zinc can be recovered unless silver remain above a certain 
 figure. 2 Lead is a rather common associate with silver in several Western 
 States, notably Utah, Idaho, and Washington. The famous Eureka of 
 eastern Nevada is also classed here. 3 
 
 A third type is that of Butte, Montana. This region began as a gold- 
 and silver-mining centre, but has become the greatest copper-producing 
 region in the world, with large quantities of gold and silver as by-products. 
 The ores, as now worked, are mainly copper sulphides with some galena and 
 blende in a quartz gangue with moderate values in silver and gold. The 
 mines are situated along veins cutting the granite knob upon which Butte 
 is situated, and their product is smelted at Butte, Anaconda, and Great 
 Falls. The output in 1906 was as follows copper about $55,000,000, 
 silver $7,000,000, gold 81,250,000, and lead 851,000. The ore 
 cannot be treated as is that of either of the above types, nor can it be 
 mined in the same way. The geographic conditions and associations of the 
 silver require specifically different processes. Furthermore, no such hard- 
 ships and difficulties have to be overcome in the two latter types as in 
 the first. Early transportation difficulties have been overcome by the 
 construction of railroads. Fuel is near in both cases, timber is abundant 
 and good, the water supply is adequate, and water in the mines is easily 
 
 1 U.S. Dept. Treas. Ann. Repts. on Prod, of Precious Metals, 1903f. 
 
 2 Ibid., 1900, p. 115 ; Tarr, R. S., JEcon. Geol., p. 235. 
 s U.S.G.S. Monogr. vii., p. 64-79. 
 
SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL ^GAZINE. 474 
 
 controlled. The Butte association of silver with copper is common in 
 Utah and Arizona. 
 
 Table I. (p. 424) shows a marked change in the relative amount of 
 silver recovered from each of the three types of ore. This partial desertion 
 of the quartz ores for the copper ores is due, in part, to the discovery of 
 the new and more closely adapted metallurgical processes required by the 
 more complex ores, and, in part, to the association of two or more by- 
 products with the silver whose value with that of the silver makes possible, 
 with similar outlay, a total production of metal of greater value than that 
 possible in the pure quartz-mining. 
 
 Summary. Xot many of these deposits which are now yielding in the 
 aggregate by far the major portion of our silver, could be operated at all 
 for the silver alone. Hence it is due to its association that the silver 
 output is what it is. On the other hand, when the price of silver declines 
 or the ore values in silver fall below certain figures, certain mines must 
 shut down, curtailing the supply of copper, lead, or zinc at the expense 
 of the factories using these metals. In each of these three types, the 
 metallurgical processes used depend upon the associated minerals ; and 
 the general problems met vary with the supply of timber, water, food and 
 transportation. 
 
 In all the mining processes discussed the influence of the geographic 
 conditions, including both telegraphic relations and mineral and rock 
 associations, have aided in determining first, whether the deposit shall 
 be worked at all or not ; second, what processes shall be employed, i.e. 
 whether cradles, and toms, dredges, stamp mills or smelters ; and third, 
 what problems of transportation, supplies, and materials must be met, 
 and how they are to be solved. It is true that man's knowledge and 
 skill are important factors all through the general problem of extraction 
 and reduction of the precious metals ; but it is equally true that the 
 closer man causes his machines and processes to conform to the natural 
 requirements, the greater his success ; and that the ruins of plants and 
 dismantled machines all over the West proclaim the fate of apparatus and 
 process that is not a response to the conditions. 
 
[Reprinted from THE BULLET. N OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, 
 Vol. IX, No. i, January, 19 u.] 
 
 THE RELATION OF GOLD AND SILVER MINING TO 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF ASSOCIATED 
 
 INDUSTRIES. 1 
 
 GEORGE D. HUBBARD. 
 
 Relative Magnitude of Several Industries. Perhaps no industry 
 in America aside from agriculture has done so much pioneer work 
 for other industries as has the mining of the precious metals. The 
 reason for this appears in the distribution of their production. The 
 relative importance of the different states in the industry is also 
 shown in accompanying tables (I and ID, which still further show in 
 which of the states to look for the greatest influence of the metals, 
 as well as those in which their influence may be small or practically 
 wanting. This phase of its influence, together with its relation to 
 other industries upon which it in some degree depends, or which 
 depend more or less upon it, constitutes a large and important field 
 for study. In the aggregate, the value of the output of this industry 
 seems enormous, and truly it is; but lest too exalted an opinion of 
 its magnitude be gotten from this study of its influence, the figures 
 for a few crops and industries are inserted in Table III. According 
 to the last census 2 there were in the United States forty-two indus- 
 tries, the products of any one of which possess a value greater than 
 that of gold or of silver mining, and twenty-three whose individual 
 values are greater than that of both gold and silver mining together. 
 This table (page 4), containing only a few of the items and not all 
 of the large ones, makes it clear that it is not necessarily the indus- 
 try whose product has great value that creates the most stir or most 
 profoundly influences man and his work. Lead smelting and refin- 
 ing has an output 20 per cent, larger than both gold and silver. 
 Carpentering has twice as large a value as both combined. Gold 
 
 1 This paper is a portion of a thesis presented as a part of the require- 
 ments for the Ph.D. degree in geography at Cornell. See Scottish Geog. 
 Mag. and Bull. Am. Geog. Society for other parts. Special thanks are due 
 Professors Tarr, Willcox and Ries, of Cornell, for criticism and sugges- 
 tion throughout the wholf work. 
 
 2 1 2th Census U. S. (1900), Abs., pp. 322-323. 
 
 (0 
 
Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
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Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 TABLE III. 
 VALUES OF CERTAIN CROPS AND PRODUCTS. 
 
 Extractive Industries, 1899. 
 
 Manufacturing Industries, 1899. 
 
 Industry or Product. 
 
 , Value. 
 
 Industry or Product. 
 
 Value. 
 
 Gold mining (product) . 
 Silver mining (product) . 
 Iron mining (ore) 
 Corn 
 
 $71,053,000 
 7O,8O7,OOO 
 58,OOO,OOO 
 828,OOO,OOO 
 37O,OOO,OOO 
 
 324,000,000 
 2I7,OOO,OOO 
 I44,OOO,OOO 
 I37,OOO,OOO 
 98,000,000 
 
 Iron and steel 
 
 $8O4,OOO,OOO 
 347,OOO,OOO 
 339.OOO.OOO 
 316,000,000 
 175,000,000 
 
 131,000,000 
 85,OOO,OOO 
 8l.OOO.OOO 
 75,OOO,OOO 
 5I,OOO,OOO 
 
 Printing and publishing 
 
 Cotton goods 
 
 Carpentering 
 Lead smelting and refining . . 
 Cheese, butter and condensed 
 milk 
 
 Wheat 
 
 Cotton 
 
 Oats 
 
 Marble and stone work 
 Confectionery 
 
 Eggs 
 
 Poultry 
 
 Shipbuilding 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 Brick and tile 
 
 production is not so large by 10 million dollars as the total for con- 
 fectionery and is surpassed by the value of the potato crop to the 
 amount of 27 millions. The product of either the poultry or egg 
 industry is about equal to the total gold and silver output; while 
 corn, wheat, cotton and oats is each millions beyond the precious 
 metals. In spite of their minor statistical rank, however, what of 
 their importance? What of their influence on other industries? 
 
 Further, Table IV (part A) shows that, although the mining 
 of gold and silver is important in many ways, its intrinsic value 
 compared with several other industries is not great even in some of 
 the western frontier states. It makes clear the fact (part B) that 
 the per capita production of gold and silver is almost universally 
 smaller than that of either agriculture or manufactures, the former 
 restrained by climate and the latter by general frontier conditions. 
 Five single states east of the Mississippi each had a production of 
 manufactures greater than that of all these eleven states and terri- 
 tories combined, and the manufactures of New York were more than 
 three times as great as all ; while that of these western states aggre- 
 gates more than six times the value of their gold and silver output. 
 
 And this minor industry has broken the way, provided the means 
 and called the labor west for the development of many industries. 
 It has successfully demanded people, railroads, manufactures, agri- 
 culture and general industrial development over a third of conti- 
 nental United States far in advance of the fondest dreams of the 
 most sanguine colonizer. 
 
 (4) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 
 
 
 
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 (5) 
 
6 Relation of Mining .to Associated Industries. 
 
 Prehistoric Mining and Metallurgy. Even back in prehistoric 
 time, Indian metallurgy, in response to the occurrence of gold, devel- 
 oped methods for smelting the ore. The Cherokees were successful 
 smelters of gold in Georgia where De Soto found them, each with 
 a long clay-tipped reed in his mouth sitting around a concave stone, 
 upon which were laid a few pieces of auriferous quartz, and blow- 
 ing a fire placed below the heap. The Peruvians and Mexicans 
 washed gold-bearing gravel, and the former mined quartz-silver 
 ledges as deep as they could shovel the rock out. This ore they 
 smelted with blow-pipes similar to those used by the Cherokees. 
 Even these simple and primitive processes seemed to have been 
 known only where the ore was known. Subsequently, under the 
 stimulus of the presence of the metal, the natives developed more 
 complex and more closely adapted processes. 
 
 Interrelation of Early and Later Mining. The relation of placer 
 mining to later gold and silver mining has been suggested. It 
 seems probable that had there been no placer gold to point the way, 
 call miners west, and furnish easily gotten capital for the develop- 
 ment of quartz mining, the latter, in its mountain fastnesses, would 
 have been much later in development, and perhaps even yet would 
 not have appealed to men. It certainly was very fortunate that the 
 rich auriferous gravels were widely distributed to introduce their 
 ancestors to prospective miners. 
 
 Influence on Utilisation of Gangue Minerals. The influence of 
 the precious metals on the production of lead, copper and zinc was 
 first felt in the West when mining of the latter began. Prospect- 
 ing for the more valuable ores revealed the others ; but their work- 
 ing nowhere began until they were encountered in the gold or silver 
 mines and could be recovered with the latter. It is doubtful if the 
 development of the lead, copper or zinc industries in the western 
 states would have attained to any considerable importance even 
 down to the present, if the precious metals had not blazed the way. 
 There are many mines now producing both silver and lead, zinc or 
 copper, which could not operate for one alone. Fortunately lead, 
 used for a flux, is found with silver in many places in sufficient 
 quantities for the smelters. But in a few places the flux does not 
 occur and must be shipped to the works. In response to the demand 
 for lead ores, both British Columbia and Mexico sent appreciable 
 
 (6) 
 
George D. Hitbbard. 7 
 
 amounts. 4 Many gangue minerals, occurring in the seam with silver 
 or gold and requiring removal to recover the metal, are now saved 
 and turned to economic importance. Sometimes the gangue min- 
 eral is of more value than the gold, but without the latter to attract 
 attention, add zest to the mining pursuit and help pay expenses, it 
 would never have been developed away off in the West. Some such 
 metallic ores have been mentioned. Other gangue minerals taken in 
 the general process are fluorite, antimony and arsenic compounds, 
 and a number of minerals yielding the rarer metals. 
 
 Stimulation of Mercury Mining. Quicksilver mining received 
 quite an impetus when its product began to be applied to the reduc- 
 tion of gold and silver. For several years after its usefulness was 
 discovered, little was found in America; but in 1567 the metal, in 
 cinnabar, was found abundant at Huancavelica in Peru. Since its 
 value was known, and the precious metal ores both of Peru and 
 Mexico were adapted to its use, the .business of mining and trans- 
 porting it to the gold mines leaped into full-fledged maturity at 
 once. 5 
 
 In the early forties this metal was discovered in California, but 
 no use was known for it there, and the considerable distance to the 
 mines of Mexico did not encourage its output ; but when the placers 
 of the Sierra gulches were found, the position of California's mer- 
 cury gave it a tremendous advantage over the South American cin- 
 nabar deposits, and under this geographic advantage the young in- 
 dustry flourished. Under the constant stimulus of the markets of 
 the West, the mercury mines have increased their output, until 
 the United States produced in 1901 6 two fifths of the world's total 
 and California 90 per cent, of that. In fact, the production is now 
 far above our own needs, and mercury is sent to China, Mexico, 
 Alaska, British Columbia and to Latin America. 
 
 Influence on Various Manufacturing Industries. The various 
 metallurgical processes connected with the reduction of gold and 
 silver are consumers of large quantities of chemicals. The chlori- 
 nation process stimulates the salt industry, from whose product 
 chlorine is derived. Large quantities of potassium cyanide are used 
 
 *U. S. Industrial Com., 1901, Vol. 12, p. xli. 
 
 5 Stirling, P. J., " Gold Discoveries and their Probable Consequences," 
 1853, PP- 127-133- 
 
 6 U. S. G. S., " Min. Resources," 1902, pp. 251-258. 
 
 (7) 
 
Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 in the cyanide process ; while zinc, iron sulphate, manganese perox- 
 ide, caustic soda, lime, and the mineral acids contribute to the outfit 
 of the large establishments ; and this demand for chemicals increases 
 the business of chemical manufacturing concerns. 7 
 
 The first process required pans and shovels and more or less 
 repairing; hence, at the outfitting towns and commercial centers, 
 blacksmith-shops and forges were set up. Even in 1849 and 1850 
 there were several, and during the next few years others followed. 
 Many such concerns failed because of the fluctuating demand; but 
 in 1861 and 1862 prices became steadier and the location of the 
 camps more permanent, resulting in the rapid improvement of these 
 little plants and the introduction of more extensive machine shops. 
 Then came the invention and construction of machinery for the 
 various new processes. Nozzles, flume-irons, chains, dredging ma- 
 chines, engines, stamp mills, and various separators, and unheard-of 
 devices for all sorts of process.es were made. Many types appeared 
 which were good for nothing but the rubbish heap or the furnace 
 after having served as a stepping stone to a better adaptation. Mills 
 and machine shops increased as their business grew. Special modes 
 of occurrence and peculiar conditions required special machinery, 
 and several towns took upon themselves to supply the desired arti- 
 cles; but their attempts frequently failed because of their isolated 
 positions with reference to the mines and the sources of materials; 
 while San Francisco has taken a leading rank in making highly 
 specialized milling machinery, pumps and engines. 8 Her work is 
 characterized by ingenuity, originality, great adaptability, and inde- 
 pendence of precedent. San Francisco has become the tenth Amer- 
 ican city in manufactures, shipping apparatus in large quantities to 
 many points in the West, and also to Mexico, the South American 
 states, British Columbia, and even to Australia and South Africa. 
 
 Gold and Silver in the Arts. One line of manufacturing which 
 in the West is especially responsive to the call of the mining industry 
 is jewelry making. While the center of the business is on the 
 Atlantic coast, many thousands of dollars' worth are made in San 
 Francisco and other cities of the mountain states. In the early 
 California days, some small beginnings were made, and by the close 
 
 7 Eissler, Manuel, " Metallurgy of Gold," pp. 345-6 ; Park, J., " The Cya- 
 nide Process," 1900, pp. 4, 96. 
 
 8 Bancroft, H. H., " History of California," 1884, Vol. VII, pp. 94-95. 
 
George D. Hubbard. 
 
 of 1850 several good local enterprises had been built up, because 
 of the work that the miners wanted done. Denver and Salt Lake 
 City share this industry. In 1880, the California jewelry establish- 
 ments consumed between 50,000 and 60,000 ounces of silver beside 
 much gold. Yet only a small per cent, of the jewelry sold in Cali- 
 fornia and the West is of local manufacture. The metals go east, 
 are manufactured mostly in and around Providence, R. I., and New 
 York City, and their products return. 9 A considerable amount of 
 the annual production of both metals is used in the industrial arts 
 in gold and silver plating, gilding, leaf work and solid wares. The 
 following table (V) gives the amount of gold used in each of the 
 
 TABLE V. 
 
 PRODUCTION AND USE OF GOLD AND SILVER IN THE WORLD. 
 COMMERCIAL VALUES. 
 
 Year 
 
 Metal. 
 
 Production. 
 
 Used in Indus- 
 trial Arts. 
 
 Per Cents 
 of Total 
 Production. 
 
 Coined or Stamped 
 in Bars at Mint. - 
 
 Per Cents 
 of Total 
 Production. 
 
 IQOI 
 
 Gold 
 
 $260,992,900 j $79,268,OOO 
 
 30 
 
 $248,093,787 
 
 95 
 
 I9O2 
 
 Gold 
 
 296,048,800 ( 75,764,400 25.5 
 
 220,405,125 
 
 75 
 
 1903 
 
 Gold 
 
 325,527,200 76,350,600 24 
 
 240,496,274 
 
 74 
 
 1901 
 
 Silver 
 
 103,805,700 
 
 26,435,800 \ 25 
 
 57,072,308 
 
 54 
 
 I9O2 
 
 Silver 85,507,200 
 
 25,654,190 j 30 
 
 79,588,484 
 
 93 
 
 1903 Silver 92,039,600 27,072,346 j 30 
 
 87,223,743 94 
 
 years 1901, 1902 and 1903 in this way, also the amount coined in 
 the world, with the per cent, of each figured on the total produc- 
 tion of the world. Seeming impossibilities in connection with the 
 per cents, will disappear, when it is remembered that only about 
 two thirds of the gold used in the arts is new 7 gold, coin and old 
 jewelry making up the other third; and that several per cent, of the 
 gold coined is old coin recoined. Moreover, there is often an 
 unused balance left over from the previous year. 
 
 The following table (VI) shows the amount of gold and silver 
 used in the arts by the leading nations in their relative rank for 
 the calendar year 1901. 
 
 Four nations manufactured about three fourths of all gold used 
 in the industry. Great Britain was the greatest consumer, with the 
 United States a close second. United States is the only country 
 using any considerable amount of gold in the arts that produces 
 
 8 Ibid., VII, p. 97- 
 
 (9) 
 
10 
 
 Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 TABLE VI. 
 LEADING NATIONS USING GOLD AND SILVER IN THE ARTS IN 1901. 
 
 Nation. 
 
 Gold. 
 
 Silver (Commercial 
 Value). 
 
 Total. 
 
 Per Cents of 
 Total Used. 
 
 United States . . 
 Great Britain . . . 
 France 
 
 $17,379,100 
 19,147,100 
 14,355,400 
 
 $7,7O9,IOO 
 5,304,200 
 3,656,700 
 
 $25,O88,20O 
 24,451,300 
 l8,OI2,IOO 
 
 cir. 24 
 cir. 23 
 cir. 1 7 
 
 Germany . . 
 
 7 I7O 8OO 
 
 2 807 ooo 
 
 10 032 800 
 
 ' 
 cir. o.^ 
 
 All others 
 
 21,246,600 
 
 . 6,872,800 
 
 28,119,400 
 
 cir. 26.5 
 
 Totals 
 
 $79,268,OOO 
 
 $26,435,800 
 
 $105,703,800 
 
 IOO.O 
 
 her own gold ; hence, there must be a movement of gold to England,. 
 France and Germany. In the case of England, this comes mainly 
 from her colonies. We export large quantities, both to France and 
 to Germany, thus aiding their use of the precious metals and in- 
 creasing our export. But the fact that the sources of gold and 
 silver in such large quantities lie within our own borders is much 
 more important to the development of the use of the precious metals 
 in our own work in the industrial arts, than it is to that of any 
 other nation. Table VI shows that we use about one fourth of the 
 gold and one third of the silver which the world uses in the arts. 
 Our great home production makes it easy for us to obtain our sup- 
 ply, and probably aids in stimulating the desire to manufacture and 
 use such large quantities of both metals. For this reason, we, a 
 young nation, are using more gold and silver in the arts than Great 
 Britain, an old, rich, established nation. 
 
 ' That portion consumed in the industrial arts is used in various 
 factories, printing establishments and local jeweler's shops. In 
 very few cases, if any, is gold the chief raw product, and probably 
 in no case is it the only one. It is said that most of the gold from 
 the South Atlantic States in the early part of the last century was> 
 purchased by local jewelers, who were anxious to get it because 
 its fineness exceeded that of coin. 10 Most of the gold manufac- 
 tured, aside from that used by local jewelers, is made up in a few 
 eastern cities, but the use of silver is more widely distributed. Four 
 states, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, 11 
 in the order named, make over seven eighths of all jewelry reported 
 to the census ; and the city of Providence has about one half of the 
 
 "Whitney, J. D., "Auriferous Gravels," 1854, P- H7- 
 11 12th U. S. Census, " Manufactures," i, cc. 
 
 (.0) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 1 1 
 
 industry, while New York City and Newark, N. J., have respect- 
 ively one fifth and one seventh. Two small suburbs of Providence, 
 Attleboro and North Attleboro, both in Massachusetts, each have 
 a considerable percentage of the total. In gold and silver leaf and 
 foil, New York City leads with 75 per cent, of the industry, and 
 Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston follow with the balance. These 
 three or four eastern centers lead in these industries because the 
 smiths located near their wealthy markets years ago, and because 
 the large amount of capital needed in the industry could more 
 easily be had in the East ; and the change in source of raw material 
 has not been sufficient reason to overcome their adjustment to these 
 environments. Hence they stay there. It is not the production nor 
 place of production that determines the place of manufacture. Bar 
 gold, silver bricks, bullion or ore can be shipped more easily from 
 the West to market than could the delicate manufactured product. 
 
 Mining and Lumbering. The roaming prospector found the 
 timber and in locating his mine took a long step toward the devel- 
 opment of the forest cutting, since a mine or a mining plant requires 
 lumber in great quantities. This need establishes a market for saw- 
 mill products. In California, late arrivals in the fall of 1849, unable 
 to get into the gulches for mining, began cutting wood; which found 
 ready market in San Francisco and elsewhere. They received $15 
 per cord for it, and the boatmen received $40 for it in the city. 13 
 This is the elementary example of what took place systematically 
 in many localities, where mining could not be carried on during the 
 winter. The men engaged in lumbering in the winter and mining 
 in the summer. Much more now than in the earlier days the saw- 
 mill goes into camp with or before the stamp-mill and smelter. 
 From the extraction of lumber for mining purposes to the general 
 industry is but a step, and where the railroad to the mine has made 
 lumbering at its terminus or along the route possible, there is often 
 a vigorous development of the industry. 
 
 The Trades and Other Local Occupations. Thousands of miners 
 drifted into Salt Lake City and San Francisco and either loafed or 
 engaged in the trades as they could find opportunity. A whole 
 group of such trades developed, made necessary and possible by the 
 presence of mining. Some preferred trapping to any city occupa- 
 
 13 Taylor, B., "Eldorado," 1857, pp. 290-291. 
 
12 Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 tion. Ferrying, and with it river navigation, wherever the streams 
 permitted, were important adjuncts to the pioneer industry. Road 
 construction early began to receive attention, because, first, sup- 
 plies must be taken to the camps ; and, second, the products of the 
 camps were sufficient to pay the expense of building. While some 
 roads were thoroughly adequate, however, most of the West was 
 never well equipped. Make-shifts were made, or nothing at all 
 was done beyond what the teamster had to do to get his load along. 
 In the hydraulicking region roads were never safe any more than 
 other property. A gold seeker could by law, and often did, sluice 
 a road away or cut an impassable channel across it and leave it 
 for years. Exceptional cases are on record. A party of hydraulic 
 miners washed a road out for many yards because it was in their 
 way; and then, having finished their exploitations, peeled the soil 
 and loose rock from the hillsides above the road, with the same 
 engine that had wrought the destruction, and washed enough back 
 into the old roadway to repair the damage they had done. The 
 restoration was not expensive and was as rapidly accomplished as 
 an army of men with teams could have done. 
 
