There are nine mineral districts (_minerales_) which are now recognized in California: their names are San Antonio, Zule, Santa Anna, Muleje, Triumpho, Las Virgenes, El Valle Perdido, Los Flores, Cuecuhilas. There is a range traversing from north to south for the space of forty leagues in that territory, which contains also a multitude of veins which have not been explored. In all these minerals abound, but the irregular and inconstant labor of some of the mines does not permit us to consider them as in action. Explorations of some mines of gold and silver have been made in California, but they remain in the same state with the other _minerales_. One and another have been worked superficially, but their possessors abandoned them when they presented any obstacle, which made the working more costly, so that it is no exaggeration to say they all are now abandoned. In a country almost a wilderness (_desierto_), where the want of conveniences in exploration of the mines failed to engender the stimulus of acquiring and preserving the proprietorship of the discoveries,[85] and where, with the same facility with which they abandon one known vein, they proceed to work another new vein--in a country where the great part of the inhabitants might well be considered as tribes that have only reached the first grades of civilization, rather than organized societies, it is not strange that there is a want of mineral recognizances where only the mines at which the metals are easily procured, and not costly in extracting from the ore, are worked. [85] The proprietorship of mines in Mexico is acquired by proof being made to the mining court of discovery and actual working; and is again lost by an abandonment of four months; there is no other source of title to mineral lands. Notwithstanding that which has been said, there are various residents of the mineral districts referred to that extract gold and silver sufficient to cover their commercial transactions, to pay their laborers and the salaries of their operatives, to procure certain necessaries, and to enjoy certain luxuries which many of their fellow-citizens do not enjoy. To ascertain to what value these extractions of metals ascend is extremely difficult for the want of data with which to aid any calculation. The benefiting (extracting the metals from the ores) is no less imperfectly done than the labor of the mines. There are no haciendas for benefiting; many persons that engage themselves in mining speculations have in that territory one, two, and even five horse-mills, with which they grind the metal; this they mix with quicksilver and salt--imitating the process by the _patio_--in proportion of 50 pounds of the first and 75 of the second to 625 (25 arobas) of metal, and, proceeding by means of fusion in bad ovens, they obtain silver. Some others obtain it by means of vases of refining with the aid of lead.