Our Silver Mountains

One of these monntain ranges, looking west to the snow-eapped Sierras, with their zones of black pines, and gazing at the glistening deserts on the east, spüt and torn with deep canons, pitted wjth the traces of volcanic disease, alike valuóles? to herder or farmer, has become farnous the world over., and has made the nation rich. Other ranges, still to the east, have wou a lesser fame and smaller wealth. Here in tliis waste and stricken land, and among these mountains, are cities, active populations and vast works; naturo gone mad in stony despair that woods nnd fields and smiling meadows are not; eivilization h'ving in spite of nature, and wholly given np day and night to a more insano toil, knowing no Sabbaths, no rest, no night. The exhaust steam from hundreds of engines waved its white banner in sunlight and starlight alike ; the respiration of a giant by day, the fluttering ghost of toil by night. These cities, with every appliance of modern science - with hotels, theaters, water-works, schools, gas mains, and every luxnry - have not sprung np here because of the beauty or eonvenience of the situation. There is no river, no sea, to bring commerce and the arts ; no springs of health, nor even-farms. These towns live and j grow on the most illnsive and unstable of foundations. They were built on a hope, and live on an expectation. Tlieir hopen have been realized in a measure past dreaming or expreesion. Their expi'ctations may collapse in a night, The very foundation beneath, the houses is shifty and unstable. The gas maius in i the strect bend and snap underground, for the very mountains groan and travail because of the greed of men. Bome day the town will sink into the grave that lies so deep beneath its streets, or the people will fleo away to more reasonable lands, leaving hotels, halls and dwellings empty in thu wilderness. All tliis - these cities, this science and enginery, this gigantic capital spent in construetions more singular, more com plieated and more efïective than any I maehinery of a like nature in the world - has but one excuse : the metal hid in j the heart of the mountains. These-men live out their works and daysfor a metal at once tho most universal, the most singular in its manifestution, and the most useful. These great engines and vast works are for the winning1 of a metal that swims in every gallon of sea water; that may hang invisible and dissolved in a glass of acid ; that becomes black at the merost glance of the sun ; that is now black, now white, now a mirror, and then a picture - a fit charm to ; wind about less stable charms, and then ! ! wedded to base metáis in menial duties. i Everywhere silver is found associated with the most eommon things - iron, copper, suíphlir, entimony and lead. It is scattered widely over the world, Í and is mined in Saxony, Bohemia, in Hungaryand Transylvania, atKonsberg in Norway, in Spain, in Mexico, along the Cordilleras in South America, and in parts of this country, notably in Nevada, California, Utah, Montana and Colorado. - Charlen Barnard, 'm Hnrper's Magazine for December.