 Hydraulic streams, introduced for mining purposes alone, have 
 been applied to various herculean tasks in the West. Material has 
 been washed into a stream for the construction of a wing dam by 
 the use of the powerful stream. In the same manner the Sound 
 in front of Seattle is being filled to make new land for the use of 
 the city. In Montana a ditch for the conveyance of water was 
 made in the soil by the plowing action of a gigantic hydraulic stream. 
 Probably none of these uses would ever have been made of hydraulic 
 streams had not the idea been suggested in mining. More extended 
 use than that so far accorded it may yet be made. 
 
 Influence on Agriculture. The mining of the precious metals 
 in the United States, from its beginnings, has been in close touch 
 with agriculture. In the first rush in California, men, all over 
 the state, deserted farms for gravel bars, and essentially crippled 
 the industry. Occasionally a man remained on his ranch and con- 
 tinued to produce wheat, fruits or cattle, and with the enormous 
 demand for fresh products he was able to obtain fabulous prices. 
 It was often as good a business as mining and much more health- 
 ful. 14 A considerable number of miners soon saw this and joined 
 
 (12) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 13 
 
 the ranks of the food purveyors. Agriculture received a tremen- 
 dous boom during the early years of gold mining, because of the 
 sudden, prodigious development of the demand for its products 
 wherever mining developed. Not only was the industry affected 
 in the mining districts, but the influence went abroad through many 
 states. Washington and Oregon, more advanced in settlement and 
 development than any other western region in 1848 and 1849, were 
 greatly disturbed. 15 Excessive emigration and curtailment of immi- 
 gration robbed every industry of its men. Agriculture especially 
 suffered. But the depression was short-lived, for in the general 
 advancement of the West these two territories felt the stimulus 
 strongly, and the rapid development of their industries is a measure 
 of their response. The benefits were specially felt among the poorer 
 people. Many were in debt and unable to earn enough to pay their 
 obligations. But by the enlarged market and higher prices, created 
 by gold mining, money became so abundant that debts easily melted 
 away. Because these territories were a little more remote than 
 California, their industries received much more moderate and health- 
 ful shocks. 
 
 But with the beginning of hydraulicking in California, agriculture 
 was found to be in a losing race with mining, both in the field and 
 on paper. Mining was the predominant industry, more universal, 
 used more men, produced more value and created many times more 
 interest. With the greater importance of mining almost univer- 
 sally conceded, it was not hard to override agriculture and several 
 other industries. Practically every industry of a mining district suf- 
 fered interference in some way. 16 Mining was indeed a great indus- 
 try, and the people were under its spell. They were short-sighted, 
 prejudiced, self-deceived, not perceiving that to cripple agriculture 
 meant to cripple the state. Industries that should have gone hand 
 in hand because of their interdependence became intensely antago- 
 nistic. Even state legal decisions were discriminating. By the 
 ruling of state courts " Agricultural lands although in the posses- 
 sion of farmers may be worked for gold," and "the right belongs 
 to miners to enter on public mineral lands although used for agri- 
 
 11 Bancroft, H. H, " History of California," Vol. VI, p. 65. 
 "Bancroft, H. H., "History of Oregon," Vol. II, pp. 56-5?; "History 
 of Washington, Idaho, and Montana," p. 13. 
 
 18 Shinn, C H., "Mining Camps," 1885, pp. 260 f. 
 
 ('3) 
 
14 Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 cultural purposes by others, and, whether inclosed, or taken up and 
 entered under the Possessory Acts." " All persons who settle for 
 agricultural purposes upon any mining lands in California settle at 
 their own risk." " The miner . . . may at any time proceed to 
 extract any valuable metals which he finds in such lands." :< The 
 fairest of gardens, thriftiest of vineyards, most fruitful of orchards, 
 one and all, were liable to be destroyed without remedy by early 
 placer miners." They might " undermine houses, wash away fertile 
 fields, move towns to new sites and tear the old location down to 
 bed rock with torrents of water." 
 
 It became apparent very early that war had been declared be- 
 tween the two belligerent interests. Grevious complaints were en- 
 tered, and attempts at combination made among the farmers. The 
 miners haughtily claimed their rights. The first real organization 
 was effected on Bear River, a tributary of the Sacramento, when the 
 land owners formed the Protective Association to prosecute mining 
 companies for damages. It was asserted that this stream, before 
 hydraulicking began, was clear and pure, and in these few years had 
 been made so muddy that it was of no value for irrigation ; and that 
 its bed had been aggraded ten to fourteen feet, while the stream 
 overflowed its banks, devastating fields along its course. 17 But the 
 organization failed to accomplish results, because the blame could 
 not be located. The members of a camp washed earth into the 
 stream and damaged crops, but who should pay damages could not 
 be decided ; nor could they tell what the crop uninjured would have 
 been worth. And worse yet was the complication, ' when several 
 camps washed gravel into the same stream, or several gulches fed 
 the single stream on lower land. All feeders brought rock waste, 
 but no damage was done until the burdens were united in the slow- 
 flowing stream. Yet something must be done. To let matters con- 
 tinue was to sacrifice agricultural lands and river channels as well, 
 and to prohibit hydraulicking was to cripple the mining business and 
 throw away millions of dollars invested in its development. 18 
 
 Matters gradually took on another aspect, however, when it was 
 really comprehended that the conflict between agriculture and min- 
 ing was civil war; and in January, 1884, the California Supreme 
 Court ruled that " private rights could not be encroached upon under 
 
 17 Patterson, R. H., " The New Golden Age, etc.," 1882, Vol. I, p. 262. 
 "Bancroft, .H. H., "History of California," Vol. VII, p. 648. 
 
 (H) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 15 
 
 guise of miner's customs even in districts where statutes recognize 
 validity of such local laws/' Thus agriculture ultimately con- 
 quered, as it must surely do. Gold mining cannot survive without 
 agricultural products, either local or imported. The business calls 
 agriculture into existence, if at all possible, and because of depen- 
 dence upon it, cannot effectually crush it. In Arizona and New 
 Mexico, while the conditions for successful agriculture are gener- 
 ally at a premium because of the general aridity, many crops can be 
 grown by irrigation. Such crops, because of their proximity to the 
 mining towns and camps, would bring good prices. Fruit and vege- 
 table farms located within convenient distance of such markets and 
 supplied with irrigation facilities would be profitable, because ad- 
 vanced prices could be commanded. Of course such an item, in 
 reducing the difficulties of mining this region, would promote the 
 latter industry and in turn react on agriculture. The two industries 
 cater to each other, and neither can be successfully arrayed against 
 its helper without mutual loss. 
 
 Placer and hydraulic mining brought blessings also to the lands. 
 The results were not all destructive. Broad alluvial flats were built 
 up where nothing but worthless gravel or even less valuable bare 
 rock existed, and these are now enormously productive. Many 
 farms, temporarily inundated with muddy water, were renewed by 
 a layer of fine mud sediment. Shinn asserts that "lands have as 
 often been created as others have been ruined." 19 It is probably 
 rather strong, but it approaches the truth. In many places the great 
 ditches, tunnels and canals, constructed for mining purposes and 
 abandoned on the exhaustion of the placers, are now used for irri- 
 gation ditches. Ditches that could not possibly be constructed out 
 of agricultural profits alone were easily launched by mining cor- 
 porations, and now in several states are bringing their blessings to 
 orchards and farms. 
 
 Thus in summary the presence of gold and silver mining in the 
 \Yest, which alone of all kinds of mining was best suited to sur- 
 vive in a new and distant land, stimulated and greatly encouraged 
 agriculture as an associated pioneer industry. And the special 
 forms of mining necessarily adopted, placer and hydraulic processes, 
 because the glamor of gold gave the industry undue importance, 
 
 19 Shinn, C. H., " Mining Camps," p. 263. 
 
 05) 
 
1 6 Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 overrode the rights of agriculture and seriously interfered with it. 
 Had the gold been found in a region with other industries well 
 established, this interference would not have occurred. And, finally, 
 while the two industries, mining and agriculture, mutually aided and 
 fostered each other, the above mentioned special processes provided 
 enriched fields and irrigation ditches, which might be appropriated 
 by agriculture and thus be made to contribute still further to the 
 expansion of the latter. 
 
 Development of Transportation. A great industry, whose ex- 
 pansion in the fifties may be attributed almost entirely to the precious 
 metals, is that of transportation and its concomitant construction. 
 World commerce with its existing means underwent rapid enlarge- 
 ment at once on the advent of gold into the list- of western com- 
 modities. The Pacific, never before navigated for trade in any 
 regular way except around the southern capes to India, was brought 
 into requisition. Its vast area of public highway was used from 
 Cape Horn northward to San Francisco, and from Puget Sound 
 southward, and not only for men but for provisions. Transporta- 
 tion of supplies as well as men from Hawaii was greatly stimulated. 
 The number of vessels from the Orient increased many fold during 
 the first few years of the western awakening. And even down to 
 the present oriental trade and communication grow rapidly with the 
 development of the West, although the direct influence of mining 
 proportionately decreases as the influence of other unfolding indus- 
 tries increases. 
 
 Land Routes. On land the response to the demand for trans- 
 portation facilities was sure, but laborious. We have seen 20 what 
 it meant to transport the thousands of people across the continent 
 in wagons, on pack animals and on foot. The problem of moving 
 bulky goods was more difficult, and the increasing necessity of 
 getting all manner of goods into the West in the fifties made any 
 solution thereof inadequate as" soon as it materialized. Organized 
 pack trains of great heavy wagons drawn by multiple teams of 
 horses or cattle were among the first responses. Many an emigrant 
 loaded his wagon with merchandise, which he expected to sell when 
 he reached California. The clumsy wagons drawn across country 
 were often later put into local stage service. With a cargo of 
 
 20 Bull. Am. Geog. Soc. 
 
 (16) 
 
George D. Hubbard. I? 
 
 5,000-16,000 pounds and ten to twelve teams of oxen or mules, 
 these vehicles crawled out of San Francisco, Sacramento or Stock- 
 ton to the mines. In the south, and to a greater extent in the north, 
 where roads were poorer and ravines steeper and more difficult, 
 mule pack trains served the purpose. 21 
 
 Express Companies and the Telegraph. The heavy staging in 
 California was rarely adequate to move the goods, and never safe 
 for moving gold, nor was the government postal system of the 
 interior sufficient for its business; so local express companies were 
 organized both to carry the mail and to convey parcels. The federal 
 postal system failed because of lack of pecuniary allowance for its 
 maintenance in the midst of the gold-begotten high prices and enor- 
 mous business. The express companies, private concerns with their 
 management on the ground, came much nearer meeting the exigen-- 
 cies of the times. In 1853 there were twelve companies connecting 
 with San Francisco. 22 Two of these, Adams and Wells Fargo, were 
 extensions or branches of eastern companies. The former failed 
 in California, while the interests and operations of its successful 
 rival have been very closely related to the gold and silver mining 
 interests. Only the business and handsome compensation derived 
 from gold mining made successful operations of express companies 
 possible at that time. 
 
 Xot only was the postal business rapidly extended in the West, 
 but a more speedy means of transporting information was demanded. 
 Nothing was too new or expensive for California. Telegraph lines 
 came long before they would have come without the influence of 
 gold, and have been multiplied from the very beginning. By the 
 end of the first decade, many lines connected the camps and trade 
 centers with the great hub of the West at the Golden Gate; and 
 other lines connected the East with the West long before the rail- 
 roads were in operation. 
 
 Water Routes. The development of river traffic has been sug- 
 gested previously. River craft very early plied the waters of every 
 navigable stream in the Sacramento valley. Regular trips were 
 made from San Francisco to Marysville, Coluca and Sacramento, 
 the former at the head of navigation on the Feather, and the others 
 at junctions of tributaries with the Sacramento. Navigation for 
 
 21 Bancroft, H. H, " History of California," Vol. VII, pp. 151-156. 
 
 22 Ibid., VII, pp. 145-151. 
 
 (17) 
 
i8 Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 provisioning mining camps developed as far up the Umpqua 23 River 
 as possible. The extensive traffic on the Missouri and its western 
 feeders due to immigrants to the mines and the movement of mer- 
 chandise to the same destination is told by Chittenden. 24 This river 
 transportation extended to the head of navigation on the Missouri, 
 Fort Benton and built that town. The business became so great 
 under the increasing demands, induced by the development of min- 
 ing in Montana and Idaho, that it brought on its own destruction; 
 for the large and growing need of transportation facilities called 
 into existence the Union and Central Pacific, which took care of the 
 trade in the southern and eastern part of the route, also the Northern 
 Pacific, which captured all the Upper Missouri commerce and left 
 Fort Benton little reason for being. 
 
 The Influence on the Development of Railroads. Railroad plans 
 for transcontinental lines were already made when the news of gold 
 discoveries in California reached the Atlantic; but none had mate- 
 rialized, because of the clashing of northern and southern rights and 
 of state and federal rights. Each faction feared, if a road were 
 built across the continent where the other desired it, that the latter's 
 gain would be detrimental to the former. None would make con- 
 cessions for the common good. So in the conflict all routes in the 
 United States remained closed until 1869. The Panama route was 
 determined upon and surveyed, and the contracts let before the 
 influence of gold mining reached the place. But during the first 
 year or two of its construction the crowds of miners demanding 
 transportation across the isthmus, interfered greatly with work on 
 the new railroad by calling off most of the labor. In spite of this 
 hindrance, and by the aid of the stimulating demand for transporta- 
 tion for the miners, road building proceeded; and the Panama rail- 
 road was completed in i855- 25 
 
 Roads discussed in the United States were a northern, a central 
 and a southern line which finally materialized respectively as the 
 Northern Pacific, the Central and Union Pacific, and the two south- 
 ern routes, the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific. 
 
 23 Bancroft, H. H., " History of Oregon," Vol. II, p. 183. 
 
 24 Chittenden, H. M., " Early Steamboat Navigation, on the Missouri 
 River," 1903. 
 
 26 Bancroft, H. H., " History of California," Vol. VI, p. 139. Otis, F. N., 
 " The Isthmus of Panama," 1867, pp. 25, 36. Rodrigues, " The Panama 
 Canal," 1885, pp. 10 f. 
 
 (.8) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 19 
 
 Federal land grants were relied upon to build the roads, but the 
 demand for them came strongly from the Far West. Until 1848, 
 the only route discussed in the North was that mainly coinciding 
 with the Lewis and Clark route. The South became awakened at 
 the accession of territory in 1848, and still more on the announce- 
 ment of gold in it. They saw the possibility of a route across all 
 southern soil and terminating in the gold fields. Thus the whole 
 situation changed. 26 Asa Whitney, prime mover in the Northern 
 Pacific scheme, proposed to terminate the line much farther north, 
 where all earlier interests had been centered for a score of years. 
 Now his plan was laid aside; and the South, plus the gold of Cali- 
 fornia, constituted a force so potent that the terminus had to be 
 in California. For a compromise, the line ran westward in the cen- 
 tral part of the country. Another phase of the desire for a railroad 
 to California had some influence in obtaining government aid. 
 Under the impetus of its great wealth, the new West was develop- 
 ing very rapidly. It was cut off from "The States" by deserts, 
 mountains and a long sea voyage, and it faced the free open ocean. 
 Bancroft records that in 1860 there was talk of a political " cut off " 
 and a new nation. 27 Californians felt that they had sufficient re- 
 sources to go alone. But of course Congress, neither North nor 
 South, would hear to this, so steps for railroad connection \vere rap- 
 idly taken. The route finally decided upon was, in the main, one 
 used by the forty-niners and others later across South Pass, through 
 Salt Lake City, Ogden, along the Humboldt and over the Sierras 
 down Rio Americano to Sacramento and San Francisco. This 
 terminal never would have been chosen had it not been for the in- 
 terest centering in California's gold. 28 This line was built from 
 both ends and was finished near Ogden, Utah, in i86o,, 29 while the 
 Northern Pacific was delayed until 1883. For a time during the 
 discussions of route for the first railroad, the unequal pull or influ- 
 ence of various mining regions seemed likely to wreck all schemes ; 
 but better things came, and three distinct lines were constructed. A 
 number of local lines in California and other states stubs from the 
 
 26 Humboldt, A. Baron von, " History of the Geography of a New Conti- 
 nent," p. 77. 
 
 27 Bancroft, H. H., " History of California," Vol. VII, pp. 532 f. 
 
 28 Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, Vol. XVIII, pp. 497, 592. 
 
 29 Bancroft, H. H., " History of California," Vol. VII, p. 145. Smalley, 
 E. V., " History of the Northern Pacific Railroad," p. 275. 
 
 (19) 
 
2O Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 main line to a mine had been built before i875. 30 A detailed map 
 of any of the leading western lines of to-day shows clearly the 
 marked influence of the distribution of the precious metals in the 
 construction of the stub lines. Similar developments of branch 
 roads appear in South Africa and Australia. 
 
 The Southern Pacific and Santa Fe, with a goodly number of 
 stubs and short branch lines, are responses to the call of growing 
 trade and mining business in California in part, but especially in 
 Arizona and New Mexico. This latter region is abundantly sup- 
 plied with the precious metals in nearly all parts, but there are few 
 great deposits known at present. Transportation is perhaps the 
 greatest problem. Lack of construction timber and fuel are serious 
 difficulties in many places, but adequate transportation would over- 
 come both. Valuable mines of gold and silver have been able suc- 
 cessfully to demand a railroad to enter their vicinity ; but lesser ones 
 are unable to obtain the desired response and hence operate, if at 
 all, against heavy odds. 
 
 It was not agriculture that called for railroads, because that 
 industry was little developed when the roads came; but by their 
 presence across the semi-arid region and through many attractive 
 valleys, they have made possible settlements and the extension of 
 agriculture, where both would have been slow to go but for the 
 transportation facilities thus afforded. 
 
 Effects in Withdrawing Capital -from Other Industries. Much 
 of the capital acquired by mining was expended in further develop- 
 ing the industry, invested in city property, or in developing other 
 local industries. But this was not sufficient. Not only did wealth 
 migrate -from the mines into the industries and structures of the 
 cities, but it came from the East into California, and later into Colo- 
 rado, and now into every state. Nor did it flow in trickling streams 
 into the mining industry. It came with prodigality and reckless- 
 ness, and entered all industries, but especially those tributary to 
 mining. Gold and silver mines have always had a secret cord on 
 the purses of the people. Because of this influence over men and 
 their stores, money had been withdrawn from almost every industry 
 and put into stocks of gold mines, depriving the robbed industry of 
 an equal amount of its earnings. 31 Even the English have responded 
 
 30 Bancroft, H. H., "History of California," Vol. VII, pp. 542-592. 
 81 Porter, R. P., " The West from the Census of 1880," p. 374. 
 
 (20) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 21 
 
 with capital for American mines and often recklessly. So great is 
 the power of attraction that millions have thus been removed from 
 legitimate enterprises, both in eastern United States and in England, 
 and sunk in western gold and silver mines. Not infrequently the 
 properties thus endowed were wild-cat. Other millions have been 
 wisely invested and are now paying good interest. 
 
 Influence on Technical Education. Putting a broad construction 
 on the term industry or occupation, it is possible to speak in this 
 section of mining education and of mining schools of the United 
 States. Of course, gold and silver alone should not be given all 
 the credit for their development ; but if the percentage of technical 
 processes and of experts employed in mining the precious metals 
 be compared with those in the whole mining industry of the country, 
 these two metals will have a very creditable rank. Ours has come 
 to be a mining nation, not because of a few abundant minerals, but 
 because of many. Our rank in gold and silver has been first more 
 than once in the last few years, but the place is interchangeable, 
 first one of three countries leading, then another. We have attained 
 this rank from almost the bottom of the list in about a half 
 century, surpassing nations whose large output is the result of years 
 of growth and long experience. Many technical processes and com- 
 plex but adapted machines have originated in our mills because in 
 them men have learned by experience what sort of combinations to 
 use. 32 By experiments in the Washoe mills alone, the ore dressing 
 industry of the whole country has largely benefited ; and the cost of 
 training, however great, is inconsiderable compared with its impor- 
 tance and value to our mining industry. A great mass of technical 
 skill and knowledge has been rapidly acquired. Schools with ex- 
 pensive equipment and large attendance have been established in 
 several of our western states in the heart of the business, and others 
 in connection with old institutions in the East. A great body of 
 scientific and technical literature has accumulated. No nation grap- 
 ples with mining problems in a more practical way and with more 
 satisfactory results than does ours. No doubt, this is in consid- 
 erable measure traceable to the abundance and variety of our gold 
 and silver ores and the refractoriness of so many of the associations. 
 
 Summary. In the words of Humboldt, "the influence of the 
 
 82 U. S. G. S. Monog., IV, p. 121. 
 
 (21) 
 
22 Relation of Mining to Associated Industries. 
 
 mines on the progressive cultivation of the country " and the devel- 
 opment of its industries " is more durable than are the mines them- 
 selves." Just as mining was a great and powerful motive for immi- 
 gration, so it was, and is, for industrial development. It creates 
 demands for the products of agriculture and manufacturing and 
 thereby stimulates and expands both. It requires transportation, 
 and often causes roads and railroads to be constructed against all 
 but insurmountable obstacles. It has put the industrial development 
 of the West decades ahead of where it could possibly have been in 
 the normal frontier development, and given its commerce and manu- 
 facturing a distinctive tone. Further, it has stimulated nearly all 
 industries throughout the country, increased their kinds of output 
 as well as their quantity, and profoundly modified the distribution 
 of hundreds of industries. 
 
 OBERLIN COLLEGE, 
 OBERLIN, OHIO. 
 
 (22) 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRECIOUS METALS 
 
 OX AMERICAN EXPLORATION, DISCOVERY, 
 
 CONQUEST AND POSSESSION* 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE D. HUBBARD, PH.D.f 
 
 EARLY EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES. Beginning with the first 
 explorer who sailed across the Atlantic, "the expectation of finding 
 a land. rich in treasures of gold and silver or in products easily sold 
 for the metals was the prevailing motive in the minds of most of the 
 early discoverers and explorers." Whitney saysj the sixteenth 
 century travelers had little else in mind save the recompense for 
 their toils and dangers in the rich mines of the precious metals which 
 they were going to discover. Thus exploration was prompted by 
 the desire for gold or for the lucrative trade in gold and spices from 
 the Orient. The news of immensely rich empires, and mines of gold 
 and silver ceaselessly attracted Spanish exploration and conquest 
 into new quarters and thereby the more rapidly and extensively 
 opened up the New World to the knowledge of mankind. The 
 treasure was first found, in quantities, in the vaults and temples of 
 the Indian civilizations both in Mexico and in Peru ; but it was soon 
 also discovered in the mines from which the natives derived it, and 
 in others new even to them. 
 
 Balboa, on the Isthmus in search of precious metals in 1513,!! 
 found gold in the hands of natives and traded for 500 pounds of it. 
 Cortez on the Gulf Coast of Mexico learned of the wealth of the 
 kingdom of Montezuma, and marched successfully on his capital, 
 destroying the natives in vast numbers in order to effect his purpose 
 and get possession of the treasure. Pizarro is said to have extorted 
 
 * This paper is a portion of a thesis presented as a part of the requirements for the Ph.D. degree 
 in Geography at Cornell University. For other parts see Scottish Geographical Magazine and later 
 numbers of the Bulletin. Special thanks are given to Professors R. S. Tarr, W. F. Willcox and 
 H. Ries for criticism and suggestion throughout the whole work. 
 
 t Read before the Association of American Geographers, Baltimore, igo8. 
 
 \ Whitney. J. D. Metallic Wealth of the United States, p. xxi. 
 
 Patterson, R. H. The New Golden Age. Vol. i., pp. 422-424. 
 
 II Ibid., pp. 339-340. 
 
2 The Influence of the Precious Metals on American 
 
 from the Incas $15,000,000 worth of gold and silver, partly by peace- 
 able means, but with accompanying slaughter and pillage.* These 
 discoveries were of prime importance as revealing metals already 
 extracted ; and they soon led to the finding of the sources. 
 
