Quartz has been called the mother of gold, and certainly quartz and gold are inseparably connected to-day. As to where gold may be found the best reply that can be given is in the words of the old miner, who, when asked that question, said: "Where it be's; there it be's," and then added, "and there ben't I." Although most prospectors travel alone from sheer necessity, there can be no doubt that three or four men forming a party and working together have the advantage. They can do their work cheaper, more thoroughly, and more surely. By co-operating they may carry a more complete outfit. Should any accident happen help is at hand, whereas the solitary wanderer often dies as the result of some accident that would have been trivial had he had a companion. Three or four claims may be worked in conjunction with one another at far less proportionate expense than a single one could. Nature's preparation for the reception of great ore deposits is somewhat as follows: The crust of the earth is prepared for the reception of the metals by great outbursts of igneous or melted rocks; the metals themselves being carried in suspension in the heated water that everywhere traverses the strata. These metals are deposited in the veins as soon as the waters begin to cool, and the pressure to which they were subjected from deep down in the earth's crust is removed. A great mineral country is usually marked by the outcrops of the veins being persistent in their courses and traceable for many miles, though very probably many breaks may occur in these outcrops. The rocks associated with great ore bodies are lime, porphyry, granite, shales, slates, quartzites, and diabase. Fragments of mineral and gangue, known to the miners as float, may be littered over the hills and encumber the courses of the stream. A central line of eruption may often be traced by masses of altered rock, and beds of lava or other volcanic products. We find the granite has been melted and the limestone has acquired magnesia, and thus become dolomatized. Whenever a heavy deposit of pyrites, or mundic, is found mineral probably exists below. The cubes of pyrite are not always valueless, they may contain gold in addition to the iron and sulphur. When the pyrites decay under the influence of the weather, and leave the quartz honeycombed, these cavities often contain concentrated gold; for which reason you often get a higher assay from the surface than from any point lower down in the vein. In sinking the shaft soon gets below this altered quartz and the ores are then combined with sulphur. They have become sulphides, and are harder to treat. The prospector should therefore act very cautiously when trying to develop a mine with a small capital behind him; because, although the first ore may be adapted for stamping, he may find, before he has gone down fifty feet, that it can only be treated in a smelter, and that all the money he has put into crushing apparatus is wasted.