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Show 564 WESTERN WILDS. in nature how many chances in her vast laboratory may lessen the proportion a little; then add the fact that silver will combine with scores of minerals, and you will plainly see that its presence in paying quantities is the accident of an accident, and that one crevice may be full of rich ore, and another but a few rods away too poor to work. You will see, too, that a man is not necessarily rich because he owns a silver mine, and understand why it is that so many mines, undoubt-edly true fissures, are not worked. I believe I can go to the western part of Utah and buy a known true- fissure vein, two or three feet wide and full of ore, for a hundred dollars. But the ore is low- grade galena, wood and water are scarce in the vicinity, and there is no railroad. Thus it often happens that a mine of no value becomes valuable by improved transportation or the discovery of coal near by. At the depth of fifty feet we find ourselves in a crevice with de-fined walls, containing some mineral ; we go twenty- five feet further, and the crevice is perceptibly wider, with an occasional " selvage " between the vein matter and the wall, and sometimes " slickensides" patches smooth as polished glass, supposed to have been caused by the friction of moving walls in the period of fracture. At a hundred feet in depth we are satisfied we have a good mine, and begin to take out ore enough nearly to pay expenses. The enterprise has cost us some $ 1500, and we think enough of it to want our title perfected. We recorded the location in the District Recorder's books soon after we put up the notice, and have done more than the amount of work the district law requires; so our next step is to apply for a United States patent, and from this on we must comply strictly with the Law of Congress, approved May 10, 1872. We first apply to the Surveyor- General of the State or Territory, paying a fee of twenty- five dollars. We must, if the question is raised, prove our citizenship or that we have filed a declaration of intention to become citizens. The proof, however, is not made very onerous, our own affidavits generally being sufficient. A corporation need only file its certificate as in other cases. We also file proof from the Dis-trict Recorder that we located and recorded as claimed, and satisfy the official that we have done work on our claim to the value of $ 500. The Surveyor- General then, in person or by deputy, surveys and maps out for us fifteen hundred feet along the lode, and one hundred and fifty feet on each side of it, unless our claim be in Boulder, Gilpin, Clear Creek, or Park counties, Colorado. In these four old counties the locator is limited to seventy- five feet on each side ; so a claim there covers but half as much surface as elsewhere. The law strictly pro- |