 The Spaniards wanted gold, silver, or anything which would bring 
 the precious metals easily ; and by all methods they acquired about 
 $250,000 per annum, chiefly gold, during the first thirty years (i49 2 ~ 
 1521). But during the conquests of Mexico and Peru, and for ten 
 years thereafter, the acquisition of precious metals, now largely 
 silver, rose rapidly to about $3,000,000 per annum. So far, essen- 
 tially all the wealth obtained by the Spaniards in America was gotten 
 by conquest, plunder, tribute or barter. Practically no mining had 
 been done prior to 1546, when the fabulously rich silver mines at 
 Potosi in Bolivia were discovered, together with other mines of both 
 silver and gold. And now, by forced native labor, and negro labor, 
 the production of silver took another quick stride and rose to an 
 average of $10,000,000 per annum until i6oo.f 
 
 Near the close of the sixteenth century, the Jesuits had spread 
 across Mexico, gotten control of Lower California and discovered the 
 pearl fisheries of the warm adjacent seas. Spanish settlers followed, 
 and these discovered auriferous gravels, the southern end of that 
 long line of gravel deposits extending north and south across the 
 United States and Canada. Settlements grew, and agriculture began. 
 The Indians harassed the settlers until their complaints brought a 
 small army from headquarters, who pursued the Indians into the 
 mountains and in 1771 discovered very rich placers. J Some 2,000 
 persons rushed in, within a few months, and the deposits were exten- 
 sively developed. As. in the case of California later, lack of provi- 
 sions hindered development. It is interesting to note how near these 
 developments led them to California, and how close they came to 
 making discoveries that would have profoundly modified the course 
 of history in the United States in 1846-48, and subsequently. 
 
 Two MOTIVES IMPELLED THE SPANISH. In the course of events 
 connected with the Spanish occupation of America two motives 
 prompted action, motives often operating in the same mind. One 
 was the avowed purpose of the religious orders to promulgate their 
 religion among the natives ; the other, the ceaseless attraction exerted 
 
 * Ibid., p. 340 ; also Bancroft, H. H : , Mexico, Vol. 3, pp. 571-2 ; Prescott, W. H., The 
 Conquest of Peru, Vol i, pp, 433, 467. 
 
 t Patterson, R. H., The New Golden Age, Vol. i, pp. 422-424. 
 % Ibid., Vol. i, pp. 347-350. 
 
Exploration, Discovery, Conquest and Possession 
 
 by treasure upon the military.* But, unfortunately, the Jesuits were 
 sometimes influenced by the knowledge of the occurrence of silver 
 and gold. While the chief missionary of a party may have had pure 
 motives, his helpers often completely forgot their specific work and 
 went where treasure bade them go. With this double motive, explo- 
 ration and conquest rapidly disclosed the New World to the Old. It 
 is not our purpose to trace the influence of the missionary spirit in 
 America. As for the other influence, so far as it operated through 
 the Spanish, and aside from the above mentioned results, its sole 
 effects in America were the enriching of a comparatively small num- 
 ber of Spanish adventurers and the gorgeous maintenance of both 
 Church and State. The commonalty suffered from two conditions, 
 both born in part of greed for gold and silver, a cramped and re- 
 stricted trade, and the tyranny, despotism and avarice of officials. 
 
 EFFECTS OF GREED FOR GOLD AND SILVER. This very greed for 
 the gold was one of the causes that operated to scatter the energy of 
 the Spanish over Southern North America and all South America, 
 and to prevent their developing cities or fixed industries. They con- 
 quered, primarily for its treasure, a territory larger than they could 
 master and administer ; and as a result, their occupancy was irregular 
 and short lived over a considerable portion of their possessions/)* 
 The thirst for gold made the adventurers wild and led them a 
 romantic career in the New World. They disdained agriculture, 
 neglected singularly fertile plains, and thwarted legitimate com- 
 merce. They directed their steps wherever they heard tales of 
 abundant treasure. And it was in these pursuits, so eagerly and 
 mercilessly carried on, that they destroyed the native population and 
 thus greatly lessened the value of their possessions by denuding the 
 land of its native races.J Had this industrious and rudely cultured 
 race of Indians been conserved and properly dealt with, the Span- 
 iards might have had a loyal colony instead of a rebellious vassalage. 
 And, further, the Indians might have lasted some time as tillers of 
 the soil, if given careful and wise supervision, and thus have pro- 
 duced abundant harvests of products desired in Europe, thereby 
 adding extensive and lucrative commerce to Spain's advantage. And 
 what would have been Spain's gain, would also have been England's 
 and America's. 
 
 HYPOTHETICAL CASES. Whether the absence of the treasure 
 
 * Bourne, E. G., Spain in America, pp. 170-175 ; Keller, Colonization, pp. 176-8, 203. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 201. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 271 ; Patterson, R. H., The New Golden Age, Vol. i, pp. 337-8. 
 
4 The influence of the Precious Metals on American 
 
 would have made the Spanish even endurable masters or not, is a 
 question; but it is certain that, having once scented it, their avarice 
 knew no bounds, and destruction and bloodshed followed in their 
 wake. Had their course been so different as to have perpetuated 
 their occupation of Mexico as long as they held Cuba, American 
 history would have been quite another story. And with a loyal 
 Spanish colony south of us as successful as the British Colony north 
 of us, our history and development might have been considerably 
 different. What has been said of the Spanish in Mexico applies in 
 principle to the Spanish in Peru and Bolivia. We might have had 
 more valuable neighbors in these countries. What might have been 
 is har4 to tell, but it is safe to assert that the conditions assumed 
 above would have yielded results very different from those which 
 have passed into history. Spanish power in America was intimately 
 connected with the output of the precious metals. When the treas- 
 ure flowed freely, Spain flourished both at home and abroad; and 
 when it slackened, her power withered. Probably without the 
 precious metals, her course would have been- less offensive, and her 
 influence less pernicious. 
 
 ENGLISH AND SPANISH COMPARED. South American mines were 
 worked three-quarters of a century before there was an English 
 settlement on the American continent. A century of Spanish explo- 
 ration, gold hunting, christianizing and a kind of colonizing, in the 
 South had been completed before the occupation of the northeastern 
 seaboard began ; then followed a century of settlement and explora- 
 tion along the North Atlantic. While, in individual cases, some 
 exploration and exploitation was done by the English immigrants in 
 the vain hope of finding wealth in gold or silver, as colonists they 
 were actuated by other motives. Not finding gold, they were not 
 scattered through the mountains, but became much more of a solid 
 unit than did the Spanish. Other factors, however, than the absence 
 of gold operated against their becoming scattered. Since Spain had 
 laid claim to so much of the South, the English, when ready to 
 explore and settle, were restricted to the so-called less desirable 
 parts.* Had there been easily gotten mineral wealth discovered in 
 the Appalachian hills and valleys in the early days, there would have 
 been a rush of adventurers at first, with fewer fixed and staid settle- 
 ments. Perhaps it would have been roving Spanish, and not English, 
 along the Atlantic coast. Hardships under the less settled conditions 
 would greatly have surpassed those of the early colonists as it was, 
 
 * Keller, Colonization, pp. 178-80. 
 
Exploration, Discovery, Conquest and Possession 5 
 
 or even those of California in 1849 and 1850. One might well ask, 
 what would our history have been had there been abundance of 
 precious metals in New England and the Old Appalachians. Of 
 course, ultimately the result would have been the development of the 
 country ; but its possession undoubtedly would have been different. 
 Again, suppose the Spanish had not found treasure in the South. 
 Well does Whitney* suggest, "How different might have been Ameri- 
 can history had there been settlements in the Mexican and South 
 American States instead of silver." No doubt the distribution of 
 gold and silver found response in the distribution of the nations 
 in America in the early days. This is never more clearly seen than 
 when the profoundly different distribution is imagined. 
 
 THE FRENCH. The French in America are usually thought of as 
 a people with very slight predilections for the precious metals. They 
 were led by other motives. But we are told that they explored 
 extensively for gold and silver in 1719-20, about the junction of the 
 Missouri and the Mississippi rivers, but, of course, with no positive 
 results. Had they found the object of their quest in the region, the 
 story of French exploration, occupation and possession would have 
 needed another chapter. 
 
 SUMMARY TO 1848. Thus it becomes apparent that the desire 
 for the precious metals was an active agent in the explorations 
 carried on by the early voyagers; that the distribution of gold and 
 silver led the searchers into nearly all parts of America south of the 
 thirtieth parallel of north latitude, and aided in scattering the energy 
 of the Spanish over too large a territory; that greed and avarice, 
 finding a fertile soil in the acquisition of American precious metals, 
 caused the Spanish to adopt and maintain a policy toward the natives 
 and toward her colonists both cruel and pernicious; a policy, detri- 
 mental to the United States through our relations with Mexico'; that 
 the lack of gold and silver in the Appalachians has had an influence 
 for good, especially on the English colonists, and through them on 
 the conquest and possession of the northeastern United States ; and 
 that the finding of treasure and the increasing production of gold and 
 silver have stimulated geographic exploration and discovery. 
 
 The amount of production of gold and silver continued to rise, 
 and the cost to decline from time to time by the introduction of 
 improved processes. It is stated that the production of gold and 
 silver in the New World in 1800 had risen to about $50,000,000 per 
 annum. It is also known that the production of the United States 
 
 * Whitney, J. D., Metallic Wealth in the United States, p. xxi. 
 
6 The Influence of the Precious Metals on American 
 
 at that time was scarcely one-third of a million, and mostly gold, 
 per annum ; yet, indirectly, the production in other American States 
 has aided the United States and has modified early American history 
 perceptibly. 
 
 THE CALIFORNIA GOLD. Up to the discovery of gold in California 
 the Pacific side of the continent had remained almost an uninhabited 
 region save for the scattered Franciscan missionary posts ; and 
 unvisited except by a few scientific expeditions that crossed the 
 desert and 'mountain wastes, by whalers who occasionally touched 
 the coast, and by trappers and fur traders who moved up and dqwn 
 the streams and along the coast. The interior was visited even less. 
 Knowledge concerning the whole region was very meager. The 
 few expeditions brought back a little information concerning strips 
 of country actually crossed, and the trappers and fur traders knew 
 the courses of the streams, but the real opening up of the country 
 and the discovery of its resources, agricultural as well as mineral, 
 had scarcely begun in 1848. Transportation was very difficult, food 
 all but wanting, water restricted to widely scattered points, and 
 Indians were hostile. No advantages to be gained by crossing were 
 known. The greatness of the uninhabited region required almost 
 prohibitive provisioning of expeditions purposing to cross; and the 
 pressure of population from the east had not yet reached a sufficient 
 degree to push the frontier into the deserts and mountains. 
 
 But with the discovery of the wealth buried so slightly in the 
 sands of the Sierras, was also found the incentive sufficient to induce 
 men to brave the difficulties presented by a long land journey, or to 
 risk the perilous voyage of six months around Cape Horn to reach 
 the otherwise inaccessible California. Incidental to getting into 
 California, more exploration of the interior was done in one summer 
 than had ever been done before, and more than probably would have 
 been done in the normal course of events in a score or two of years 
 to come. 
 
 The fur traders had worked out many routes, but rarely did they 
 point the way entirely across from the Mississippi to the Pacific. 
 Fremont's report in 1845, embodying careful topographic and descrip- 
 tive work, was a further contribution to the scanty fund of informa- 
 tion concerning routes westward. The Oregon trail* was worked 
 out, and used prior to the gold discoveries by several bands who 
 later, in part, at least, figured in California. Perhaps the Sante Fe 
 
 * Parkraan, Francis. The Oregon Trail. 
 
Exploration, Discovery, Conquest and Possession 7 
 
 trail* from St. Louis to Sante Fe, and the Gila and Spanish trails 
 from there to southern California were as important as any of the 
 older trails. These routes were almost entirely established prior to 
 1848, hence, their discovery can by no means be ascribed to the 
 influence of this metal; but they were little known and little used 
 save by the fur traders until 1849. During that summer trails be- 
 came roads, and bridle paths highways, cut-offs were found, new 
 watering-places discovered and in many ways the courses improved. 
 The trail to Salt Lake City through South Pass was used; but, 
 instead of going on northwestward to the Columbia and Oregon, a 
 new trail was worked out down the Humboldt River to Humboldt 
 Sink, then up the back of the Sierras, and down the many ravines 
 on the western face. The route, a well-woven cord nearly to the 
 eastern slope of these mountains, seemed to fray out ijito many 
 strands leading down the gulches on the western side. The American 
 River, down which Fremont traveled,f is fairly typical in the hard- 
 ships presented. It is astonishing what difficulties men and even 
 women and children will surmount when under the influence of the 
 gold fever. 
 
 Mention must also be made of the exploration of routes, mainly 
 by water, which came into use on the advent of California gold, and 
 led from the Atlantic ports to Mexico and Central America and then 
 by stream or on the land across to the Pacific, and thence to Cali- 
 fornia. The route with the shortest land section crossed the Isthmus 
 of Panama, and was found very early both by passengers and freight. 
 Other routes crossed at Tehuantepec, Nicaragua and from Tampico 
 across northern Mexico to Mazatlan and other Pacific ports, all 
 resulting in the exploration of sections of the country, but, neither 
 in occupation nor in possession, any more than the crossing of the 
 arid plains and the mountains, resulted at first in their occupation. 
 Routes discovered and developed by emigrants in search of gold at 
 the end of their journey, differ in this respect from those worked out 
 by the ordinary overland emigrant. Only the discouraged or ex- 
 hausted halt on the former, while the latter soon become enlivened 
 by settlements of those who find places "good enough for them" and 
 turn aside to occupy. 
 
 EXPLORATION BY PROSPECTORS. This pioneer exploration, dis- 
 cussed above, took place during the early days of the gold excitement 
 in California ; but as the richer deposits became exhausted, the pros- 
 
 * Semple, E. C. American History and Its Geographicaj Conditions, Ch. X and XI. 
 
 t Fremont, J. C., Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, pp. 230 f. 
 
8 The Influence of the Precious Metals on American Exploration 
 
 pector set out, impelled by a continuous vision of "nuggets." He 
 pushed back into the interior wilderness, across deserts, over ridges, 
 into glens, gulches, parks, and long stately valleys; he climbed 
 mountains, crossed divides and traced streams from end to end. 
 While his explorations were not scientific, and his results were not 
 recorded, his discoveries were valuable even aside from the treasure 
 they revealed, because definite reports of his discoveries often got 
 into possession of others; and the latter followed him out to make 
 new settlements or to occupy fields which he had only viewed. And 
 even in the absence of positive statement of valuable finds of minerals, 
 lands, forest, or game, the report that so-and-so had been through 
 certain valleys or over certain mountains or had been exploring in a 
 named locality or direction, served to turn the attention thitherward, 
 and make one feel somewhat acquainted with the places beyond fris 
 more complete knowledge. It all aided in the conquest of valley 
 and hillside, spring and water course, to other purposes than the 
 maintenance of wild animals and savages. Desire to find gold, and 
 the reports of gold and silver found all over the West, prompted 
 further exploration, and led to discoveries, not only of precious 
 metals, but of many geographic features, streams, mountains, valleys, 
 and plains, and of many other less attractive but more remunerative 
 resources of the region. Under the powerful stimulus, exploration 
 was very active, and the knowledge of the West extended phenomen- 
 ally. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION OF ALASKA. Nor should this section 
 be concluded without reference to the influence Alaskan gold has had 
 upon exploration. It played no part in the discovery, nor in our 
 gaining possession of the peninsula, but since the announcement of 
 its presence the exploration of the country by prospectors and miners, 
 and by those who would enter the carrying trade to assist the miners, 
 has been very vigorously pushed. In a much closer way careful 
 surveying and mapping have gone on rapidly under the supervision 
 of the United States Geological Survey, and at the expense of the 
 Federal Government. Of course, this work is not done alone in 
 response to the influence of gold and silver ; but the distribution of 
 the work both in Alaska and in the States shows how influential 
 have been the mineral deposits in determining the areas to be sur- 
 veyed first. Gold and silver have played an important part, as have 
 other minerals. 
 
 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, 
 Columbus, Ohio. 
 
[Reprinted from the BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN- GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, February, 1912.] 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRESENCE, DIS- 
 COVERY AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE 
 PRECIOUS METALS IN AMERICA ON 
 THE MIGRATION OF PEOPLE* 
 
 GEORGE D. HUBBARD 
 Oberlin College 
 
 In a previous sectionf was traced the exploration carried on by 
 the three leading nations in America, Spanish, English and French. 
 The exploring parties in some cases became so large and numerous 
 that they really constituted a migration, a flood of immigration. It 
 is difficult to establish a line that will properly delimit explorers arid 
 adventurers from immigrants, but for all practical purposes those 
 who come and roam about with no intention of remaining in a place 
 may be classed in the first group ; those who come ostensibly to re- 
 main, even though not permanently in one place, may be put in the 
 second group. A migration has the idea of mass movement and for 
 a more or less permanent home, while the exploring party is small 
 and never intends to abide. 
 
 SPANISH MIGRATIONS. Myersi speaks of the migration of ad- 
 venturers and colonists from Spain to America in the Sixteenth 
 
 * This paper is a portion of the thesis presented as a part of the requirement for the Ph.D. degree 
 in Geography at Cornell University. For other parts see this Bulletin, Vol. XLII, pp. 594-602; Scott. 
 Geog. Mag., Vol. XXVI, pp. 440-466; Vol. XXVII, pp. 417 and 470; Bull. Phil. Geog. Soc., Vol. IX, 
 pp. 1-22; Vol. X, pp. 36-50. Special thanks are herein expressed for criticism and suggestion given 
 by Professors R. S. Tarr, H. Ries, and W. F. Willcox, throughout the whole work. 
 
 t Bulletin, Vol. XLII, pp. 594-602. 
 
 * Myers, P. V. W. Gen. Hist., 1889, pp. 517, 518. 
 
 97 
 
98 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 Century as to be compared only with that to California and the 
 West in 1849 and subsequently. It was more scattered in destina- 
 tion, and less scattered in source. Moved by the stories of rich 
 deposits, the desire for adventure and for a new home, thousands 
 of Spanish and Portuguese took passage for the new continent. 
 Because the treasure could be found in so many places, and because 
 gold and silver had the greatest attraction, they occupied nearly all 
 parts of South America and Mexico, and even established them- 
 selves in territory constituting at present southwestern United States. 
 The mines in America, in these early days, drew no small part of 
 their workers from the mines in Spain, although many of the labor- 
 ers were Indians and Negroes ; and, inasmuch as the precious metals 
 were found well distributed over South America and Mexico, the 
 colonists, scattered over all this region, have given an Iberian color 
 to the life and activities of the whole territory. 
 
 ENGLISH IMMIGRATION. South American mines were worked 
 nearly a century, before English immigration made a beginning on 
 the North Atlantic coast and spread westward across the lowlands 
 to .the foot-hills from New England to Georgia ; and, when the Eng- 
 lish immigration began, gold and gold hunting seem to have had 
 little power over it. Other ends than wealth were sought. The 
 men in that stream of colonists were almost uniformly in search of 
 permanent homes surrounded by agriculture, lumbering, fishing, and 
 the beginnings of manufacturing. How fortunate for these colonists 
 tbat they found no gold and silver in the Appalachians, for probably, 
 had they found deposits, their settlements would have been preceded 
 by Spanish miners' camps, and their standards of life by those 
 somewhat opposed to the arts of peace and husbandry. 
 
 Just as gold played no part in the immigration of the early Eng- 
 lish colonists to America, so the desire for gold was not the in- 
 fluence that led those waves of families and civilization across the 
 eastern barriers and to the plains and prairies of the Mississippi 
 Valley. Likewise, the expansion into the first row of States west of 
 that great river, a growth partly antecedent to the discovery of gold 
 in California, apparently cannot be traced to the influence of the 
 precious metals. jSFor can those several western movements which 
 stretched to the Pacific coast prior to 1849, really be said to have 
 had anything to do with gold. The Mormons were forced from 
 behind to cross the great plains. The Oregon immigrants of 1843 
 were induced to go by the prospect of lucrative trade in furs. A 
 scattered emigration from the eastern and central States sifted a 
 
Factor in the Migration of People 99 
 
 sparse population of hardy pioneers through the mountains or 
 around Cape Horn into California, Washington, and Oregon. But 
 the motive was not in the gold. The results of all this fragmentary 
 and heterogeneous westward movement of the people played its part 
 in 1849-1853, for, when the news of the brilliant discoveries along 
 the American River went abroad, the response first began among 
 those who had found their way into the vicinity for other purposes 
 than gold digging. 
 
 LOCAL EFFECTS ix 1848. Californians were at first incredulous 
 of the discovery, and for three months the news did not reach points 
 outside the valley. Accordingly, the response did not begin until 
 April, 1848. Then there began a cautious ingathering, which was 
 quickly followed by an apprehension of the magnitude of the dis- 
 coveries, a quicker dissemination of the news in ever widening 
 circles and a hasty response to the influence of the finds. The 
 widening circle of information could travel no faster than man 
 could move from one place to another; hence, where geographic 
 conditions made travel easy the circle enlarged rapidly, but on the 
 Sierra side its expansion was greatly restricted. Consequently, the 
 first rush of eager miners came from the California Valley and the 
 limiting slopes of the mountains into the gulches of as many of the 
 Sierra streams as were known to possess gold-bearing gravels. 
 California-Americans to the number of 2,000 and California-Spanish- 
 Mexicans and Indians, in the aggregate about 3,000, w r ere at work 
 by the middle of the summer. The population .of the mining camps 
 was varied, to be sure, during the first summer, but no more so than 
 was that of California and the immediate vicinity at the discovery of 
 gold, barring a few foreign sailors who deserted their ships in harbor. 
 The cosmopolitan nature of the migration was a feature of subse- 
 quent years and not of the first. As soon as the news had time to 
 get to Oregon, Xorthern Mexico, and the Sandwich Islands, after 
 gaining credence near home, there started parties from these places, 
 the Argonauts, Sonorans, and Kanakas;* and as the news of the 
 discovery reached the far-off Peruvian and Chilian, so the response 
 came quickly in considerable parties from each country. 
 
 So great was the excitement in the California Valley, and so con- 
 tagious the gold fever, that few escaped the effects of the epidemic. 
 The main valley in close proximity to the centers of influence was 
 pretty well drained to the gulches before the close of the season of 
 1848. By June, three-fourths of the male population of San Fran- 
 
 * Bancroft, H. H. Hist of Calif., 1884. 7 vols., Vol. VI, p. 7T . 
 
100 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 
 
 cisco had gone. The Star, of San Francisco, May 27, 1849, con - 
 tained the following vivid description : 
 
 "Stores are closed, places of business vacated, houses are tenantless, various 
 kinds of mechanical labor suspended or given up entirely, everything wears a 
 desolate and somber look, everywhere all is dull, monotonous, dead." 
 
