one in hydraulic and tunnel claims in deep hills. Near the centre of
the county is a mountain called the Downieville Butte, or the Yuba
Butte, eight thousand eight hundred and forty-six feet high, on the
sides of which are found some rich quartz leads. In 1859 there were
eleven quartz-mills in Sierra county, of which seven are at the Butte,
two at Downieville, one at the Mountain House, and one at Sierra City.
The principal mining towns are Downieville, Monte Cristo, Pine Grove,
St. Louis, La Porte, Poker Flat, Eureka City, Forest City, Alleghany
Town, and Cox's Bar. One of the most remarkable features of the placers
of the state, is the blue lead, which was first discovered in Sierra
county, and has been more thoroughly examined there than elsewhere. The
"blue lead" is a stratum of blue clay very rich in gold. It is found
deep under other strata. The general opinion is, that the blue lead
occupies the bed of a large antediluvian river, which ran parallel with
the Sacramento and about sixty miles eastward of it. It has been traced
twenty miles or more, passing near Monte Cristo, Alleghany Town, Forest
City, Chip's Flat and Zion Hill. Mr. C. S. Capp wrote thus to the San
Francisco _Bulletin_:

"This is not one of the many petty leads, an inch or two in breadth and
thickness, which, after being traced a few hundred feet, end as
suddenly and mysteriously as they commence; but it is evidently the bed
of some ancient river. It is often hundreds of feet in width, and
extends for miles and miles, a thousand feet below the summits of high
mountains, and entirely through them. Now it crops out where the deep
channels of some of the rivers and ravines of the present day have cut
it asunder; and then, hidden beneath the rocks and strata above it, it
only emerges again miles and miles away. Wherever its continuity has
been destroyed, the river or gulch which has washed a portion of it
away, was found to be immensely rich for some distance below, and the
materials of which the lead is composed are found with the gold in the
bed of the stream. It is evidently the bed of some ancient stream,
because it is walled in by steep banks of hard bed-rock, precisely like
the banks of rivers and ravines in which water now runs, and because it
is composed of clay which is evidently a sedimentary deposit, and of
pebbles of black and white quartz, which could only be rounded and
polished as they are by the long continued action of swiftly running