Down the Mother Lode | Page 4

preface to
"Roughing It" that there is a great deal of information in his work
which he regrets very much but which really could not be helped, as
"information seems to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar
of roses out of the otter"!
These stories make no such particular claim! They are merely historical
fragments of their everyday life, gathered from a passing generation
before they shall be finally lost. Each one is based upon truth.
Somewhere, sometime, some place, certain characters lived the scenes
and actions here described.
The title "Mother Lode" has been used in its broader sense as
exemplifying the source of all gold in California, and the life which
arose from it.
The mining engineer said: "The Mother Lode runs south from El
Dorado County to the lower boundary of Mariposa County. It stretches
past the towns of Sutter Creek, Jackson, San Andreas, Angel's Camp
and the road to Yosemite far down below Coulterville. The lode begins
suddenly and ends as suddenly, and though we have searched up and
down the state we have never been able to pick it up again."
"Has it any relation to the Comstock Lode?" was asked.
"None whatever. Curiously enough, in Nevada City and vicinity it
would appear that at one time in the earth's making, a great fissure
opened in forming California and a wedge of Nevada mining country
was pushed into it. North of there the California stratas begin again."
"But it was always my belief that these localities were on the Mother
Lode, as well as the Georgetown and Auburn country."
"Many persons are apparently under that impression, but the geological
surveys of the government place it in the exact location I have given

you."
The "Old Miner, '49er," said: "We hunted most all o' our lives, lookin'
for her! We called her the Mother Lode, because we thought that all the
gold in the state must a' come from her an' washed down the rivers onto
the bars where we found it. We thought she'd be pure gold, an' a
hundred feet wide an' go on, world without end. We looked, an' looked,
an' after quartz minin' come in, we dug an' dug, but we never found the
old girl exceptin' here an' there.
"Joe Dance, that old prospector that died last year, he lost his mind
lookin' for the big lode. Made some rich strikes in his day, Joe did, but
he never could stop to work 'em. He was always waitin' for the mother
of 'em all, he said, who'd put him on the road to the heart a' molten gold
in the middle a' the earth.
"We old fellows tramped all the way through the hills with only a burro
for company most a' the time, an' you'll ride down a broad paved way,
soon, in your automobile. You'll go in days, where it took us months,
an' some brainy young engineer will locate the old girl, most likely, in
new-fangled ways that were unknown in our time.
"Well, the world whirls fast, now-a-days. Guess they'll need all the
gold in the old girl's lap to keep on greasin' the machinery. I take off
my hat to this generation. I hope they'll find it!"
Hittell says: "The Mother Lode is one of the most extraordinary
metalliferous veins in the world. Gold-bearing lodes usually range only
five or six miles, but this can be traced for more than sixty. The rock is
a hard and white quartz, rich in very fine particles of gold, and the vein
varies in width from a foot to thirty feet.
"There are in some portions of its course side branches or companion
veins, as they are sometimes called, making the total width nearly one
hundred feet. Nor is the direction of the lode always in a straight line.
Though usually found within half a mile of what may be considered its
normal course, it is sometimes found as far as two or three miles from
it, and there are cases of other lodes (three, in all) entirely distinct,
which in some instances approach so close as to be confounded with
it."
There are numerous mines along the whole length of the lode, famous
for having yielded their millions. One quartz ledge is said to have
yielded for a long time, two-thirds gold. They say of the Morgan Mine,

at Carson's Creek near Melones, "It appeared to be rich beyond parallel.
On one occasion $110,000.00 worth of gold was thrown down at a
single blast."
Many expeditions were made in search of the fabled Great Lode but all
attempts were vain.
'The old spread-eagle judge said: "Yes, sir; the Mother Lode dips up in
a bit of a circle with no beginning and no end, in the western