 Newspapers ceased publication by June; town council and the 
 sanctuary services ended; sailors, and even officers, and sometimes 
 captains, left ship in the harbor. Mexicans and Americans were 
 equally affected; townsmen and farmers equally impetuous; judges, 
 priests, doctors, alcaldes, criminals and their keepers, soldiers and 
 their officers, all classes went. Towns and farms were equally 
 depopulated all along the valley and coast to San Diego.* 
 
 GOLD AND SILVER PRODUCING REGIONS ARE MOUNTAINOUS. But 
 beyond the valley on the east for a thousand miles lay mountains 
 and deserts; and on the west, the sea. Few miners could come 
 from adjoining territory. It was uninhabited. The gulches, them- 
 selves, and their placers were in the mountains, and the quartz veins 
 from which these placers and essentially all others of the West 
 were derived, lay farther up in rugged, wild, mountain masses. 
 This topographic distribution is a result of the origin ancl nature of 
 gold deposits. The metal occurs in veins and fissures, hence in 
 regions of metamorphism, folding, and faulting; in regions where 
 rocks may contain heated waters, often associated with intrusions or 
 with lava flows, sometimes not yet cold.f Silver occurs in similar 
 regions and for the same reasons. Inasmuch as rocks which have 
 been subjected to these dynamic processes are metamorphosed and 
 often thereby hardened, and as, with the crustal disturbances, uplift 
 has also occurred, the country, favored with the precious metals, is 
 usually rough, high, mountainous, and difficult of access. Reference 
 to lists of producing States, and a comparison of these lists with a 
 physical map of the United States, will make it clear that almost all 
 the gold and silver produced in the country comes from two widely 
 separated mountainous areas. 
 
 When the gold of the Southern Appalachian States was found, 
 mining began in the midst of a well settled region, in which food- 
 producing industries were well established, and men, although busy 
 with other work, were right on the ground. Further, the deposits 
 were not extensive; hence, far reaching migrations did not occur. 
 But when the California gold was found, and, later, when both 
 
 * Bancroft, ibid.^ pp. 59, 263. Shinn, C. H., Mining Camps, pp. 109-114. 
 t Am. Inst. Min. Eng. (1903), Vol. XXXIII, pp. 79 of. 
 
Factor itj, the Migration of People 101 
 
 metals were discovered in other Western States, the newness, rough- 
 ness, inaccessibility, and distance to centers of population had suc- 
 cessfully restrained any considerable accumulation of people and 
 any development of other industries. Consequently, the rich and 
 extensive deposits, by virtue of their geographic position and asso- 
 ciations, did not find at hand labor and supplies for their exploitation : 
 and, when the news of their discovery went forth, it called out a 
 great migration; a migration from distant regions where labor was 
 more abundant. 
 
 EXCITEMENT ix EASTERN UNITED STATES. Word of the unusual 
 stir on the Pacific did not reach the Atlantic coast until late in 1848, 
 because of the great distance and difficult transportation ; and, dur- 
 ing the winter and early spring of 1849, the news was spread far 
 afield, until by the close of summer of that year knowledge of the 
 mining possibilities there had become world-w r ide. Xo such wide- 
 spread excitement had ever been known before ; and nothing so far- 
 reaching and influential has occurred since, although just as great 
 discoveries of wealth have been made. The sweeping force of the 
 craze arose from the remoteness of its source, and the consequent 
 novelty and wildness, and from the richness of the deposits compared 
 with anything known before. It was beyond the dreams of the 
 ancients. 
 
 As the fact took hold of the people in eastern United States, 
 thousands determined to go.' Whitney conjectures that within a 
 few months, some 50,000 of the healthiest and most energetic young 
 men of the nation were on their way to California. So strong was 
 the desire to go, that many started by one of the sea routes before 
 the winter was over ; and as the weather permitted, others departed 
 by the land routes, until almost every town throughout the Eastern 
 States had contributed a representative to the great army now clos- 
 ing in on California. Whitney estimates that 100,000 reached the 
 region during the year 1849, among whom were citizens of every 
 State in the Union. The estimate was probably a little generous.* 
 Land routes were popular and supplied as many miners as the sea 
 routes, but not so continuous a stream; because most were pro- 
 
 * Whitney. J. D., Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th Ed., Vol. 4, p. 701. Shinn, C. H.. Mining Camps, 
 p. 109. R. H. Patterson ('The New Golden Age, Vol. i, pp. 108-0) estimates the white population of Cali- 
 fornia, in 1850, at less than 100,000, and quotes the census of Nov., 1852, at 170,000 whites. Shinn 
 (Mining Camps, p. 132) says: " In December, 1849, there were 53,000 Americans in California." and a 
 few pages later, states that in 1849 35.000 persons came to California by sea, and 42,000 by land. Not 
 many had left for other fields as early as the close of 1849. Perhaps as much credence should be given 
 to Whitney as to Shinn, who presents considerable discrepancy in his own statements. 
 
102 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 hibitively closed during the winter, while one might sail anytime 
 during the twelve months. 
 
 LAND ROUTES. Overland routes had been known for years prior 
 to 1848.* The fur traders had worked them out, and the explorers 
 had mapped some of them; but it should be remembered, that they 
 were not made for continuous traffic across the continent. The 
 connecting passes and high level routes had not become well estab- 
 lished because so little used. Even the well ordered trails, formerly 
 used primarily for freight, now became great passenger routes. 
 
 A common starting point was at the elbow of the Missouri River, 
 but several towns in the vicinity became outfitting towns: St. Joseph, 
 Westport, Leavenworth, Ft. Kearney, Independence, Kansas City, 
 and even Omaha became important commercial centers in the effort 
 to meet the needs of the trade. The northern routes to Laramie 
 and South Pass conducted rather more emigrants westward that 
 the southern route to Sante Fe, probably because the gold was 
 mainly in the northern half of California, and because the emigrants 
 did not know, or at least realize, that a longer journey, but at a 
 much less altitude, bv Sante Fe might bring them to their desired 
 grounds equally as soon. Possibly the aridity and lack of settle- 
 ments tended to keep people from the southern route, while the re- 
 cruiting station at Salt Lake City offered a chance to rest by the 
 northern line. The routes followed by the land emigrants through 
 Salt Lake City led through rugged mountain passes and over long 
 desert stretches ; and then, as the pioneers approached the eastern 
 flank of the Sierras in the rush to be first into the coveted gravels, 
 they began to scatter and thus were compelled to use poorer, less 
 traveled trails both up the slopes and through the passes of the crest. 
 Having passed the summit, they scattered down the gulches from the 
 Pitt in the north to the Tuolumne in the south. This brought them 
 first to the upper ends of the steep, deep, defiles whose floors farther 
 down were auriferous gravels. 
 
 These northern routes were beset by Indians. As long as the 
 migration consisted of the fur-traders and an occasional settler, the 
 natives cared little; but when the glamor and attractiveness of gold 
 brought thousands of prairie schooners sailing across their grounds 
 
 * Chittenden, H. M. Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River, 1903. 
 Thittenden, H. M. Hit. of Amer., Fur Trade of The Far West, 1902. 
 Fremont, J. C. Report of The Expl. Exp. to Rocky Mts. in 1842, &c., 1845. 
 Lewis and Clark. Explorations in The North West. 
 Parkman, Francis. The Oregon Trail. 
 Semple, E. C. Amer. Hist, and Its Geographic Conditions, 1903. 
 
Factor in the Migration of People 103 
 
 in one summer, and when towns and roads and all that drives out 
 wilderness crowded in and claimed their habitat, they became rest- 
 less, then revengeful. It only needed the lack of watchfulness on 
 the part of the government, whose attention was elsewhere at the 
 time, to permit the outbreak of trouble and hostilities beween the 
 Indians and the settlers in 1862. 
 
 Those who came by the southern route past Sante Fe, along the 
 Gila River or the Spanish Trail, and across the Colorado River at 
 Yuma into Southern California had to endure more desert, found a 
 warmer climate, less rainfall, less forest, and had no great altitudes 
 to traverse. They came into the California Valley and swung north- 
 westward through the tule-covered swampland, or along the western 
 foot of the mountains, and entered the gulches at their lower or 
 western ends. They were led through territory already appropri- 
 ated by Mexicans-; and after the first summer, had not only the 
 wicked Apache Indians to watch, but also the outlaw or the expelled 
 Mexican miner who frequented these roads and robbed the traveler. 
 Returning miners who presumably had in possession at least samples 
 of California's treasures, proved most fascinating bait. Robbing 
 became quite a business under the superior temptation presented by 
 the returning miners, or by those going to new fields with their 
 accumulated wealth in their belts. And not only was robbery com- 
 mitted, but occasionally entire parties were put out of the way by 
 outlaws lurking in the defiles through which the caravan must pro- 
 ceed. In California, express companies abandoned their routes, 
 because their goods so endangered the lives of their drivers. Rob- 
 bing and murder were not local features but occurred on most of 
 the trails and even on the highways between the mines and their 
 trading centers. 
 
 The water routes worked out under the lead of gold were varied ; 
 but those broken at the Isthmus gave at least a possibility of a 
 shorter time period than either the overland or Cape Horn route, 
 hence they were always overcrowded. Until 1855, when the Panama 
 railroad began duty, more emigrants, bound for California, arrived 
 at the Atlantic ports than Isthmian transportation could be found 
 for ; and many more succeeded in crossing and reached the western 
 ports than could find passage on the Pacific vessels to California, 
 partly because so many Pacific ships were tied up at San Francisco. 
 Consequently hundreds, probably thousands, were delayed between 
 the two oceans, and became the prey of malarious diseases, which 
 they were often unable to shake off, and therefore were never able 
 
104 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 to grasp the gold they were seeking. A goodly number sailed 
 around Cape Horn; and in these long journeys, subsisting on im- 
 proper food, ran the risk of scurvy to which many fell victims. By 
 December, 1848, the stream of emigration had become a rush. Ships 
 were loaded at almost every Atlantic port. Vessels were drawn 
 from the whaling business and from all kinds of trade greatly to 
 the disarrangement of other commercial lines.* 
 
 GOLD CREATED GREAT MIGRATION. When one compares the 
 small trickling stream of migration to the Far West prior to 1848 
 with the mighty river which surged through the passes and deluged 
 the deserts between 1849 an ^ 1856, he arrives at an expression for 
 the magnitude of the influence emanating from the California 
 gravels. Nor should the numerical response alone be taken as the 
 measure of the influence. The obstacles to overcome, because the 
 gold occurred in a far away mountain wilderness, were gigantic; 
 over 3,000 miles by land for the far easterner; 2,000 miles for the 
 prairie farmer ; deserts, sand and dust, mountains and forest, snows 
 and exposure, three or four months of severe hardship and pri- 
 vation ; or, if by water, exposed for as long a time to dangers by 
 sea ; the sacrifice of home and its associations and comforts ; the 
 denial of friends, business and pleasures ; and finally the expense of 
 all this journey with only a hope at the end. Truly, tremendous, 
 must have been that power over the lives of men to induce such 
 enthusiasm and excitement, and to make men willing to submit 
 themselves and often their families to such hardships. Chittendenf 
 justly styles the movement as one of the most wonderful migra- 
 tions of people on record. 
 
 Those going by sea were almost entirely from the coast regions, 
 while those of the interior waited for spring to open up the land 
 route. The response was strongest throughout the great Missisippi 
 Valley, perhaps, because many of these people had moved once 
 within the generation and were thus more susceptible to the moving 
 . fever than those farther east; perhaps, because they were nearer 
 the gold fields. 
 
 Yet not only did the people of the eastern United States catch 
 
 * H. H. Bancroft (Hist, of Calif., Vol. VI, pp. 121-5) gives the following figures attesting the 
 volume of emigration from Eastern United States by sea: From six Atlantic ports between the dates 
 of December 14, 1848, and January t8, 1849, OI vessels carrying an average of 50 persons set sail. 
 In the month of February, 1849, 60 vessels weighed anchor in New York Harbor loaded with California 
 passengers, and 70 more in the harbors of Boston and Philadelphia. During the winter of 1849-50, 
 250 vessels sailed from Atlantic ports for California, 45 of which arrived in San Francisco Bay on the 
 same day. 
 
 tChittenden, H. M. Early Steamboat Navigation on The Missouri River, 1903, Vol, I, pp. 173, 4. 
 
Factor in the. Migration of People 105 
 
 the gold fever and respond to the call ; but, in the latter part of 1848 
 and during 1849, some 2,000 immigrants reached California from 
 Oregon and Washington; and by July, 1849, JS* 000 foreigners from 
 Mexico, Chili, Peru, and other Pacific States had arrived. New 
 Holland, Australia, the Marquesas Islands, and even China each 
 sent its quota. Just a year from the discovery of gold, a flood of 
 European emigrants, mostly British, arrived to try their fortunes.* 
 In fact, nearly every civilized land was represented in the diggings 
 of California during the course of the first five years. The South- 
 ern Appalachians happily sent to the West many men who knew the 
 processes of placer mining, and found in California a larger free- 
 dom in which local mining institutions were rapidly developing.! 
 European mining regions sent squads of miners trained in con- 
 servative methods of mining and disciplined in knowledge of camp 
 life and organization, who contributed both to the common fund in 
 their adopted country. Many miners from the south brought along 
 a few negroes, thus adding another element to the ample heter- 
 ogeneity of the mass collected around the mining centers of Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
 Japan's stolidity under the almost universal excitement is some- 
 what remarkable; but it is asserted by Bancroft^ that she was 
 almost absolutely indifferent to all the world's bustle and flurry ; and 
 the almost total absence of the Japanese from California until many 
 years after bears silent testimony to his indifference. With China, 
 the case was very different. Either in direct response to the in- 
 fluence of gold in the rocks, or else with a desire to engage in some 
 other business than mining, but tributary to it, her people came ; 
 3 in 1848, 700 in 1849, over 3' OO i n ^SO, as many more in 1851, 
 and about 10,000 in 1852, so that by the opening of 1853 at ^ east 
 20,000 Chinese were in the State. Then the incoming rapidly de- 
 clined^ A great many arrived from the Hawaiian Islands and easily 
 became the menial class. They were accustomed to it, and were 
 willing, when there arose a need for such work, to be laborers of the 
 lowest class. Moreover, the fact' that gold had been acquired with 
 simple, cheap equipment, and that no one had been able to hire 
 laborers in the placers for what such laborers easily ran the chance 
 of making when working for themselves, had given rise to a uni- 
 
 * Patterson, R. H. The New Golden Age, 1882, Vol. I, pp. 104, 5. 
 t Shinn, C. H. Mining Camps, 1885, p. 40. 
 % Bancroft, H. H. Hist, of Calif., Vol. VI, p. 124. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. VII, p. 335 f; Semple, E. C., American History and its Geographical Conditiors, 
 1903, p. 319. 
 
106 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 versal aristocracy with no true laboring class. When, owing to 
 changed mining conditions, such a class became necessary, the ports 
 of China were nearer in time, expense, and hardship than were the 
 Eastern States, hence the Chinaman stepped in and became the 
 common drudge.* 
 
 Prior to the discovery of gold in California, the Spanish-Mexicans 
 were coming into the valley in greater numbers than the Americans. 
 The query might well arise, would this condition have continued, 
 had not the new mining industry invited the thousands to immi- 
 grate? And had it continued, would not the Americans, when the 
 time came for their expansion, have found little desirable land un- 
 occupied? The discoveries seem from this point of view to have 
 been very timely. 
 
 INCREASE OF POPULATION. No statement of the increa'se of 
 population in California will portray the phenomenal growth better 
 than can be done with a few figures. Each year before 1848, a few 
 had come until, by the summer of 1845, just prior to any emigration 
 which could -possibly be ascribed to the influence of gold, the State 
 contained 2,000 Americans and as many Mexicans. In December 
 of the same year there were 6,000; in July 1849, 15,000 and in De- 
 cember, 53,000. In June 1850, the total white population was 
 92,597 and in November, 1852, according to the census taken that 
 month, it amounted to 269,000, of which about 30,000 were Indians, 
 20,000 Chinese and 2,000 negroes.f The center of population in 
 the United States migrated 81 miles westward during the decade 
 1850-1860, the movement being about 50 per cent, larger than that 
 of preceding decades, and a result of the emigrating impulse that 
 was filling up the far western territory. 
 
 This same phenomenal growth of population has been witnessed 
 in most of the newly discovered gold regions. In Alaska, the Nome 
 coast furnishes an illustVation where the conditions were even harder 
 to meet than those of California. On January I, 1899, a ^ ew Eski- 
 mo huts and one or two sod houses for white men were the only 
 human habitations along 60 miles of coast. In June, a dozen or 
 score of tents housed the entire population, and in October, 5,000 
 whites were dwelling on the beach.! Another illustration comes" 
 from Australia. Gold was discovered in Victoria in 1851. Previ- 
 ous immigration had been rapid, but at this time it took a sudden 
 
 * Semple, E. C., loc. cit., p. 320. 
 
 t Patterson, R. H. The New Golden Age, &c., Vol. I, pp. 108-9. Shinn, C. H. Mining Camps, 
 p. 132. Abstract i2th Census of the United States, pp. 32-33. 
 
 t U. S. G. S. Prelim. Rept. on Cape Nome Region, Alaska, Brooks & Schrader, p. 45. 
 
Factor in the Migration of People 107 
 
 leap. In 1846. Victoria contained 33,000 people; in 1851, 51,000; 
 and in 1854, 236,000.* 
 
 OTHER EFFECTS ox POPULATION. This rapid growth in the 
 number of people was not the only effect of the precious metals on 
 the population of the West. Society was masculine, and most of 
 the men were under forty years of age. Only men of youth and 
 vigor could make the journey or bear the privations and exposure 
 of camp life. Wisely, the selection in the main occurred in the 
 homes, and only the young, healthy men started. The novelty and 
 wildness, the adventure and risk of the journey and of mining, 
 appealed to the young men more than to those who -were rooted in 
 business or family. Shinnf says there were but 15 women in San 
 Francisco in the Spring of 1849. There were many camps with 
 none at all, and others containing but one family among, say 40 
 single men. Perhaps the inequality of the sexes numerically was 
 greater among the Chinese than among any other nationality. In 
 August, 1852, not one in a thousand among them was a woman.t 
 Bancroft, after discussing the manliness and strength of character 
 of the men who came under the influence of gold mining camp life, 
 remarks that "the comparative superiority of the men over women 
 is an expression of the law that the power of attraction due to gold 
 and silver does not tear a\yay from civilized and cultured comforts 
 the same select grades of both. Nor do the mining habits develop 
 the same admirable qualities in women as in men. Even in the 
 report of the I2th Census 1900, there is shown a remarkable differ- 
 ence in the number of men and of women in the mining States of 
 the West, a condition not entirely due to the mining industry, but 
 partly to the fact that these States constituted a part of our frontier. 
 Table I summarizes the population conditions in the mining States 
 and Territories and in some others. In Arizona, Idaho, Montana, 
 Nevada, Wyoming and Alaska mining constituted a larger per cent, 
 of the total industries of the region than in the others, and here the 
 largest percentages of male population were found. In Utah, 
 although mining constituted a considerable portion of the business, 
 religious influences kept the percentage of males lower than in any 
 other State west of the Mississippi, except Louisiana. Nevada 
 presents an interesting example. In 1880, her population was 
 62,266 ; and it has been declining ever since, while the percentage of 
 females has been increasing. The declining industry through these 
 
 * Nicholson, J. S. Effects of Great Discoveries of Precious Metals, 1887, pp. 38-9. +Ibid., p. 137. 
 
 * Bancroft, H. H. Hist, of Calif., Vol. VII, pp. 335 f. %Ibid., p. 715. 
 
108 
 
 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 twenty years is that of mining. It seems probable that the miners 
 who are going to other places are single men, while the family men 
 in other occupations are remaining. If this be true, it emphasizes 
 again the law that the precious metals attract for workmen, single 
 men. Should it be charged that these western mining States pos- 
 sess a high percentage of male population, simply because they are 
 on the frontier, the answer comes from all the States not engaged 
 in this kind of mining whose settlement has taken place mainly since 
 California began to be filled up, and which may, for this reason, be 
 considered pioneer States. Table I, part B, summarizes the con- 
 
 TABLE I. 
 
 POPULATION OF GOLD AND SILVER MINING STATES 
 CLASSIFIED BY SEX. 
 
 STATE 
 
 OR 
 
 TERRITORY. 
 
 POPULATION 1900. 
 
 PERCENTAGE. 
 
 MALE. 
 
 FEMALE. 
 
 TOTAL. 
 
 MALE. 
 
 FEMALE. 
 
 Part A 
 Western Division 
 
 2,297,732 
 7!,795 
 820,531 
 295,332 
 93,367 
 149,842 
 25,603 
 104,228 
 177,493 
 232,985 
 216,164 
 141,687 
 304,178 
 58,184 
 45,872 
 
 208,952 
 768.716 
 93 2 ,4Q 
 564-592 
 214,359 
 
 1,793,617 
 51, '3 6 
 66 4 ,522 
 244,368 
 68,405 
 93-487 
 16.732 
 91,082 
 141,653 
 180,551 
 185,406 
 135,062 
 213,925 
 
 34,347 
 17,720 
 
 183,108 
 701.779 
 818,904 
 501,708 
 183.972 
 
 4,091,349 
 122,931 
 1,485.053 
 
 539,7 
 161,772 
 243,329 
 42,335 
 i95-3' 
 319,146 
 4'3-53 6 
 401,570 
 276,794 
 518,103 
 92.531 
 63,592 
 
 392,060 
 1.470.495 
 
 1,751-394 
 1.066,300 
 
 398,331 
 
 56.2 
 58.4 
 55-3 
 54-7 
 57-7 
 61.6 
 60.5 
 53-4 
 55-6 
 56.3 
 53-8 
 5'-2 
 58.7 
 62.9 
 72.1 
 
 53-3 
 52-3 
 53-2 
 52.9 
 53-8 
 
 43-8 
 41.6 
 44-7 
 45-3 
 
 S3 
 $1 
 
 44.4 
 43-7 
 46.2 
 48.8 
 41-3 
 37-1 
 27.9 
 
 46.7 
 47-7 
 46.8 
 47.1 
 46.2 
 
 California 
 
 
 Idaho 
 
 Montana 
 
 Nevada 
 
 New Mexico 
 North Dakota 
 Oregon 
 
 South Dakota 
 
 Utah 
 
 Washington 
 
 Wyoming 
 
 Alaska 
 
 Part B 
 Indian Territory 
 Kansas ' 
 Minnesota 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 Oklahoma 
 
 ditions in five of this class. The disparity of the sexes is less than 
 half as great in these five as in the eleven western states and terri- 
 tories excluding Alaska. Inasmuch as Oklahoma is by far the 
 most newly settled of all, one would expect to find it approaching 
 California; but while it has the greatest inequality of any of the 
 five, it is as far from California as from Kansas, the state of the 
 second group having the minimum inequality. 
 
 The population in California did not increase as fast as immigra- 
 tion might seem to warrant, because of emigration from the State 
 to new gold and silver deposits, and because a reaction in mining 
 matters set in after about five years of rush and excitement. The 
 mania had run its course and was abating. It was influenced 
 slightly, too, by a counter attraction in the Appalachian mountains. 
 
Factor in the Migration of People 109 
 
 There began about this time a general search for gold throughout 
 the eastern mountains. Many men engaged in it; and under the 
 stimulus of Western excitement, mining, as well as prospecting, re- 
 vived in the East, although the output was rather decreased at first 
 by the movement westward and did not recover for ten years. An- 
 other reason why California's population grew slowly after 1853, is 
 found in the compulsory exodus of a large number of Mexicans and 
 half breeds to Mexico; an expulsion deemed necessary, because the 
 lawlessness of the Mexican had been much aggravated by the con- 
 ditions in which the mining had placed him; and made possible, 
 because there had responded to the call to come West so many more 
 men from the States than from the south. The foreign population 
 from the south, however, was only expelled when its character made 
 it an undesirable element.* 
 
 PROSPECTORS AND RUSHES. The development of mining evolved 
 the prospectors, whose whole purpose seems to have been to roam 
 about and unearth new deposits of treasure. They scattered from 
 the camps up the sides of the gulches, across divides laterally and 
 down into parallel valleys, or out at the upper ends of valleys and 
 down the eastern Sierra slope. Thus other gulches and their con- 
 tents became known. Men worked their claims, and told or wrote 
 to their friends what they had found, or so described it that similar 
 deposits were identified elsewhere. Other men came to visit the 
 mines and camps, and after a little examination declared that they 
 had the same kind of stuff at home, and forthwith proceeded to 
 prove it. By these exploratory wanderings the extent of the gold 
 fields of California became known. 
 
