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Show THE CENTENNIAL 8TA TE. 485 run together, like " leaf lard," as it were, and, according to its purity, or the chemicals mixed in it, such " nibs" are known as chloride, horn silver, ruby silver, azurite or tetrahedrite. A change of one- tenth of one per cent, in the chemical will sometimes change entirely the color and texture of the ore. " Black- jack," or zinc blende, is a very troub-lesome combination. Chunks of it are found, which assay five hun-dred ounces of silver per ton, but its reduction is very difficult and expensive. Azurite is a combination of silver with blue carbonates of copper, and yields all the way from three hundred to a thousand ounces of silver per ton Every year lower grade ores can be profita-bly worked, with the improvement in methods and cheapening of transportation. When this district was opened, in 1864, ore must yield a hundred ounces per ton to be worth working; now thirty-ounce ore can be profitably treated. The laws as to title in silver mines are now pretty well settled; but no law that Congress or Territorial Legislature could pass has prevented men who stayed on the ground from getting title to thousands of " feet" in mines. The laws also say something about the preemptor being of voting age ; but by " unwritten law" any able- bodied lad of sixteen and upward, who can do the required work, can preempt sufficiently to sell out to an adult, who can perfect the title. A shrewd lawyer, of course, might pick flaws in the inchoate title ; but it wrould be unhealthy to do so if the boy had any friends. Various laws, lately enacted, give title in width also, allowing a hundred and fifty feet on each side of a claim for working purposes. But each county is allowed to limit this by popular vote, and many counties do. Thus it will be seen that origi-nal location, preemption and sale, and each successive transfer, being recorded in the old district records, now legalized as part of the county records, these titles are just as susceptible of proof as those of a farm. Over the sub- range which bounds Georgetown on the north- west, through a lofty region of forests, parks and mountain meads, and over another more gentle range, brings us to North Clear Creek Cafion, where gold was first discovered. The gold placers have long since yielded in prominence to silver lodes. On the old Gregory claim is now part of Central City, the historic town of Colorado. There sprung up a rattling " city" of logs and rough- sawed plank during the week that. Horace Greeley was inspecting the mines in 1859; and there, for a time, was the territorial capital, until the sudden and amazing growth of Denver overshadowed all the mountain towns, and absorbed all the Federal fat things. Mining in the old Gregory dis- |
