ern
part of the county is the basin of the Trinity River, and is
auriferous. From the county assessor's report for 1860, it is to be
inferred that there is not a quartz-mill or a mining-ditch in the
state. The county is very mountainous, and most of the mining is done
in rugged _canons_ along the Trinity River. The chief mining towns are
Weaverville, Cox's Bar, Big Bar, Arkansas Flat, Mooney's Flat and
Trinity Centre.

South of Siskiyou and east of Trinity lies Shasta county, which is on
an average forty miles wide from north to south and one hundred miles
long, reaching to the eastern border of the state. There is a rich
auriferous district about twenty miles square, in the vicinity of the
town of Shasta, in the south-western part of the county. The diggings
are mostly in the basins of Clear Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Rock Creek
and Salt Creek, all of which enter into the Sacramento. There are four
quartz-mills in the county, one at French Gulch, one at Middle Creek,
one at Muletown, and one at Old Diggings. The county has twenty-seven
mining ditches, with a joint length of one hundred and forty-one miles,
an average of five miles each. The chief mining towns are Shasta,
Horsetown, French Gulch, Muletown, Briggsville, Whiskey and Middletown.

_Plumas and Sierra._--South of the eastern part of Shasta county lies
Plumas, which is about seventy miles square. About one third of the
county, in the south-western part of it, comprising that portion
drained by the head waters of Feather River, is auriferous. It lies
high above the level of the sea, and the work of mining is interrupted
during a considerable portion of the winter, by cold, snow and ice.
Hydraulic and tunnel claims in deep hills, furnish a large portion of
the gold yield of the county. There are five quartz-mills, one at
Elizabethtown, one at Eureka Lake, and three at Jamison Creek. The
principal mining towns are Quincy, Jamison City, Indian Bar, Nelson's
Point and Poorman's Creek.

South of Plumas is Sierra county, which is fifty miles long from east
to west, and twenty miles wide from north to south. The North Fork of
the Yuba River runs through its centre, and the Middle Fork is its
southern boundary. Though small, it is one of the richest mining
counties of the state, and in proportion to the extent of its mining
ground, is much richer than any other county. All its territory is four
thousand feet above the sea level, at the lowest. Most of the mining is
d