 The prospector wandered out of the State and into others, .made 
 magnificent finds, or told of finding magnificent things ; and im- 
 mediately there were swarms of men, urged by strong desire, who 
 were ready to leave sure things for the possibility of something 
 richer. By this means there arose many local or even inter-state 
 migrations of considerable bodies of men. Whole camps became 
 fired with something akin to the feeling in the bosom of the roving 
 prospector, but differing in that they knew where they were going, 
 while the prospector never knew. Hundreds of rushes of men from 
 one gulch to another occurred, thus scattering the miners in all 
 directions. Camps often sprung up, mushroom like, in a night, and 
 flourished a few months or even a year or two, and then were left 
 deserted and abandoned, because the builders had taken a new attack 
 
 * Whitney, J. D. Metallic Wealth of the U. S., p. 137. 
 
110 Precious Metals as a Geographic 
 
 of the gold fever. While such frequent moves were usually dis- 
 astrous to many of the participants, they were factors of progress ; 
 and their final result was an ever widening benefit to the state and 
 society, because they increased knowledge both of land and mineral ; 
 they mixed men in their period of rapid transformation and pre- 
 vented local sectionalism; they diffused knowledge of methods of 
 mining and reducing the ores; they acquainted men with several 
 conditions under which the ore occurred; and in many ways made 
 for the improvement of the industry and the more uniform develop- 
 ment of the whole western region. 
 
 Examples of significant or extensive migrations by means of 
 rushes are easily found and date from the beginning of the history 
 of western gold mining. No sooner had the development of Cali- 
 fornia's wealth gotten well under way than such emigration began. 
 Sometimes, the particular provocation was a report of a promising 
 bonanza, based on some prospector's discovered "traces of gold;" 
 sometimes, it was a day's or week's hard luck in the home beds that 
 sufficed to send forth the restless mirier. In the Fraser River rush of 
 1858, 15,000 hardy men left California in four months, and other 
 thousands later.* In the following year, thousands went to the 
 Cariboo B. C. ; and in 1860-1862, a multitude hastened to Idaho on 
 the Clearwater and Salmon rivers. The Washoe rush occurred 
 at the same time. During 1860-1862, Nevada sagebrush deserts 
 and treeless mountains proved attractive, and California miners be- 
 gan to gather treasures from Humboldt, Esmeralda, etc. In 1862, 
 a rush to Boise, Idaho, occurred ;f in 1863, to Owyhee ; in 1864, to 
 Alturas; to Big Bend of the Columbia in 1865, and to White Pine 
 in 1866. California lost to these regions in the last three or four 
 of these years 30,000 to 40,000 men. Nor did all in each new place 
 come from the one State ; for the later rushes were made up in part 
 of men who had become accustomed to rush, and in part of men 
 fresh from the East, as well as of those who were leaving Cali- 
 fornia for the first time. Rushing into- new territory was not 
 confined to the early days but continued down to the present century. 
 Nor was it a feature of American mining; for Australia, in the 
 fifties, had many wild, exciting rushes and occasional examples all 
 along, until the famous West Australia excitements in the nineties, 
 of 'which the Siberia rush was perhaps the most notable. t Klondike 
 in the later nineties, and Nome in 1899 and 1900 with Thunder 
 
 * Bancroft, H. H. Hist, of Calif., Vol. VII, pp. 682-3. 
 
 t Bancroft, H. H. Hist, of Wash., Idaho and Montana, pp. 4o6f; 418. 
 
 % Amer. Inst. Min. Eng., 1898, p. 496. 
 
Factor in the. Migration of People 111 
 
 Mountain, Idaho, in 1901-2 bring the rush down nearly to the pres 1 
 ent. The surficial nature of the gold occurrence in placers seems 
 directly responsible for this peculiar character of migrations. Quartz 
 deposits do not elicit the phenomenon, because it takes capital and 
 machinery to get anything out of them, and the single handed miner 
 with rapid development ideas can do nothing. In this shifting 
 about, many became discouraged with mining and turned to other 
 occupations, as they found suitable localities for grazing or culti- 
 vating. Almost all occupations were recruited from among the 
 miners, as they had contributed to that class. 
 
 Rushing not only gave an impetus to all the Western States, but 
 by this form of migration miners overflowed into British Columbia 
 and even into Northern Mexico, teaching the Mexicans better 
 methods of working. They affiliated with them, fought Indians for 
 them, and prepared the way for closer international relations.* The 
 wandering miners even spread into South America, Alaska, Aus- 
 tralia, and the Transvaal, from all of which our own Western States 
 have now received miners ; and carried with them their laws and 
 customs as well as methods of working. Often the transported 
 Yankee mining notions were unworkable in the new conditions ; 
 but the ingenuity, which responded to the former conditions, was 
 again sufficient to devise something that would work, and so the 
 diffusion of ideas went on working beneficence all the way as surely 
 as did those Crusades of the olden days. 
 
 REFLEX WAVE OF MIGRATION'. The fact that the first great dis- 
 coveries of gold and silver in the United States were very near the 
 western coast, and that subsequent disclosures were made at vary- 
 ing distances inland, led to the reflexing of the wave of migration 
 and development. All focussed on California for a few years; then 
 other discoveries were made, in Oregon in 1852, Washington in 
 I 855,t with Arizona in 1858, Nevada in 1859, an d Idaho in 1860 or 
 1862,$ completing the semi-circle around the first State. Colorado, 
 a little out of time, was found to be rich jn gold in 1859 by men 
 enroute to California ; and there followed a ra,pid immigration from 
 the West as well as from the East. Other valuable deposits were 
 revealed in Idaho in 1861 and 1863. Montana started the second 
 semi-circle in 1860 and 1862, and possibly in 1858, which New 
 Mexico in 1860; and Utah in 1867 completed. Then came the out- 
 posts of South Dakota in 1876 and Alaska in 1880. The dates of 
 
 * Sh ; nn, C. H. Mining Camps, pp. 291-2. 
 
 t Bancroft, H. H. Hist, of Wash., Idaho and Mont., p. 108. 
 
 %Ibid., p. 406. Eggleston, Edw. United States and Its People, 1888, pp. 75-77. 
 
112 Previous Metals as a Geographic Factor 
 
 admission to statehood confirm this truth and illustrate still further 
 the influence of the mining industry. California, the first western 
 State to receive the honor, entered the Union in 1850. Oregon and 
 Nevada, two adjoining States, followed in 1859 and 1864, respec- 
 tively. Although Utah's population was sufficient before 1870 to 
 admit her with her semi-circle, for other reasons she was detained 
 until 1896. In 1889 and 1890, the second semi-circle, begun ab- 
 normally by Colorado in 1876 (already an important mining State), 
 was completed by the admission of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and 
 Washington. South Dakota was admitted in 1889, also, but not 
 primarily on account of the mining population. Arizona, due in the 
 sixties, and New Mexico due with Idaho and Wyoming, did not 
 gain statehood until a very recent date. Their interests, although 
 mostly mining, were relatively slight; and their populations con- 
 sisted, beside the miners, mostly of Mexicans and Indians. As the 
 widening waves of discovery spread from California as a center, so 
 the wave of migration set in the same direction; and in the course 
 of thirty years, with constant additions from the East, had beaten 
 back across all the mountains, setting in motion the machinery of 
 development in every State.* 
 
 * Chittenden, H. M. Early Steamboat Navigation on The Missouri River, 1903, Vol. II, pp. 265$. 
 
Reprinted from The Scottish Geographical Magazine for September 1910. 
 
 THE PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN THE 
 SETTLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT OF TOWNS IN THE 
 UNITED STATES. 1 
 
 By GEORGE D. HUBBARD. 
 
 Classes of Towns and Settlements. In other papers the relation of the 
 discovery and distribution of the precious metals to the movements 
 of the people has been discussed, 2 movements both for the purpose of 
 exploration, and of engaging in more or less fixed occupations. Here, 
 the kinds of habitations and settlements, and the nature of the com- 
 munity groups formed where the influence of gold and silver was strong, 
 will be treated. There were in the mining regions of the West 
 camps and towns of all degrees of permanence, from the group of 
 tents, staked for one or two nights' lodging, to the substantial and well- 
 ordered city. There were mining camps, commercial centres, and out- 
 fitting stations, and towns and cities primarily for other purposes than to 
 minister to the gold and silver mining industry. And not only the 
 camps and towns, but the distribution of people and the* character of 
 rural settlements often show the effects of gold- and silver-mining. 
 Probably every hamlet, town, and city in the whole West has been more 
 or less modified under the powerful touch of the precious metals. Many 
 would never have been at all ; others would not have been so great ; and 
 possibly a few would have been of more importance ; but each certainly 
 
 1 This paper was prepared as a part of the requirements for the doctor's degree in 
 geography at Cornell University. Thanks are hereby given to Prof. R. S. Tarr, Prof. W. F. 
 \Villcox, and Prof. H. Ries. whose valuable suggestions aided ill giving it any virtue it may 
 possess. [It was also submitted to Section E (Geography) at the Winnipeg Meeting of the 
 British Association (cf. vol. xrr. p. 579). ED. S. G. J/.] 
 
 2 Bull. Amer. Geog. Society, vol. xlii., 1910. 
 
450 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 bears, in its character and development, marks of the moulding influence 
 of this powerful industry. 
 
 A number of causes operated to determine the nature and life-history 
 of a miner's settlement. Its purpose probably functioned first. If it 
 was to be a camp in a gulch, whither men had been collected hurriedly 
 to wash auriferous gravel, the signs of permanence were few or entirely 
 wanting ; if it was a centre of extensive or expensive mining of complex 
 ores, it had to be more enduring ; if it was to be a provisioning centre 
 for a group of diggings, it took on a somewhat fixed character and was 
 classed as a town ; if it was to be a commercial centre and the outfitting 
 headquarters where new arrivals by land or water were to enter the 
 region, its buildings were of a still more substantial kind, and its plan 
 better worked out. But the first classification has not always been 
 maintained. Founders' plans have often gone far astray, because not in 
 harmony with the conditions. 
 
 Conditions and Character of Camps. Camp conditions have been por- 
 trayed by many writers from earliest mining days to the present. 1 In 
 some respects the conditions differ widely then and now, owing partly to 
 differences in the kind of men who come to the camp ; but in many 
 respects there are characteristic resemblances. Placer mining conditions 
 will be treated first, hence the following paragraphs are more applicable 
 to the earlier mining days. Shelter was nothing more than shelter of 
 the simplest kind ; even rude houses in the early days were rarely built ; 
 but in recent times adjacent saw-mills make them possible in many 
 places. The flimsy board shanty, the tent, stakes with a canvas cover, 
 booths of branches, and often simply the thick branches of a standing 
 tree, were all the miner took time to construct or appropriate. The 
 warm and, for the most part, dry climate of California, where the gold 
 first called for dwellers, made it possible to live with almost no shelter in 
 summer, while severe winters sometimes drove the miner entirely out of 
 the gulch. The shelters stood right in the gulch, or along the bar that 
 was to be mined, as near as might be to the work that was to be done ; 
 sometimes in the way of future operations, sometimes arranged along a 
 single street or path, sometimes irregularly scattered along the side of 
 the valley. Planning a camp was usually not thought of. The men 
 were too full of the present to plan for the future, and of self to think of 
 the convenience of orderly construction. Their equipment consisted of a 
 blanket or two apiece for the occupants, a frying-pan and a few other 
 culinary or table utensils, a few boxes, bags or bundles of eatables, and, 
 after matters were started, an empty box or two. 
 
 The element of camp permanence was at first very small in any 
 locality, especially in the early days. This grew out of several condi- 
 tions. The first work was usually done on gravels or ledges whose 
 output was uncertain, and whose quantity of pay-dirt or ore was never 
 known until it was practically exhausted. Men expected to mine what 
 
 i T. A. Barry and B. A. Patten, San Francisco in the Spring 0/1850, 1873. H. H. Ban- 
 croft, History of California, 1884. 7 vols. Bret Harte, Many Poems and Stories of 
 Western Life. See Works. C. H. Miller (Joachin), Poems, 1882. Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, 
 1857. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN UNITED STATES. 451 
 
 was there, and move on. Then the miners were anxious to make the 
 most of every moment. The time lost in building a house put one far 
 in the rear. A third reason was the excitement induced in most camps 
 by the gold. It was not a matter of reason whether to build or to mine. 
 Hardly any one who entered a camp could keep from using a pick and 
 shovel. The temptation to mine was too strong to be resisted for the 
 sake of a little more present comfort. Fourth, the great disparity of the 
 sexes, a fact already traceable largely to the geographic conditions under 
 which the gold occurred, was in turn a cause of the spirit of unrest and 
 the free movement from place to place. If a single man thought he 
 could do better elsewhere, he was free to go and try. Again, the 
 simple methods of mining, begotten of the conditions of occurrence, 
 favoured, for two reasons, the moving about from gulch to gulch. In 
 the first place, throughout the California placers the conditions and 
 requirements were so similar that no one need stop after moving to 
 learn new methods. Secondly, for placer mining one's whole outfit 
 could be tied up in a blanket and carried to a new place. This condition 
 disappeared when the more complicated processes came into use, but in 
 the early history in the placer stage permanent settlements were 
 almost out of the question. And had there been only placer deposits, 
 the boom of any State or region would have been ephemeral. 
 
 There was little division of labour. Nor was there a labouring 
 class ; everybody was a proprietor. Because education and experience 
 counted for little so simple was the mining process, and so blind the 
 clue to rich pockets professors of geology, newspaper men, lawyers, 
 physicians, sailors, masons, accountants, and farmers, all worked side by 
 side. Because of this same simplicity in mining process, and the oppor- 
 tunity for any one to "strike it rich," the poor man preferred to work 
 independently and run all risks rather than to hire out and thus be sure 
 of what the rich man was able to pay. And the rich man was compelled 
 to work himself because he could not afford to hire. He could not pay 
 what the labourer with his chance for success thought he could make 
 alone. All this, with the common risk and speculation and the universal 
 gold-begotten excitement, tended to produce the social equality of the 
 camp, so marked a feature of the early California days. 
 
 In spite of the social equality, however, some division of labour arose 
 early. Those who had an eye to business, and were willing to forego 
 the thrill of plucking the yellow rock from the gravels, and at the same 
 time to avoid the exposure incident to actual mining, engaged in other 
 occupations as essential to the success of the camp as mining, and often 
 more certainly lucrative. Some entered the carrying trade. A man and 
 a mule sometimes made 83000 in a month. Three Yankees established 
 a ferry across the San Joachin river, and took from 8500 to SI 000 daily. 
 They charged 82 for carrying a man and horse across. 1 It was not 
 extortion to charge such prices and reap the reward thereof. The miners 
 were making money as rapidly and were perfectly willing to pay. The 
 shrewd non-miners simply hit upon an occupation for which the condi- 
 
 1 Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, 1857, pp. 75, 98. 
 
452 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 tions gave a ready market. Keenness for gold was an element of the 
 atmosphere in which society moved. 
 
 Frequently one member of a camp ran a gambling establishment, 
 and every town had an abundance and variety of gaming-tables. 
 After 1848, robbers, camp-thieves, horse-thieves, and lawless characters 
 were to be found, but Shinn l says that there was probably less crime 
 in California during the first summer than in any summer before or 
 since. This fact has been attested by a number of writers, and is 
 probably due to several causes. Most of the men were near home, and 
 were among friends and neighbours ; the foreign elements had not yet 
 arrived, because the influence of the metal had not yet gone far. An 
 excitement, a sort of spell, was over the region. The fascination and 
 witchery of gold-mining held universal sway. Every one was anxious 
 to see what would develop. He preferred to be out knocking about in 
 the ravines to find a bigger pile than his neighbour, than to be robbing 
 him of his find. Then, too, theft was made a capital offence in many 
 districts. It was very easy to take a thousand dollars from the gravel, 
 and many times safer than to take it from some miner's tent. Further, 
 there was a romance in recovering such valuables from the stream-beds. 
 It is no wonder that there was so little theft during these early 
 months. 
 
 Owing to the freedom and the independence of endeavour in the 
 mining camps, each man's will and power was his law. Disputes and 
 quarrels, even duels and murders, occurred in the camps, but were not 
 common. As a rule the early camps were much more peaceable than 
 would be expected. In recent times lawless tendencies are even less 
 violent than in the fifties. Two reasons seem to explain the fact : (a) 
 Law and order are not now in the hands of the camp, but are functions 
 of the State and local civil organisation, because these institutions have 
 had time to develop over most of the West; (b) Camps as such are 
 largely replaced by towns gathered around some huge mining and 
 reducing plant, which location gives the place a feeling of permanence 
 and security. Of course, many times the rough brute side of human 
 nature displays itself vehemently, but respect for law by loyal citizens 
 is the rule not the exception. 
 
 The tendency to fast living, a product of extreme optimism and 
 unbounded faith in mining, is still found in mining camps and towns ; 
 but it is not so strong as in the early days in the newness and wonderful- 
 ness of the whole episode. Men made their money easily and rapidly ; 
 they were in the exuberance of young manhood. They were away 
 from family, and even civil restraint ; they were excited, feverish, often 
 delirious with the infatuation for gold, and were not themselves. 
 Besides, the tendency to fast living often expressed itself in drunken- 
 ness and gambling. 
 
 Special Types of Camps. Special local conditions gave rise to camps 
 of peculiar character. The Southern Appalachian region and places in 
 the arid region will illustrate this point. In Georgia and the eastern 
 
 1 C. H. Shinn, Mining Camps: A Study in American Frontier Government, 1885, 
 pp. 119, 120. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN UNITED STATES. 453 
 
 States generally, the gold was discovered in well-settled and organised 
 regions, and among many other occupations, where, because of the 
 scarcity of gold, mining had to remain a minor industry. Hence men 
 worked in the mines and gravel deposits between other regular work, 
 but did not follow the business all the year round. 1 They could make 
 more on their farms in the growing season than from the mines with 
 their low grade ores ; and, therefore, the camps were occupied only 
 intermittently. At present, however, expensive mining and reduction 
 plants which operate all the year round have been introduced at several 
 mines. 
 
 Another intermittent type of camp occurs in some places in the arid 
 south-west. Gold gravels occur in stream-beds where the flow of water 
 is not continuous. A heavy downpour of rain may give the creeks a 
 sudden, strong flow, which gradually dwindles to nothing, to be revived 
 months later by the next heavy shower. During the dry season the 
 men go up the ravines and get a large quantity of gravel out ready to 
 sluice when the water comes. Then they return to the valley farms 
 or ranches, and work at something else till the approach of rain. On its 
 arrival all hands break for the sluices and wash gravel as long as the 
 flow of water permits.. Occasionally the signs of rain are good, and the 
 men hurry to the gravel piles only to find that there is not enough rain 
 to reach their diggings ; or the storm comes in the night, and the water, 
 having no one to control or use it, sweeps away the accumulations of 
 months, and all is lost. Mining is the industry the men are there for, 
 but owing to the special climatic and geographic conditions they cannot 
 follow it continuously. These peculiar conditions of camp life and work 
 are not common enough to effect the total output, but they illustrate 
 one phase of geographic influence on the character of the camps. 
 
 Succession of Camp Occupancy. In the normal order of things in the 
 gold-mining States, the prospector has always been the first man on the 
 ground. During the early days his voluntary services opened the way 
 for the miner and the capitalist. He found and marked the deposit; 
 miners began its development ; capital came and bought as cheaply as 
 possible; but the capitalist himself rarely searched for the deposits. 
 In modern times the function of the prospector, with his peculiar 
 training and development, is well recognised. Many of the large mining 
 companies employ prospectors whose sole business is to scour the hills 
 and ravines for more gold, silver, or copper. Of the several types of men 
 developed under the special conditions, each finds place in the changing 
 economy of gold and silver mining. 2 
 
 Development of Permanent Camps. In harmony with the permanence 
 of form assumed by the industry, the permanence of camps increased. 
 While all the work in a region was placer mining, the camp could not 
 take on an enduring character ; but, as the processes inevitably changed 
 in many localities from the elementary operations of washing gravel to 
 the more advanced, complicated, and expensive methods necessarily 
 
 1 J. D. Whitney, Metallic Wealth of the United States, p. 118. 
 
 2 H. H. Bancroft, History of California, 1884, vol. vii. p. 655. 
 
454 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 employed in quartz mining, and in the extraction of values from even 
 more complex ores of silver, very naturally more fixed camps and 
 habitations sprang up around the more stable establishments. In some 
 cases vigorous, substantial, well-organised towns have developed from 
 these flimsy, temporary beginnings. Butte, Montana, a placer town of 
 shabby miners' cabins in 1864, was given a copper smelter in 1866, and 
 began its more extensive development in 1875. Five years later it 
 had become a substantial town of 5000 people, and its population had 
 doubled again by 1885. 1 In 1900 Butte contained over 30,000 people. 
 Leadville, Colorado, with its predecessor Oro, furnishes another example. 
 This now important mining centre rose in three years from nothing in 
 1877, through the placer stage to a town of 15,000 people in 1880, and 
 that in a wilderness at an altitude of 10,000 feet. It all came in 
 response to the impetus of silver and associated ores. 2 Cripple Creek, 
 Colorado, and Deadwood, South Dakota, with a number of smaller purely 
 mining towns possessing a permanent character, may be added to the 
 list. Potosi, in Bolivia, sprang up from almost nothing, under the 
 influence of the exceedingly rich silver mines of the mountain, to a city 
 of 160,000 inhabitants, and this at an altitude greater than that of Mt. 
 Blanc. The result was marvellous, and would have called forth comment 
 even had it occurred under favourable circumstances, but under the 
 actual conditions it scarcely seems in the realm of the possible. 3 
 
 Virginia City, located on the Comstock lode, has been in character 
 a permanent city from its foundation, because it was built in connection 
 with the development of the great silver-gold mine below it. Many of 
 the difficulties in the way of the development of the mines restrained 
 city building. But a city must be had, because the mining required it. 
 The town began very soon after the discovery of the lode in 1858, and, 
 under the impetus of the great inrush of miners and others from 
 California, grew very rapidly, so that in 1870 and 1880 it had a popula- 
 tion of about 10,000. Its supplies had to come by wagon from California ; 
 its lumber for buildings over sandy wagon-roads for 20 miles ; its 
 water-supply was at first brought 12 to 15 miles in wagons, and later, 
 at an enormous expense, from lakes in the mountains 20 miles away. 
 No agricultural land near by contributed food, for all around was 
 barren, parched, deserted wilderness. And yet the city rose in ten 
 years to 10,000 people. 
 
 But when the mine ceased to produce, because the great obstacles en- 
 countered were then unconquerable, the city declined, and it is now but 
 a shadow of its former short-lived greatness. The region, although once 
 considerably improved, has reverted to wilderness. The close relation 
 between the mining industry on the Comstock lode and the growth and 
 decline of Virginia City and its associates, cannot be more clearly seen 
 than in the accompanying Table. 
 
 1 H. H. Bancroft, History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, 1890, pp. 740, 752, 764, 
 
 2 R. P. Porter, The West from the Census of 1880, 1882, p. 373. United States Geological 
 Survey, Monograph xn., pp. 14 ft seq. 
 
 3 J. D. Whitney, Auriferous Gravels, 1854, p. 171. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN UNITED STATES. 455 
 
 PRODUCTION OF COMSTOCK LODE AND POPULATION OF THE THREE TOWNS 
 IN THE VICINITY VIRGINIA, GOLD HILL, AND SILVER CITY. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Population 
 (approximate). 1 
 
 Production in oz. 2 
 
 1859 
 
 a few 
 
 30,000 
 
 1860 
 
 4,000 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 1870 
 
 13,000 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 1877 
 
 21,000 
 
 36,000,000 
 
 1880 
 
 15,500 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 1881 
 
 ... 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 1890 9,000 3 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 1900 
 
 3,000 3 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 This city is only a giant of a common type. Towns were built 
 hurriedly, badly, and extravagantly, as the mining industry grew, because 
 everybody had full faith in the prosperity of the mine. After a more or 
 less successful and extended boom, the mine in many cases began to 
 decline, and with it the town. Abandoned claims, camps, and towns are 
 to be found all through the Western mountains, and every year adds 
 to the list. 
 
 Commercial and Outfitting Centres. A class of places in very close 
 contact with purely mining camps and towns contains a long list of 
 distributing and outfitting towns all over the West, from Denver to the 
 Pacific. Stockton on the San Joachin, and Sacramento on the Sacra- 
 mento, both at the foot of the slopes leading eastward up to the mouths 
 of the Sierra gulches and valleys, were two of the earliest of the class, 
 and will serve to illustrate their characteristics. Each was within fairly 
 easy reach of a number of mining camps, whose wants they supplied. 
 Each had water communication with the sea and with that greater 
 emporium, San Francisco. Each sprang up at a point where goods and 
 people could no longer go in large masses, but must scatter to the 
 individual camps. Merchandise and miners, transferred to river steam- 
 boats at San Francisco, were carried up the rivers to either of these 
 places, and again transferred to heavy wagons or pack-animals, and then 
 laboriously hauled out to the various camps. 
 
 Stockton was a canvas town in 1849, but also a commercial centre 
 making very perceptible growth in the course of a week. Taylor 4 pre- 
 dicted its success as a distributing point, because of its central position 
 and means of transport. The mining camps demanded a centre some- 
 where in the vicinity, and this point had the requisite position. The 
 enormously rapid increase in population and output of the tributary 
 mines was closely followed by the expansion of the town. Shinn 5 says 
 it increased from a single ranch house to a canvas city of a thousand 
 people in three months. For several years it was flooded with transients 
 and with merchandise, because of its relation to the camps. People and 
 
 i Becker, Monog. in., U.S.G.S., p. 4. 
 
 3 Eleventh Census. 
 
 s C. H. Shinn, Mining Camps, 1885, p. 137. 
 
 2 Lord, Monog. iv. f U.S.G.S., p. 416. 
 B. Taylor, Eldvrado, 1857, pp. 98, 99. 
 
456 SCOTTISH GEOGKAPHIOAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 goods destined for camps came here by boat faster than they could 
 be despatched to the gulches. It never collapsed so completely as did 
 others when the mining in its tributary gulches declined, because of its 
 early-developed agricultural interests. 
 
 Sacramento also experienced a phenomenal evolution. In April 1849 
 there were four houses on the site ; in November there were hundreds of 
 tents, shanties, and respectable houses sheltering ten thousand people, 
 most of whom were transients, some just arriving in California, others 
 returning for the winter from their summer's digging. The town, apart 
 from these diverse residences, consisted of a few stores and large platforms 
 for handling freight, which were clustered along the river, while the 
 unsightly collection of abodes was scattered along the flood plain 
 for a mile. 
 
 Like Stockton, its business demanded that it should be close to the 
 stream, and therefore, like its twin, Sacramento was frequently flooded 
 by the sudden rise of the torrent-fed river. Its hasty construction, due 
 to enormous and imperative demands for greater commercial and hostelry 
 accommodation, and to the feverish excitement of its business men, 
 resulted in many carelessly built, inflammable structures. Hence fierce 
 and destructive fires ravaged the city. Fabulous prices prevailed. 
 Carpenters struck because they were getting only $12 a day. This 
 price for labour, low compared with that in San Francisco, was due 
 to the return of many disappointed miners who temporarily overstocked 
 the market. 1 Single town lots were held at from one to three thousand 
 dollars, when scarcely a house in town was actually worth that amount. 
 As the time passed, buildings, expensive because of the great demand, 
 the cost of labour, and the scarcity and expense of building materials, 
 quickly replaced the tents and shanties. Prices were pushed too high, 
 business became unsteady; the town surged with speculation, and became 
 uproarious with traffic ; profits reached 100 per cent, above rates accepted 
 in San Francisco, and rents ruled as high as $5000 dollars a month 
 for moderate buildings, while lots crept to $30,000 in the summer of 
 1850. In September 1850 this enormous inflation of values was followed 
 by a terrific collapse. Similar crises, though less tense, arose again 
 in this city and in other commercial centres. Floods, fires, and failures 
 were the common city disasters. Sacramento, in a large fertile valley, 
 did not experience the customary collapse on the waning of placer mining, 
 because of the early utilisation of the agricultural possibilities, and 
 because of its position as the State capital. It is to-day the capital, and 
 a centre of considerable trade in agricultural supplies and products, which 
 far outweighs its purely mining interests. 
 
 Other commercial centres of this class are Denver, Walla Walla, 
 Lewiston, Fort Benton, El Paso, and even Salt Lake City. Denver 
 is said to have sprung from a stage station to a city almost in a night, 
 while a long line of mining towns rose along the eastern base of the 
 Kockies. 2 Walla Walla was the outfitting station for the camps in the 
 
 1 B. Taylor, Eldorado, 1857, pp. 220, 221. 
 
 2 R. P. Porter, The West from the Census c/1880, 1882, p. 373. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IX UNITED STATES. 457 
 
 rich Boise basin and Owyhee valley, and Lewiston supplied the Salmon 
 and Clearwater valleys. 1 Fort Benton, at the head of navigation on the 
 upper Missouri river, was destined to be a commercial centre as long as 
 river traffic continued ; but its character as an outfitting and provisioning 
 centre was determined by the discovery of gold in Fergus county, and 
 especially in the mountains west of the fort. The place was but a fort 
 and fur-trading station prior to the outbreak of Montana's gold fever, but 
 by leaps and bounds it rose to the rank of a town, and even bade fair to 
 be a city of note within a few years. The impetus of the mining industry 
 was too great for the good of the growing town, for the arrival of the 
 Northern Pacific railroad, required just at this time and place by the new 
 industry, robbed the river of its traffic, and at the same stroke removed 
 Fort Benton's excuse for existence. Hence it has declined, and Great 
 Falls has risen as a manufacturing and smelting centre. 2 Seattle, in 
 Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, bear the same relations 
 to the Alaskan camps that the above towns bore to their respective 
 regions. 
 
 San Francisco and the Influence of Gold. San Francisco, one of the 
 largest cities on the Pacific coast, is in its entirety a response to the 
 influence of several classes of environmental elements. Founded in 1835 
 by an Englishman who built his own little group of houses, and augmented 
 in the following year by the single structure of an American, the great 
 commercial emporium began its existence. The Hudson Bay Company 
 took advantage, in 1841, of its position, and established a branch house. 
 Its growth up to January 1848, the date of Sutter's discoveries, amounted 
 to about two hundred houses set along well laid out streets and squares, 
 with a population of less than a thousand; but in many respects it 
 was one of the most thriving towns in California. Its people, chiefly 
 Americans, were hardy, determined pioneers backwoodsmen, artisans, 
 seafarers, traders, and a few professional men. The town never was 
 Mexican although under Mexican colours at the start, but there were a 
 few scattered Spanish-Mexican mission settlements near. 3 
 
 The locality was marked by Nature for a commercial centre, and, with 
 the elements of commerce provided, promised to be a metropolis. It lay 
 on the only natural harbour between San Diego and the mouth of the 
 Columbia, and almost midway between them. It was in the gateway to 
 a rich, fertile valley of enormous dimensions, bathed in salubrious air, 
 a valley nearly closed to the east by mountain and desert barriers, and 
 walled in on all sides by almost continuous ranges. Other harbours south 
 of the Columbia had less of value in their hinterland. It of necessity 
 had a monopoly of the trade of the State of California. Then its western 
 outlook was toward the millions of the Orient just on the verge of their 
 awakening. Naturally, a city would some day arise on this bay. Where 
 would it be 1 The farther or inland side was too shallow for sea-going 
 vessels, as were also the mouths of the rivers. The north side of the gate- 
 
 1 H. H. Bancroft, History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, 1890, pp. 406 et seq. 
 
 2 H. M. Chittenden, Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River, 1903, vol. i. 
 p. 237. 
 
 3 H. H. Bancroft, History of California, 1884, voL vi. pp. 6, 7. 
 
458 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 way was steep and rocky ; the south was gently rising, and on the eastern 
 side of the ridge, between the bay and the sea, there was a broad, low 
 area stretching along the coast for some miles with depth of water before 
 it sufficient for the merchant marine of those days. All this aided in 
 determining the spot. Now, in 1848, all was like a great machine in 
 place in the mill, but with no grist and no power. California's total 
 American white population was about two thousand. No resources 
 except furs, lumbering, and a very little agriculture were known, and 
 these were undeveloped. The land was sparsely settled, unknown, and 
 insufficiently watered for agriculture. Moreover, if development had 
 depended upon the normal processes of migration and frontier evolution, 
 against such heavy odds, it is hardly likely that fifty years would have 
 accomplished what was done in five or six. 1 
 
 Suddenly and vehemently came the impulse which created excitement 
 and chaos not only in the city but throughout the entire State and even 
 thousands of miles beyond her undefined boundaries. Gold was found 
 in gravels so marvellously productive and so easily worked, that anybody 
 with a pick, shovel, and pan could gather from ten to a hundred dollars 
 worth a day, and ran the chances of finding ten times as much in one 
 hour. And San Francisco had a corner on all trade, passenger as well as 
 freight, for all the developing industry of valley and mountain-side save 
 that which crawled slowly across country in wagons. 
 
 Her first response was a rush of almost her entire population to the 
 diggings across the valley, but in a very short time an incoming rush of 
 immigrants replaced the loss. From less than 1000 in the spring of 
 1848, she grew to 15,000 in the early fall of 1849; 2 from a group 
 of dwellings, stores, and little warehouses she became a great commercial 
 city ; from a quiet fur-trading station to a centre of international trade 
 and cosmopolitan enterprise and life. Every vessel in 1849 brought 
 passengers, and the harbour was crowded with the shipping of almost 
 every nationality. Goods and provisions were hurried to her wharves 
 and into the streets. There were not half buildings enough to house the 
 supply. Tents, and canvas or rubber-covered frames, piles of empty 
 boxes, sheds, houses enclosed on three sides, and buildings in every stage 
 of construction, and of every conceivable cheap pattern, might be found. 
 From fifteen to thirty houses were built in a day. At least seventy-five 
 were imported from Canton and were erected by Chinese labour. Streets 
 stretched out up the hill to-day ; and to-morrow their flanks were cleared 
 of chapparal, hemmed in by a double row of houses, and thronged with 
 people and goods. New warehouses sprang up, and new piers were 
 reaching farther and farther out into the thickening and enlarging forest 
 of masts ; and the noise, motion, and bustle of business and labour were 
 incessant. 3 And all this in a place where lumber and even houses were 
 imported ; where a year before there was not even a saw-mill ; where 
 agriculture had no footing, and civil organisation scarcely existed ; where 
 
 1 J. S. Nicholson, Effects of Great Discoveries of the Precious Metals, 1887, pp. 38, 39. 
 
 2 B. Taylor, Eldorado, 1857, pp. 203-5. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 109, 110. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN ' UNITED STATES. 459 
 
 both labour and materials were exorbitantly high ; in fact, where almost 
 everything but enterprise and gold-dust were lacking. All else was 
 hurrying thitherward on the demand of these. Taylor estimates that 
 the values expended for materials, labour, and lands would have built 
 on the Atlantic coast a well-established and organised city of 100,000 
 people. 1 
 
 The constant stream of immigration brought every class from every 
 land until one could see in the streets a throng as " diverse and bizarre 
 as the houses" beside them Yankees of every possible variety, and 
 frontiersmen from all over the middle West, native Californians, Chilians, 
 Sonorans, Kanakas, Chinese, Malays, and scores of others so browned 
 and grizzled that their nationality was unrecognisable. Such a cosmopoli- 
 tan population gathers in a commercial centre ; but it was found here 
 before the city became a commercial centre, and hence it must be ascribed 
 to some other cause. Commerce came later when the market was ready. 
 If the people themselves be consulted, they will answer that they were 
 attracted by the stories of the gold discoveries. 
 
 Then the spirit or humour of the people was characteristic. The 
 general excitement, good nature, and buoyancy have been remarked" by 
 all writers. There was a restless spirit, too, in those men, a bustling, 
 energetic manner ; energy to spare, a genius and an adaptability, rarely 
 met with elsewhere. Men with little material to do with did what they 
 could. Their buildings were a testimony to the use of makeshifts. Men 
 were willing to put up with any convenience or inconvenience, for the 
 sake of being there. 
 
 Prices and rents soared to fabulous heights. Taylor 2 tells of his 
 garret-room beneath rafters, with home-made chairs and bed frame, which 
 he shared with another man, and for which they paid 825 each a week. 
 They paid 820 a week for board. A hotel board structure, two or three 
 stories high, and no conveniences let for an aggregate of 8110,000 per 
 annum. A canvas tent, 15 by 25 feet, used by gamblers, let for 848,000 
 per annum. Shinn 3 says the Parker House in San Francisco cost 830,000 
 to construct, and let for 815,000 a month. Labour cost 810 to 815 per 
 diem, and some kinds even more. Trade in that evolving city was 
 spasmodic. Merchandise, becoming scarce in the abnormally stimulated 
 market, could command fancy prices ; then the arriving of new stock 
 would often over-reach the demand, and prices might decline far below 
 cost. Of course, much of this irregularity in the supply and demand 
 was due to the isolation of the place ; for gold-mining was calling into 
 being a city remote from all else, but near the miners. Telegraph, cables, 
 and telephones did not connect the city with eastern markets, nor did 
 rapid transportation bring new stock to a depleted market. A stock of 
 merchandise exhausted in any line remained so, barring any chance arrival 
 of the article wanted, until word could be carried to market and the goods 
 returned three months at a minimum. 
 
 1 B. Taylor, Eldorado, pp. 203-5. 
 
 2 Ibid., 1857, pp. teetseq. 
 
 3 C. H. Shinn, Mining Camps, 1885, p. 138. 
 
460 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 While San Francisco was so shut off from the outside world, she 
 kept in close touch with her subordinates. With those sub-centres of 
 commerce, supplied through the seaport, she was in frequent communi- 
 cation by wagon and pack-animal. Like other towns of. the mining 
 region, San Francisco's life and spirit pulsated with the life about her ; 
 and, while she may have more than kept pace with the country in 
 material progress, she felt particularly the changes in trade currents as 
 mining interest rose and fell in tributary districts. 1 
 
 And so the city grew. Her hasty and flimsy, but extravagant con- 
 struction incorporated much bad planning, from which she suffered 
 many things later. Severe conflagrations were so common that the 
 sixth had occurred before the end of June 1851. Each time she built 
 better and endeavoured to protect herself more adequately. Municipal 
 affairs could not be organised fast enough to keep pace with the needs 
 of the city ; hence the chaotic and corrupt condition of administration 
 and control may be ascribed to the influence of gold within her environ- 
 ment. The wave of flush times formed an incentive to disorders due to 
 the incoming of idle workmen, and this in turn called for vigilance 
 committees. Change was the order, both of officials and of form of 
 organisation. Eivalry and abuse, supported by strategy, intrigue, and 
 greed, succeeded in rolling up a city debt of over a million within the 
 year ending February 185 1. 2 
 
 The first six years were a period of herculean achievement hills 
 were levelled, marshes filled, streets paved, the sites of smouldering 
 ruins were covered with more substantial buildings, and order and 
 system were gradually evolved from the most heterogeneous mixture of 
 humanity and organisation ever collected in so few years. A commercial 
 metropolis was formed, ranking well with the world's master commercial 
 centres. And all was brought about against heavy odds. Unscrupulous 
 officials, fires, lawless ruffians and vigilantes, debt, bad land titles, inflated 
 land values, and emigration of thousands of men to more lucrative fields 
 these were her opponents, but she mastered them. 
 
 A crash in 1853, on the summit of the enormous inflations associated 
 with the maximum gold production, shook the civil and social fabric as 
 well as the financial structure, but only shook it together the better. It 
 initiated many industries ; miners entered farming of various kinds and 
 helped to supply the city's needs. Manufacturing of candles and furni- 
 ture, sugar refining and whisky distillation, founding and machine 
 making, became notable industries in the city. She has grown and 
 incorporated until a few years ago her population was over 350,000, and 
 her rank was easily the first on this side of the Pacific. And had it not 
 been for her location along a line of earth-crustal movement, no doubt 
 she would have maintained her leadership. Her business, especially 
 commercial and manufactural, is dependent to a considerable degree 
 upon the mining industry even at present. Her commerce, in part, 
 concerns itself with the handling of imported mining supplies, and her 
 
 1 H. H. Bancroft, History .of California, 1884, vol. vii. p. 682. 
 
 2 Ibid., vol. vi. pp. 164-220. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN UNITED STATES. 461 
 
 manufacturing with the making of many machines, materials, foods, and 
 equipment for the mining industry. 
 
 While her present prosperity and national as well as international 
 relations are due to her position and the products of the industries 
 around her, it must be admitted that the development of these industries 
 and the presence of the city in this generation are largely due to the 
 stimulation of the gold-mining industry. Had no gold been found in 
 the vicinity, there would have been little need as yet for such a mart. 
 
 Settlements and Towns remotely related. Not all camps or settlements 
 whose beginnings may be credited to the influence of gold and silver, were 
 placed in the metal-producing localities ; but, just as in other great 
 migrations a few travellers turn aside from the trail to make permanent 
 settlements, so here occasionally fertile mountain valleys and beautiful 
 parks were settled long before the United States frontier in its normal 
 agricultural development could have reached the position. 1 Some of 
 these were occupied by families, en route for California, who became 
 stranded, others by families whose enthusiasm had brought them thus 
 far, but, becoming exhausted, permitted them to make permanent settle- 
 ments and to begin farming, grazing, or lumbering, or all three, out in 
 some charming but isolated locality. This halting sometimes led also to 
 the discovery of new sources of wealth, minerals of various sorts, or inter- 
 esting crop possibilities ; but this always took place in advance of the 
 general onward march of the agricultural frontier of the West. 
 
 So far as their relation to the precious metals is concerned, all other 
 towns belong to one of two types. The first is that of Anaconda, Pueblo, 
 and Tucson, with no mining at all. These towns were founded primarily 
 for refining the ore, and many of their people work in great ore-smelters. 
 Such towns are absolutely necessary to the progress of the mining busi- 
 ness, because without places near the mines where the ore can be reduced, 
 the industry cannot be carried on. These towns owe most of their 
 development and present business to their relation to mining. 
 
 The other class consists of places, often founded before the discoveries 
 of gold, whose business has come to be in some way tributary to mining, 
 and hence stimulated by it. Such places are Astoria, Tacoma, Oakland, 
 San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, Colorado Springs, and many others. 
 It may be said that probably no city or town west of the 105th meridian 
 is what it would have been without any gold or silver in the West. 
 Most of them would as yet have had but little reason for being. Many 
 of them were enormously stimulated indirectly by the immigration, 
 commerce, agriculture, manufactures, and railroad development, them- 
 selves quickened by the presence and exploitation of gold and silver. 
 
 Metamorphosis of Towns. An interesting change of character has taken 
 place in the case of several of these mining camps and local commercial 
 centres because of the influence of gold and silver. Benicia, at the 
 mouth of the inner bay into which the Sacramento and San Joachin 
 rivers flow, promised to be the commercial centre of that region ; but in 
 spite of her many advantages of position, San Francisco received the 
 
 1 C. H. Shinn, Mining Camps, p. 134. 
 
462 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 passenger traffic when the ships came in 1849-50, because the latter wa 
 nearer the sea and most of the vessels could not reach Benicia. San 
 Francisco very soon outstripped her ambitious rival, who humbly retired 
 to the rank of a quiet county seat. The gold excitement overruled 
 Benicia's plans, made so quietly and securely. San Francisco, a child of 
 circumstances, took the palm from the city of plan and design. 
 
 Placerville and Eldorado were purely mining towns. The former 
 was famous under the name of " Hangtown," and sustained the first mob 
 tribunal in 1849. It was very rich in 1848, and increased in 1849, but 
 soon after began to sink because of the failure of the placers, and in 1856 
 it had passed from a rich flourishing town of brilliant promise, through 
 abandonment, fire, and flood, to rise again more substantially built, and 
 to grow gradually into a staid agricultural community and a dignified 
 county seat. Eldorado passed through a similar history for the same 
 reasons. The mining canals of both became irrigation ditches, and their 
 wasted slopes were given over to viticulture, while the neighbouring 
 fields passed under adequate tillage. 
 
 Many towns rose quickly from camp to trade centre under changing 
 conditions, and as quickly melted to a rubbish-heap when the miners of 
 the locality heard of richer finds elsewhere. Everything in the con- 
 struction of towns partook of the precarious and unstable. A thousand 
 incalculable incidents, usually styled luck, but growing out of the 
 distribution of the precious metals, were constantly lifting up one town 
 and pulling down another, inflating this district and impoverishing that. 
 As the mining industry continues to increase, wood structures replace 
 the tents, brick or better wood replaces the first wood, and the new-born 
 city thrives ; then the gold fails, and in a week the town of a thousand 
 people is deserted, perhaps never to be again rehabilitated with activity, 
 perhaps to lie dormant a season, and then, because new deposits are 
 found, come forth as some other style of mining centre, or, because 
 irrigation possibilities and soil resources have been recognised, as an 
 agricultural settlement. Hence it is that wrecked towns as well as 
 camps are exceedingly common in most of the leading mining States ; 
 and, further, it is true that similar conditions are producing similar 
 results to-day. Millions invested in towns, ditches, and appliances, now 
 in ruins, have been wasted because the actual distribution of the ore was 
 not known, or because the proper processes for its extraction had not 
 been found. No accurate estimate of this loss can be made. 
 
 Monterey, California, founded in the year 1770 as a Spanish mission 
 and garrison, was the Spanish capital of the territory until 1847, and 
 the American capital from then until after the constitutional convention 
 of 1849. It was deserted for the mines in 1848, in spite of the dignity 
 recently acquired, even as was San Francisco, and both commercial San 
 Francisco and governmental Monterey were temporarily eclipsed. 1 
 Taylor 2 predicted a great future for the town, even though its govern- 
 mental supremacy vanished with the removal of the capital to San Jose\ 
 
 i-H. H. Bancroft, History of California, 1884, vol. vi. pp. 63, 64. 
 2 B. Taylor, Eldorado, 1857, pp. 140, 141. 
 
PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN UNITED STATES. 463 
 
 But its early start availed nothing ; for it was effectively cut off form 
 the influence of gold and silver by the Coast range, and no railroad has 
 yet reached it through the mountains, although it has railroad connec- 
 tions and outlet both north and south between mountains and coast. In 
 1883 it had fourteen hundred people and in 1890 sixteen hundred. It 
 is now no more than a little quiet residence town for a few retired men. 
 Influence on Place-names. Names of towns all through the mining 
 States bear the marks of their origin as mining camps. Instead of ville, 
 city, burg, or ton, the affixes are camp, flat, bar, beach, bank, gulch, etc. 
 Sometimes the name has the ordinary affix and a radical gold-determined, 
 or it contains some term for gold or silver, or consists of something 
 strongly smacking of camp-life. The following illustrations were selected 
 from small-scale maps in a school atlas and in Britannica. It may be 
 that one or two of these names were given for other reasons than the 
 influence of the precious metals, but most of them are certainly gold- 
 derived. 
 
 Angel's Camp Goldburg Silverton 
 
 Happy Camp Gold Hill Silver City 
 
 Camp Grant Golden Silver King 
 
 Chinese Camp Gold Creek Silver Bow 
 
 Moor's Flat Eichfield Silver Plume 
 
 Dutch Flat Ophir Argenta 
 
 Fresno Flat Eldorado Chloride 
 
 Oak Bar Oro. Fino Telluride 
 
 Eocky Bar Oro Blanco Eureka 
 
 Washington Gulch Oroville Powderville 
 
 Brown's Canyon Placerville Troublesome 
 
 Cut Bank Quartz Bonanza 
 
 Gold Beach Enterprise Presto 
 
 Goldendale Silver Fairplay 
 
 Scores of stations, cross-roads, and other minor places proclaim their 
 ancestry in their patronymics. Xot only do towns bear the royal 
 colouring, but many words in our language have been coined for special 
 mining terms, or incorporated into the language from some other tongue, 
 or given special technical meanings, as results of the gold- and silver- 
 mining industry. Pay-dirt, prospecting, hydraulicking, and pay-gravel 
 illustrate the first type ; placer, bonanza, tye, and buddle the second ; 
 and torn, ledge, show, colour, etc., the third. 
 
 Paper Towns. City-building and town-booming by oily-tongued 
 agents early became a business, and in the speculative atmosphere of 
 the West the business grew. California suffered most in the earlier 
 days because she was the pioneer as well as the greatest gold producer. 
 Bancroft says this State had probably more paper towns than any equal 
 area in the West. 1 The city-building craze possessed men most strongly 
 in 1849 and 1850, after which the symptoms abated to sporadic cases 
 with occasional epidemics, as in 1863. "Corner lot" speculations were 
 
 i H. H. Bancroft, History of California,, 1884, vol. vi. p. 443. 
 
464 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 common. Cross-roads, ferries, and even river-landings had their pro- 
 moters who predicted their future greatness. Examples may be found 
 in such paper fabrics as Linda, Kearney, Eliza, Featherton, and others 
 from California's roll. Idaho has suffered much in recent years from 
 town-lot agents, as well as from spurious mining companies and un- 
 scrupulous stockbrokers. 
 
 Influence on Settlement in General. The discussion of towns and cities 
 must not claim all our attention in the consideration of the settlement 
 of the West, as influenced by the precious metals. The chief business 
 prior to 1849 all through these Western States was trapping and fur- 
 trading, a business whose success and permanence depended on the 
 suppression of any tendency toward fixed settlements for the develop- 
 ment of agriculture and grazing. Hence, the occupation of these States 
 cannot be attributed to the influence of that industry. Following it, 
 and discouraging it to a considerable extent, the mining industry spread 
 over the whole western section, more actively and more permanently in 
 some places than in others. Thus, mining the precious metals became 
 the pioneer industry throughout much of the West. Because its ten- 
 dency was to call into being, as associates and feeders, agriculture, 
 grazing, lumbering, manufacturing, commerce, and government, this 
 development of mining resulted in settlement for other subsequent 
 industries. The history of settlement arid the development of industries 
 in most of the Western States is largely a history of their mining 
 industry. 1 
 
 Colorado and California have had the most rapid development, and 
 have been in the aggregate the heaviest producers. Nevada is the third 
 in total output, but her backward condition is due to her lack of other 
 possible resources. It is a marvel that even her mining industry has 
 been able to reach such dimensions against such odds. What would 
 her development have been had there been no gold- and silver-mining to 
 nurse and coerce other industries 1 And of the other States, so far as 
 settlement is concerned, probably Washington, Oregon, and Utah have 
 been least affected ; the two former, because of moderate values and 
 limited development of the ores, while settlement for other industries 
 has responded to the general call of progress and been stimulated by the 
 influence of mining in neighbouring States ; the latter, because religious 
 beliefs suppressed mining for a long time but encouraged settlement 
 for other occupations, and these were greatly aided by mining in other 
 States. 
 
 In two ways the influence on settlement is evident. Tens of 
 thousands of men went West to mine the precious metals, but many of 
 them soon decided to withdraw, or were forced by hard luck, lack 
 of capital, or ill-health, into other occupations. While a large number 
 returned to the East, thousands remained on the agricultural or grazing 
 lands or entered the forest as lumbermen, while still others entered 
 shops, warehouses, stores, offices, etc., aiding the general settlement and 
 development of the country by their presence and work. Further, the 
 
 i R. P. Porter, The West from the Census 0/1880, 1882, p. 372. 
 
PRECIOUS MKTAI.s AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN UNITED STATES. 465 
 
 great output of gold advertised the West both in the East and abroad. 
 In connection with gold stories went its news of soils, crops, forest, and 
 climate ; and bond fide settlers, who never intended to mine at all, have 
 gone into all parts of the West. Not only has gold- and silver-mining 
 been a pioneer industry throughout the Western mountain States, but it 
 has been a fundamental force in opening up to settlement as much of the 
 vast area as it is desirable to settle. 
 
 Effects on the Foreign Population. Little need be said of the special 
 influence on the foreign population of the West. According to the 
 Twelfth Census, foreigners are congested about Butte, Montana, in 
 several places in California, both in the valley and on the mountain 
 slopes, and in scattered patches over both agricultural and mining lands. 
 It seems that with the Americans came also others in response to the 
 drawing power of gold ; but probably in no greater proportion than they 
 came to engage in other occupations open in a new country. Certainly 
 gold- and silver-mines have been no more effective in settling foreigners 
 in their vicinity than have coal-mines, iron and cotton factories. 
 Certain local phases and one general result of foreign settlement in the 
 West must be noted. A large influx of Spanish-Mexicans occurred in 
 the early California days, but it was always second to the pure American 
 immigration even then. The Sonorans scattered all along the Sierra 
 valleys, but were not allowed to remain because of their general in- 
 dolent, unruly character, and their special tendency to thievishness. 
 Their expulsion began well north, and they settled again farther south ; 
 then, again becoming a nuisance, they were sent home in great numbers. 
 Mexicans certainly would have been more permanent settlers in Cali- 
 fornia if the treasure had never been found, and no Americans brought 
 thither to oppose them. A second local effect of the influence of gold 
 on foreigners is the gift to the Pacific States, and notably to California, 
 of thousands of Chinese. Many of these cheap labourers came exclusively 
 to dig gold. Others came to engage in some of the lucrative subsidiary 
 occupations, such as cooking, laundry work, and farming. Thousands are 
 engaged in agriculture, horticulture, fishing, etc. They were not usually 
 allowed in the mines or gravels with the Americans, so they took up 
 abandoned claims, and even to the present thousands of Chinese are 
 laying up money on the "worn-out" claims. 1 An attempt has been 
 made to find out if there were any notable responses to California's call 
 from gold- and silver-mining regions in other parts of the world, but 
 without any result. Not one, but all occupations sent settlers to the 
 mining regions. 
 
 The general effects over the entire area of the mining States, of their 
 occupation upon an exceedingly mixed and varied population, drawn 
 from all classes, creeds, and nationalities, are apparent. What Jordan 2 
 said of California as a consequence of this cosmopolitan character applies, 
 though often with less force, to most of the mountain States. "It is 
 the most cosmopolitan of all the States of the Union, and such it will 
 
 1 H. H. Bancroft, History of California, 1884, vol. vii. p. 649. 
 
 2 Atlantic Monthly, 1898. 
 
466 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE. 
 
 remain. Whatever the fates may bring, the people will be tolerant, 
 hopeful, and adequate, sure of themselves, masters of the present, fear- 
 less of the future." The percentage of the foreign element is no higher 
 than in other portions of the United States, or in other industries, but 
 the variety in any locality is greater, and no one element predominates. 
 
[Reprinted from THE BULLETIN OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, 
 Vol. X, No. I, January, 1912.] 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF GOLD AND SILVER MINING UPON 
 THE CHARACTERS OF MEN. 
 
 GEORGE D. HUBBARD, PH.D. 1 
 OBERLIX COLLEGE, OBERLIN, OHIO. 
 
 The results of the influence of the precious metals upon the 
 character of men are intangible, immaterial, and evasive. Many 
 factors have entered into the character of our Western men and 
 Western society beside the influence of gold and silver mining; and 
 other factors than gold are able to produce some of the results which 
 come in response to its influence. The oil craze is similar to the 
 gold fever. Other kinds of mining than gold produce some of the 
 same effects, and any frontier life develops some of the character- 
 istics found in gold and silver miners. Hence, it has been extremely 
 difficult and sometimes impossible to arrive at conclusions that are 
 at all trustworthy. For these reasons, it will not be surprising if, 
 on some points, the author and reader part company. 
 
 The Gold Fever. The "rush" has been described as a con- 
 sequence of an excitement popularly called the " gold fever." This 
 mania captured all classes of people, often making them oblivious of 
 duty, forgetful of friends, and even of self and bodily comforts. 
 The excitement in Georgia in 1829-1830 did not last long but was 
 extraordinary. Professor Silliman 2 speaks of the excited state of 
 men's minds and of the speculative spirit existing: and adds that 
 facts were rarely reported correctly; and the public mind, being 
 morbidly excited, was blinded. 
 
 In California, the stories of gold did not seem to enthuse the 
 people; but, when in April the dazzling yellow metal itself was 
 
 1 This paper is a portion of a thesis presented as a part of the require- 
 ment for the Ph.D. degree in geography at Cornell. For other parts see 
 Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., Vol. XLII (1910), pp. 592-602; also Vol. XLIV, 
 Feb., 1912; Scottish Geog. Mag., 1910, pp. 449-466, and 1911, pp. 417 and 
 470; Bull. Phil. Geog. Society, Vol. IX (1911), pp. 1-22. Special thanks 
 are due Professors R. S. Tarr, W. F. Willcox and H. Ries, of Cornell 
 University, for criticism and suggestion throughout the whole work. 
 
 2 Am. Jour. Sci., XXXII (1836), p. 98. 
 
 (36) 
 
37 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining upon Characters. 
 
 brought into the streets of San Francisco, the fever spread, and the 
 contagion swept through the State. 3 Merchants and their clerks 
 alike left the offices ; lawyers, doctors, and even State officials went ; 
 soldiers and policemen deserted; whole ships' crews and officers 
 abandoned their vessels when once within the harbor ; farmers, 
 ministers, laborers, and gamblers responded. The epidemic knew no 
 social or class lines. During the first years, a kind of frenzy would 
 seize a community; and thousands would rush away to some new 
 and perhaps distant locality, where many would perish with disease 
 or hunger, while the remainder returned in poverty and rags. They 
 would leave localities of known value to search out a new one with 
 no more provocation than a newspaper note. 4 
 
 Gold was discovered in Coeur d'Alene placers of Northern Idaho 
 in 1883 and produced the same enthusiasm; men surged in from 
 New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California; from Minnesota, 
 Puget Sound, Winnipeg, Assiniboine, British Columbia, and 
 Dakota. 5 When masses of gold aggregating 106 pounds were found 
 near Bathurst, Australia, in 1851, and the news became public 
 property, the greatest excitement prevailed. The Sydney Morning 
 Herald of July 18, said " Bathurst is mad again. Men meet 
 together, stare stupidly at each other and talk incoherent nonsense. 
 The nerves of the community at large have received a severe shock." 
 It has been the same in Alaska, Klondyke, Transvaal and West 
 Australia, and from the beginning of gold mining down to the 
 present. Gold in veins is much less effective than in gravel. Today, 
 cooperation and the reduction of mining for the precious metals to 
 an organized and capitalized business, remove the romance of gold 
 mining, and of course cut off the excitement among the miners. 6 
 
 It would be quite unfair to turn from the subject of gold fevers 
 without mention of the effects on those left at home. The enormous 
 migrations of 1849 an d subsequent years tore many families asunder, 
 leaving sad mothers, sorrowing wives, and neglected children witn 
 poverty and disappointment to combat ; while he who had gone for th 
 
 'Bancroft, H. H., "History of California" (1884), Vol. VI, p. 58. 
 
 4 Bancroft, H. H., " Hist, of Mexico," Vol. IV, p. 702. 
 
 5 Shinn, C. H., " Mining Camps ; a Study in American Frontier Govern- 
 ment " (1885), P. 255. 
 
 9 World Today, Vol. VIII (1905), pp. 178-185. 
 
 (37) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 38 
 
 sometimes struggled with fortune successfully, but frequently sunk 
 discouraged and diseased into an unmarked grave. 7 
 
 Effects on Health. While many left at home suffered from 
 privation, the miner in the field and camp, contended with disease 
 and very often gave up health, or even life itself, in his eager search. 
 Literally thousands were stricken down while en route in the desert 
 and mountain wastes, thus depriving families of their support and 
 society of some of its strength. This was because of the distant 
 occurrence of the gold and lack of proper food, water or shelter. 
 The exposure to weather and to cold and ague by standing in cold 
 water at work; the privations due to lack of food and shelter, and 
 the irregularities induced by improper food, begot a whole crop of 
 maladies, ague and chills, fever, dysentery, scurvy, pneumonia, 
 malaria. Most of these are common in new countries, but exposure 
 and vicious mining methods so weakened constitutions that these 
 disorders were doubly potent. Drinking water from some of the 
 streams gave diarrhea to 99 per cent of the men. 8 Beside exposure, 
 the mental strain of business life told on minds, as the insane 
 asylums of the early years will bear abundant evidence. 9 
 
 Character of the Miner. Certain virtues and vices seem to have 
 been begotten or nourished by the conditions in gold mining camps, 
 or by the influence emanating from them. Self reliance developed 
 (o) because anyone could succeed without a superior, and no one 
 could afford to hire help; (b) because one had no time to help 
 another so long as the latter could help himself. Balancing this 
 independence, a fraternal spirit appeared, especially in the beginnings 
 in the several fields ; partly because of the isolation from home and 
 the East ; partly because of dependence for society and for sympathy 
 upon neighbors. This spirit brought together men differing greatly 
 in birth, education, and tastes, and welded them into something of a 
 guild, a kind of free-masonry. 10 
 
 Friendships and personal attachments sprang up between men of 
 very different temperament and culture, because the conditions re- 
 quired that they work together, and gave them a community of 
 
 T Bancroft, H. H., "Hist, of Calif./' Vol. VI, pp. 118-119. 
 "Taylor, B., "Eldorado" (1857), pp. 206-7, 262-3. 
 8 Royce, Josiah, " California," Am. Commonwealth Series, pp. 392-3. 
 10 Shinn, C. H., "Mining Camps," pp. 133-290; Barry, T. A., and Patten, 
 B. A., "San Francisco in the Spring of 1850" (1873), p. 8. 
 
 (38) 
 
39 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining upo-n Characters. 
 
 interest and risk. Men who crossed the land or the sea in company 
 and worked in a gulch together held reunions along the Pacific Coast 
 for many years. There was a cordiality peculiar to the conditions, 
 a jovial fellowship which developed at the expense of ordinary 
 forms of courtesy. 11 
 
 Gambling, drunkenness and improvidence were the greatest vices 
 of the miners. Placer mining itself was, and is yet, a very good 
 game of chance. It gave all the excitement of the game with the 
 charm of the wilderness, and often added the novelty of a solitary 
 independent game. 12 It brought familiarity with chance and created 
 a desire to tempt luck. In the placer stages, gambling was mainly 
 by means of games during the evening. It became very intense. 
 The gold had come easily, and there was plenty more where it came 
 from. Isolation from home and relatives weakened restraint ; even- 
 ings were dull, and amusements lacking; therefore almost every- 
 one played. When the veins began to be worked, the mining stocks 
 and corporations appeared, speculation in part replaced the gaming 
 table. Clerks and laborers as well as merchants and other business 
 and mining men whose daily occupations were, at best, dangerously 
 near gambling, and whose nerves were constantly tormented by 
 unnatural yet, for the time, inevitable excitement and strain, entered 
 into the sport fully as fast as their means warranted. Wildest 
 speculation occurred, and individual as well as social disaster fol- 
 lowed, even to the confusion of bankers and conservative Eastern- 
 ers. 13 Gambling and speculation were not peculiar to the gold and 
 silver mining industry; but they found therein fertile soil, because 
 of the easy money at hand, the general excitement, the distance from 
 relatives, lack of restraint, the hustle and self-absorption, and the 
 intense desire to get rich. Cope 14 calls attention to the waning of 
 the spirit of speculation throughout the West because of the great 
 changes since 1849 m the mining business. The large concern, with 
 its capital invested in a fixed and elaborate plant, its ores of all 
 grades, and its many mines consolidated under one immense organi- 
 zation, has much less to run chances upon. At present, mining and 
 
 11 Taylor, B., " Eldorado," pp. 310 f. 
 
 "Patterson, R. H., "The New Golden Age" (1882), Vol. I, p. 253. 
 
 "Royce, Josiah, "California," pp. 391-3. 
 
 14 World Today, Vol. VIII, 1905, p. 181. 
 
 (39) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 40 
 
 extraction partake largely of the nature of a manufacturing enter- 
 prise. 
 
 Although drinking and drunkenness are very common, it is 
 doubtful if they are more so than in other kinds of mining, or 
 even in old settled and established communities. The predominance 
 of men, the excitement and freedom, the abundance of wealth, and 
 the social good feeling, which have been characteristics of gold 
 mining districts all through the West since 1849, tend to foster this 
 evil. The lack of restraint and the failure of the civil, social and 
 religious organization to keep pace with the rapid development under 
 the stimulus of the precious metals, make for lawlessness and 
 liberty-taking, so that indirectly gold and silver share the responsi- 
 bility. But a counter quality was developed in the mining districts. 
 Great popular interest in civic order was taken by the mining and 
 other population, because no superior organization dispensed that 
 article; and order and security of property were much better than 
 would be expected, considering the sources and heterogeneity of the 
 people and the conditions under which they were living. 15 
 
 Extravagance and its offspring, improvidence, were as natural 
 fruits as the conditions ever produced. First, almost nothing could 
 be had for ordinary prices ; and, since one must pay exorbitantly, he 
 felt that he might as well purchase anything that his pile could 
 compass. Second, those who had gold, had come by it easily and 
 expected to get much more before going home. Third, there was 
 the novelty of paying ten prices for an article instead of one, coupled 
 with the ease with which it could be accomplished. Men did not 
 realize in those flush times and strange surroundings, the real cost 
 of things. A few, unused to labor, whose daily ounce or two seemed 
 a poor recompense for weary limb, sore muscles and flagging 
 spirits, carefully hoarded their gains ; but those whose lives had been 
 mostly of work and privation (by far the larger per cent, of the 
 miners) were open-handed. Impulse and whim had free rein. Men 
 accustomed to no luxuries beyond a good beef steak and a glass of 
 whiskey, now dined on tongue and lobster and drank ten dollar 
 champagne. Oregonians were said to surpass all others in dietary 
 extravagance. 16 Yet there were men of culture in many lines who 
 
 13 Taylor, B., loc. cit., pp. 101, 310-14; Shinn, C. H., loc. cit., p. 287. 
 16 Taylor, B., loc. cit., pp. 254-7 ; Shinn, C. H., loc. cit., p. 139. 
 
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41 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining upon Characters. 
 
 were careful, provident and regular, unscathed by the violent tempta- 
 tions to recklessness. 
 
 The influence of gold when taken from the natives or mined by 
 oppressive slavery in Mexico and South America, seems to have 
 had quite an opposite effect. There, avarice and greed developed 
 enormously ; but in the United States, where every man was his own 
 miner, and had to lift the treasure by his own strength or skill, 
 these qualities seem not to have taken root. 
 
 In any study of the personal character of the miners of the West, 
 it is necessary to take into account the liberal variety of men upon 
 whom the influence of the precious metals, with other factors, had 
 to work. The miner came from the North, the South, the East and 
 West, from Europe, Asia and Latin America, from home and from 
 prison, from farm and town, shop and ship; he was raw or cul- 
 tured, ignorant or educated, boisterous or gentle, stupid or alert, red, 
 blonde or brunette. All types were cast together with their multi- 
 tudinous personal differences. Some of these initial qualities were 
 lost, some were transformed, developed or dwarfed, and new or 
 dormant qualities were brought out. Some of the changes were 
 due to change of environment; some due to the frontier nature of 
 the region ; some directly due to the influence of gold and silver, and 
 some indirectly traceable thereto. And from it all, there developed 
 a species the typical Western miner; a variety the prospector; 
 and in general, a social character, and a basis for the present tone 
 and character of the citizen and of society in our mountainous 
 Western States. 
 
 Following a well-recognized law man is the product of his own 
 environment into the condensed and crystallized effects of all en- 
 vironments previously occupied by himself and his race one would 
 not expect all who have had contact with the production of the 
 precious metals to be alike, but he might feel confident that they 
 would have certain common well-marked characteristics a common 
 factor. After reading many character sketches, descriptions of 
 camp and western life, and estimates of men and society in the 
 West, the following summary has been made, 17 embracing some of 
 the personal characteristics of miners. 
 
 17 Besides books mentioned in other references in this paper Bret Hartes' 
 stories and poems of western life were examined ; also works of Joachin 
 Miller, Josiah Royce, and J. D. Whitney and others. 
 
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George D. Hubbard. 42 
 
 1. Hardy; because selected and hardened in a severe life, out of 
 doors, subject to weather and privation. 
 
 2. Generous ; because right at hand were the means, also the 
 opportunity to share, and many chances that he too would soon need 
 another's aid. 
 
 3. Careless and reckless ; because of the chances constantly run 
 for success or failure, because of association with other gold-cul- 
 tivated reckless characters, because of the distance from home and 
 lack of family ties, and because of general excitement. 
 
 4. Happy and hopeful ; because of excitement, many chances of 
 success, constantly hearing of others' good fortune, and necessity of 
 outdoor life. 
 
 5. Brave, because only the stronger spirits started, and these were 
 sorted again en route and yet again continuously in the gulches; 
 because of isolation and vicious associates with no defence save his 
 own. 
 
 6. Self reliant ; because of ease of success without aid. No one 
 had time to seek or give counsel or assistance unless needed. 
 
 7. Exuberant with life and push ; because mostly men, young and 
 selected, successful, hopeful, and in new untried conditions. 
 
 8. Resourceful ; because driven to it by circumstances. De- 
 vices must be made, and experiments conducted to find best adapted 
 machines and methods. 
 
 9. Orderly, and loyal to order; because under the conditions he 
 could have no order unless he helped to make it ; and it must be had, 
 if at all possible. He demanded fair play; honest himself, and 
 exacting justice and honesty in others. 
 
 10. Impetuous and hasty; manifested in duels, trials and execu- 
 tions, and in snappy decisions on courses of action. In the former 
 cases, a delay meant an escaped offender. There were no prisons 
 and no time to stand guard. In the latter case quick decisions 
 brought best results. 
 
 11. Aptitude and adaptability; power to adjust and to grasp 
 opportunities. This quality was specially nurtured in the mining 
 camps because of their evanescent nature and the constantly chang- 
 ing conditions and associations. It developed in individuals by 
 virtue of a natural selection process. He who adjusted himself 
 to new conditions had a much better chance of success. 
 
 Rarely do wholly new traits of character seem to have developed, 
 
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43 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining up cm Characters. 
 
 but abnormal growths of certain qualities and dwarfing of others, 
 thus producing an unsymmetrical character are common. 18 Ele- 
 ments of character most unlocked for would spring up in a man 
 and come to fruition, before his acquaintances or friends were 
 aware even of their existence. Men would indulge in dangerous or 
 frivolous excesses, when they had formerly been temperate. They 
 would be greatly given to drink, generosity, talkativeness, and jest- 
 ing. Taylor considers these excrescences, " rank wild shoots slightly 
 weakening the trunk, but signs of the abundant life." 
 
 The Speculator. One or two special types of character and 
 occupation deserve special mention at this point. When stocks and 
 companies came into vogue, and men cared more for speculation in 
 stocks and properties than in gambling machines; the speculator 
 evolved from the proprietor of the gaming table, or he developed 
 from a miner who saw riches in the enthusiasm of his fellows. He 
 is a product of the printing press and the credulous gold seeker. 
 His whole business in this connection has to do with gold mines, 
 real or fictitious, and with a quality in men called forth or developed 
 under the influence of gold. He booms a mine, sells properties or 
 company shares, and pockets the proceeds, leaving beautifully en- 
 graved certificates in the hands of his purchasers. He is the 
 eloquent advertiser of modern times ; one who induces others to 
 speculate in gold mines, which have little value outside their Broad- 
 way offices and embossed certificates. 19 
 
 The Prospector. The prospector is undoubtedly the most typical 
 human product of the whole gold and silver mining business. Men 
 rarely began mining with the expectation of becoming professionals, 
 but many of the more adventurous found themselves, at the end 
 of a year or two, well within the meshes of the web, and then, 
 unconsciously perhaps, surrendered themselves to the lot of a 
 prospector. 20 
 
 Equipped with shovel and pan, blanket, skillet, matches, a gun 
 and a knife or two, far too careless of food and personal comfort, 
 utterly oblivious to vicissitudes of the elements, beyond the ken of 
 man for months, roved the adventurous, restless, professional 
 prospector, dreaming at night of nuggets and heaps of gold, and 
 
 18 Taylor, B., loc. cit., pp. 254-57, 310 f. 
 
 19 World Today, Vol. VIII (1905), p. 179. 
 
 20 Patterson, R. H., loc. cit., Vol. I, pp. 239, 253-4. 
 
 (43) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 44 
 
 burning all day with a thirst for gold which gold only quickened and 
 never quenched. He lived on wild game, berries and anything pro- 
 curable, paid little attention to health, sought solitude and seclusion, 
 was worth his thousands one day and nothing the next, usually a 
 keen observer, grizzled, poorly clad, brave, hardy and careless. 
 
 The prospector was the advance guard of the miner. He wan- 
 dered away from the camp, up ravines and over divides, picked at 
 the gravel here and there, washing a bit in his shovel or pan, then 
 peering in for " color," the measure of his success. Thus he passed 
 the snowy mountains, and crossed the burning plains, becoming 
 nomadic, moving on unverified report, and circulating news of his 
 various finds. Unless the prowling Indian, dysentery or starvation 
 accomplished the deed too soon, old age crept in and took him 
 unawares, and his wasted body or bleached bones were left to mark 
 some lonely gulch or sentry hill. His hoarded dust in leathern bag 
 sometimes revealed his business, when regathered by another solitary 
 prospector who happened by the deserted wealth. 21 
 
 His type is a minor element in the exploitation and development 
 of the West today. He works alone, unguided and, in the main, 
 unfollowed, unless in the employ of some great concern where both 
 he and the mining expert contribute to the expansion of the enter- 
 prise. 22 
 
 Effects on Western Business and Social Life. Many personal 
 qualities of the miners discussed above were so common as to be 
 more or less crystallized in society, and others still more universal 
 aided in giving the characteristic tone to western society. Royce 
 points out that in the early days there was in California a blindness 
 to social duties and an indifference to the rights of certain foreign- 
 ers. 23 This latter was noticeable concerning the Mexican " greaser " 
 and the Chinaman. The all-absorbing personal ambition to acquire 
 gold, and the carelessness, overhastiness and extravagant confidence 
 in luck, which seems to be largely gold-born, were certainly in great 
 measure accountable for this early lack of the normally very prom- 
 inent pioneer characteristics, thrift, sociability, promotion of the 
 
 21 Patterson, R. H., loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 245 ; Bancroft, H. H., " Hist, of 
 Calif.," Vol. VI, pp. 385, 390, 391. 
 
 * World Today, Vol. VIII (1905), P- 181. 
 23 Royce, Josiah, "California," p. 2. 
 
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45 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining upon Characters. 
 
 social organization, and affiliation with everyone in the community, 
 even though his nationality, or skin, be of different kind. 
 
 Later, men becoming aware of social obligations took up with the 
 usual zest and energy the task of building a well-organized, perma- 
 nent and progressive society and State. In many parts of the 
 West, the first few years witnessed the conditions noted in Cali- 
 fornia, and later years have seen a similar change. 
 
 Peculiar business methods grew up and flourished in California 
 during the first few years of her Golden Age. Extraordinary 
 abundance of metal made it possible to pay all debts punctually, and 
 a public spirit unfolded which was opposed to slackness. 24 Men 
 were forced to have business confidence in each other. Business 
 was transacted on a large scale, and the market was so absolutely 
 sure that the ordinary solicitation and attempt to reduce the price 
 were almost entirely forgotten. The merchant became indifferent 
 as to whether the customer purchased or not; he was sure of a 
 speedy sale anyway. And the customer bought if he approved the 
 price, or really wanted the goods; if not, he went away. Usually 
 he paid the price without a word. So flush were the coffers that 
 men loaned money without security and many times without even a 
 note, suffering little or no loss. 
 
 These general conditions continued for ten years, until business 
 began to settle into more secure routine. Then those who continued 
 to display the same indifference to purchasers or to loan without 
 note and security were forced to the wall. Competition rose; the 
 transient regime entirely disappeared ; and with its removal many a 
 business man, failing to adjust with sufficient alacrity to the new 
 conditions, went into bankruptcy. Much of the same results were 
 found in Australia during the period of great abundance, and were 
 followed by similar subsequent change. 
 
 Beside these abnormalities in trade, many writers mention an 
 exuberance in everything, which manifested itself not a little in busi- 
 ness and enterprise. Men were possessed of a spirit of hustle, due, 
 in part at least, to success and to the bountiful resources and ample 
 opportunity. 25 Caution and prudence seem to have been thrown to 
 the wind, and yet men prospered. This spirit was propagated 
 
 24 Taylor, B., "Eldorado," pp. 59-60. 
 
 25 Bancroft, H. H., "Hist. Calif.," Vol. VI, p. 225; Taylor, B., "Eldo- 
 rado," pp. 310-314. 
 
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George D. Hubbard, 46 
 
 wherever the new gold went, and there resulted a quickening of 
 enterprise, an intensifying of prosperity, an augmented productivity 
 until Hume 26 remarks " In every kingdom into which money begins 
 to flow in greater abundance than formerly, everything takes on a 
 new face. Labor and industry gain life, the merchant becomes more 
 enterprising, the manufacturer more diligent and skilful, and even 
 the farmer follows his plough with greater alacrity and attention/' 27 
 Increased gold and silver production seems to be not only a local 
 stimulant but a universal industrial tonic, vivifying enterprise as far 
 as it goes. 
 
 A characteristic quality of Western society has been its lack of 
 rank, its democratic equalization. Taylor predicts that California 
 will be the most democratic country in the world. This democracy 
 was due to a number of conditions. ( I ) The richest never came to 
 California nor to the other mining regions, and the poorer could not 
 come, so the financially determined social range from the start was 
 less than in the East. (2) Those who came all worked, worked 
 side by side, and at the same or similar occupations. (3) None 
 could afford to hire or be hired. (4) Where riches lay so near the 
 surface, they conferred little advantage. 
 
 In the course of time, as mining methods have changed, finan- 
 cially determined social rank has arisen. There are laborers and 
 capitalists in two well-established classes. This distinction could 
 not well have come in an agricultural pioneer community. It is 
 little known in new countries other than those mining gold. In the 
 East, property plays a part in social organization, but position, 
 scholarship and culture are stronger factors. It is no wonder, 
 however, that in the West and especially in California, many of the 
 citizens know no aristocracy save that based on wealth, and that 
 by many the clergyman or professor is not to be considered eligible 
 to the best society unless backed by his gold. Oregon and Wash- 
 ington, less important as mining States, seem to feel this distinction 
 less. 
 
 Gold and silver mining brings men closer together physically and 
 thus creates links of town-life and society. 28 In spite of the strong 
 
 28 Hume, D., " Political Discoveries," 2d edition, p. 47. 
 
 27 Stirling, P. J., " Gold Discoveries and Their Probable Consequences " 
 
 (1853), PP. 256-7. 
 
 ^Shinn, C. H., loc. cit., p. 227. 
 
 (46) 
 
47 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining up&n Characters. 
 
 individualistic spirit in mining communities, there is a real charity 
 and a healthy fraternalism not known or possible in other kinds of 
 frontier life. 
 
 The Camp as an Organizing Force. As an organizing force, 
 mining-camp society is one of the strongest and quickest to act. 
 This has been shown in the case of court organization, and was 
 specially marked in the massing of men in orderly concourse to 
 discuss and carry into effect district organization. Popular dis- 
 cussion was a right of miners, growing as naturally out of their 
 environment as did equal mining rights; and assembling with 
 startling energy and swiftness for effective consolidation was as 
 much to be expected as hasty trial and execution. The miner saw 
 the need of order, because he was removed from its protection ; and, 
 under the tremendous pressure of local demand for unification of all 
 forces, he became bound to his fellows by common interests into a 
 social compact owing allegiance to no higher authority. The evolu- 
 tion of social community when begun was much more rapid under 
 the influence of gold than it could have been among a more staid 
 and less mobile populace. 29 
 
 In discussing the characteristics of men in mining regions, Shinn, 
 writing in 1884, remarks that they are a class peculiarly ready to 
 assemble for free discussion, to have debates, to start arguments and 
 to listen to stump speeches. 30 The early training of miners' courts 
 and of camp life have left their impress upon the people of the 
 mining regions. Compared with the people of the valley engaged 
 in other occupations, they bear relations similar to those born by 
 Tennessee mountaineers to the valley dwellers of the same vicinity. 
 But these mining mountaineers compared with the ordinary moun- 
 tain dweller, have a closer organization, a more constant habit of 
 seeking each other's counsel, of meeting in assembly, and of openly 
 discussing local and general affairs. 
 
 Spread of Camp Spirit. The mining camp spreads its influence 
 with the wanderings of prospector and miner. It was as much a 
 unit and centralizing force in the West as the town in New England, 
 and the plantation in the South, and fully as much a product of the 
 environment. Institutionally, it underlies the Western common- 
 wealth; intellectually and socially, it represents a colonial era; but 
 
 29 Shinn, C. H., loc. cit., p. 135; Taylor, B., loc. cit., pp. 310-14. 
 80 Shinn, C. H., loc. cit., pp. 226-7. 
 
 (47) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 48 
 
 in both respects, it is a type not found in merely agricultural or 
 pastoral development, but belongs to the production of the precious 
 metals. Not only has the camp and mining district life given its 
 strength, energy and manners to western society, but it has already 
 passed as a powerful force into the very fiber of the social fabric 
 throughout the western mining States. Men and women trained 
 in that atmosphere are in control of the departments of state and 
 local government, are leaders in society, and while the whole organi- 
 zation of state and society is similar to that in the East, its move- 
 ments are quicker, its pulse healthier, and its jurisprudence more 
 primitive, its spirit of unity stronger and tone more democratic. 
 
 Oregon has the name both at home and among its neighbors of 
 being the least progressive of all the coast states, although it was one 
 of the earliest occupied, having its permanent settlements before the 
 California gold discoveries. May this not be in large measure due 
 to its lack of gold and silver mining and of contact with mining life? 
 A comparison of Seattle, Portland and San Francisco is also strik- 
 ing. We have seen the character of the latter. Seattle is said by 
 travellers to resemble Chicago in its hustle and push. Portland is 
 much less active. It is an agricultural market but has little contact 
 with gold mining, while Seattle has, besides agricultural and lumber 
 marketing, an extensive business in outfitting Alaskan and Klondyke 
 miners. 
 
 Effects on Other Institutions. In the beginnings of the develop- 
 ment of the various districts, certain institutions were slow of 
 growth because neglected for the Western summum bonum gold. 
 Perhaps the slowest was the church and with it religious life. All 
 writers pay a tribute to the miners when they speak of their rever- 
 ence for religion, their emotions and responses in cases of births and 
 natural deaths. Probably much of this feeling toward spiritual 
 things was due to the scarcity of church and religious influence, 
 which in turn was a product of the conditions. Certain institutions 
 must reach a community last, and these will be determined by the 
 relative importance attached to them by the members of each com- 
 munity. Naturally, where the material interests were so clamorous 
 for attention, their importance was magnified to the detriment of 
 the spiritual. 
 
 It is also common testimony that the Westerner today has a very 
 high regard for and interest in the church, religion and education. 
 
 (48) 
 
49 Influence of Gold and Silver Mining upon Characters. 
 
 Probably this is a development of the earlier feelings, coupled with 
 an increased desire to have for his youth what the exigencies of the 
 times forbade him to enjoy. 
 
 On Literature. Books, articles and stories in considerable num- 
 bers have sprung from the Western conditions, but as yet there is 
 little that can take rank as literature. A swarm of little, cheap, and 
 often loud books by persons who had spent " three weeks " to " six 
 months" in the gulches came up as spontaneously as mushrooms 
 after a June shower. 
 
 The scientific literature is no small item. Thousands of pages 
 along many lines, geologic, petrographic, chemical, mining and engi- 
 neering have been published in books and journals. Many volumes 
 of more or less technical reports annually appear. Much of the 
 western fiction is gold inspired. In the gulches was found not only 
 the pioneer conditions attractive to all readers but also a romantic, 
 novel background set with gold nuggets, pious gamblers, forgotten 
 forty-niners, tricky Mexicans, Indian outlaws and rescued innocents, 
 all possible and all thrilling. A thousand stories such as those by 
 Bret Harte illustrate the spirit of the times. Cincinnatus H. Miller 
 (Joaquin Miller) in his poems has depicted the mountain scenery, 
 open-air life, and freedom, often lawless, of mining days ; and other 
 lesser men have written, yet the total is but meager. 
 
 The great mining West has a treasure house brimful in her 
 romance and history; an inspiration in her scenery for the outdoor 
 poet ; a theme for the dramatist in the vivid life scenes of the over- 
 land routes, her mining camps and forests ; a sublime symphony for 
 the deft fingers of the artist to express in music of poetry, song, 
 or story : 
 
 The masters of these themes will be products of the environ- 
 ment. They will grow up in the grandeur and vastness of those 
 majestic mountains and profound valleys, opened to the world by 
 the far-reaching influence of the metallic treasure in their hearts 
 and mantles. Men of spirit and strength have already written, but 
 the best from this virile, exuberant and cosmopolitan people, in a 
 new and varied country, is yet to come. 
 
 The Commingling of Races. As already shown, under the influ- 
 ence of gold and silver there were drawn to the West and especially 
 to California, all nationalities and conditions of society. The mass 
 of population was most heterogeneous and unpropitious, yet there 
 
 (49) 
 
George D. Hubbard. 50 
 
 " is growing up " says Taylor, " harmony beyond the most sanguine 
 hopes." 31 This resultant, save some very local foreign examples, the 
 most cosmopolitan of all societies, was not alone due to the variety 
 of its ingredients. Commingling races and interbedding social 
 strata, coupled with primitive and similar modes of life for all ; the 
 most perfect mixing process carried on by means of characteristic 
 rushes ; the common risk and responsibility, have all collaborated to 
 produce the finished product Western cosmopolitan society. Much 
 of the virility and enterprise in California is a consequence of the 
 complexity of population and its complete mixing. And by the same 
 means, the citizens, facing the awakening Orient, were prepared to 
 enter broad world relations. 
 
 jrorld-ivide Results. There were broader social effects, re- 
 sponses to the influence of gold and silver in the Far West. The 
 gold seeker's emigration from all the world was socially a disturb- 
 ing influence touching the spirit of the times in many lands. The 
 discoveries and exploitation of treasure called forth hordes from 
 quiet, steady civilizations, relieving congestion, quickening markets 
 and reviving life, thought and action. There was a loss from many 
 lands and communities of capital and strong arms, to a new, wild, 
 and untried country. 
 
 Society in the aggregate suffered by loss of moral restraint in- 
 cident on mining life, and the consequent vice, crime and bloodshed, 
 gambling and thriftlessness, and the partial loss of mental equi- 
 librium. And so the subtle influence of a very potent element goes 
 on permeating, enthusing, restraining, inducing, discouraging and 
 cheering, and all the time preparing the way for speedy emergence 
 of the Great West in its strength and integrity. 
 
 31 Taylor, B., " Eldorado," pp. 101 f. 
 
 (50) 
 
THE 
 
 VOLUME X JUNE, 1912 NUMBER 10 
 
 THE PRECIOUS METALS AS A GEOGRAPHIC FACTOR IN THE 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES* 
 
 A Summary by GEORGE D. HUBBARD, 
 Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio 
 
 IX the preparation of this dissertation, the purpose has been to set forth 
 the evidence and the extent of the geographic influence of the precious 
 metals in the development of the United States. If undue emphasis has 
 seemingly been given to the geographic influences, it may be simply because 
 all other classes of influences and their effects have been disregarded for the 
 time. This lack of attention to economic, social and other forces has not 
 been through a lack of appreciation of their importance or a desire to de- 
 tract from their interest, but because of the purpose to make clear and to 
 emphasize the influence of gold and silver growing out of their geographic 
 distribution and geographic associations and relations. 
 
 Care has been taken to pursue the investigation along each line as far 
 as the evidence will allow; and caution has been used to prevent drawing 
 unwarranted conclusions. The facts that various other causes produce simi- 
 lar results, and that several causes operate together to bring about a single 
 result have often complicated the problem. After certain results have been 
 noted, an examination of other classes of influence economic, social, re- 
 ligious, historic, and racial has been made to determine which cause has 
 been 'effective, or which should be considered more important. Occasional- 
 ly, in testing the power of the influence of any set of conditions, or the de- 
 gree of the responses to them, it has been found helpful to suppose changed 
 conditions, and note results. This device cannot be considered final, because 
 one is never sure what would happen under Irvpothetical conditions ; nor can 
 he be certain that he has taken cognizance of all conditions. 
 
 *Under this general title there have appeared a series of articles dealing 
 with several phases of the question. Together they constitute the thesis pre- 
 sented by the author to Cornell University for the degree of Doctor of Philoso- 
 phy. The papers may be found as follows: 
 
 Scott. Geog. Mag. Vol. XXVI (1910) pp. 449-466. 
 
 Bull Amer. Geog. Soc. Vol. XLII (1910) pp. 594-602. 
 
 Scott. Geog. Mag. Vol. XXVII (1911) pp. 417-26, 470-74. 
 
 Bull. Phil. Geog. Soc. Vol. IX (1911) pp. 1-22. 
 
 Bull. Phil. Geog. Soc. Vol. X (1912) pp. 36-50. 
 
 Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc. Vol. XLIV (1912) pp. 97-112. 
 
An attempt has been made to discover the essential principle in each 
 case, because items alone are of little value except as they lead, or point to, 
 or illustrate the principle. Some of the principles deduced in the study may 
 be set forth as follows : 
 
 Mining processes have responded to the character of the ore and the 
 nature of the geographic environment. In so far as the methods of mining 
 and reduction, and the apparatus used, are adapted to the requirements of 
 the ores and the conditions, they are successful; while a failure to conform 
 is the signal for their defeat and disuse. 
 
 Spanish exploration and conquest were impelled and directed largely 
 by the desire for treasure, and the scattering of the Spanish in search for 
 it was a cause for their undoing; while English exploration and posses- 
 sion was not much affected by the presence of gold and silver within the 
 territory which was left. Gold in California and other Western States has 
 led both directly and indirectly to their exploration; and by this means 
 not only have precious metals been discovered and possessed, but many 
 other and more valuable resources have been found, and extensive scientific 
 exploration has been carried on. 
 
 Spanish migration and settlement were largely for the purpose of 
 acquiring the discovered gold and silver- The quest led them to wander all 
 over South and Central America; however, during the early centuries they 
 established but few organized agricultural settlements; hence their foot- 
 hold on American soil was not permanent. The great exodus in 1849 
 and following, from the Atlantic Coasts, both European and American, 
 was a tremendous wave of migration, and was impelled by the glamor and 
 presence of gold in our West. The working out of the routes, the sustain- 
 ing of hardships and the distribution of the people were in part responses 
 to the influence of gold and silver; and these responses were what they were, 
 because the precious metals were where they were. Many local migrations 
 and minor effects on the people accrue to the influence of the metals. 
 
 The position, size and shape of camps as well as their character, are re- 
 sponses to the presence and distribution of the ores. Besides camps, com- 
 mercial and outfitting towns, and later, extensive milling towns arose in re- 
 sponse to the need for such settlements. Many other towns, less closely re- 
 lated to the industry, were stimulated by the presence and production of 
 gold and silver. Most, if not all, Western towns are other than they would 
 have been had the metals not been in their States. And, further, this in- 
 dustry will continue to influence towns as long as its extensive operation 
 continues. Old towns, now active, will decline and new ones arise, as de- 
 posits become exhausted, and new ones are found. 
 
 Metallurgical and all reduction processes, as well as the mining itself, 
 use the products of other industries; hence, manufacturies of shovels, min- 
 
ing machinery, milling apparatus, and chemicals required in the processes 
 are all more or less stimulated. Further, the products of gold and silver 
 mining contribute to other industries, and have thereby encouraged the 
 manufacture of jewelry and many works of art as well as of coin. Agricult- 
 ure, first hindered, has been greatly aided; all means of transportation 
 have been called into use in one place or another, and their facilities de- 
 veloped far in advance of the stage they would otherwise have reached 
 in the West. Education in mining, chemistry, and metallurgy, as well as 
 in the making of mining machinery, has been greatly stimulated. 
 
 The industry of gold and silver mining and reduction has called into 
 existence, in the West, volumes of laws and cases, covering the various kinds 
 of mining and mining claims, and controversies arising from the clashing 
 of opinions or misunderstandings concerning them. Local laws vary as do 
 local geographic conditions- Many camp laws and regulations were some- 
 what generalized and carried up to district, county, and even to state codes, 
 until the constitutions of most of the mining states have sections or 
 articles relating to mining. 
 
 Eegions containing extensive mining camps and, consequently, having 
 a considerable population were organized into small counties, while terri- 
 tory possessing little or no mining was later lumped into large counties. 
 Questions of national policy and conduct in the West have been hurried to 
 crises by the presence and development of the ores. International relations 
 have been strained by conditions arising, under the influence of the metals, 
 and consequent agreements have been entered into. 
 
 Early Spanish trade was encouraged and modified by the use of the gold 
 that the traders found. Local prices in mining regions rose, and through 
 their stimulating effect, commerce or prices, in all countries contributing 
 goods to the regions, responded; and, thus, the new metal aided greatly in 
 the commercial and industrial expansion, struggling for expression in the 
 middle of the last century. 
 
 Men's characters, under the feverish excitement of the early mining 
 days, were strengthened in the directions of independence of thought and 
 action, mutual helpfulness, business alertness and resourcefulness. Power 
 to resist extravagance and improvidence seems to have been weakened. De- 
 sire to wander, speculate, and gamble increased. Exuberance of life and 
 spirit, .joyousiiess and good feeling were developed. Former characters were 
 abnormally and unsymmetrically developed. Health was impair- 
 ed. Distinct types of character were found in the case of the speculator 
 and prospector. Business, society and literature of the West have been 
 colored markedly by the presence and abundance of the precious metals, 
 until social tone and the Westerner's attitude toward various institutions 
 is, in part, a response to the influence. World-wide social effects are found 
 
in the distributing and quickening influences of the miner's emigration,, in 
 the loss to society of. strength and restraint incident on mining life,, and 
 in the enlargement of knowledge and extension of vision felt in every 
 nation of the earth permeated by the subtle influence of the precious 
 metals. 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY