been said that if three Americans meet to talk over an item of business,
the first thing they do is to organize."

"Finding themselves far from the legal traditions and restraints of the
settled East," said the report of the Public Land Commission of 1880,
"in a pathless wilderness, under the feverish excitement of an industry
as swift and full of chance as the throwing of dice, the adventurers of
1849 spontaneously instituted neighborhood or district codes of
regulation, which were simply meant to define and protect a brief
possessory ownership. The ravines and river bars which held the placer
gold were valueless for settlement or home-making, but were splendid
stakes to hold for a few short seasons and gamble with nature for wealth
or ruin.

"In the absence of State and Federal laws competent to meet the novel
industry, and with the inbred respect for equitable adjustments of
rights between man and man, the miners sought only to secure equitable
rights and protection from robbery by a simple agreement as to the
maximum size of a surface claim, trusting, with a well-founded
confidence, that no machinery was necessary to enforce their regulations
other than the swift, rough blows of public opinion. The gold-seekers
were not long in realizing that the source of the dust which had worked
its way into the sands and bars, and distributed its precious particles
over the bedrocks of rivers was derived from solid quartz veins, which
were thin sheets of mineral material inclosed in the foundation rocks of
the country. Still in advance of any enactments by legislature or
Congress, the common sense of the miners, which had proved strong enough
to govern with wisdom the ownership of placer mines, rose to meet the
question of lode claims and sheet-like veins of quartz, and provided
that a claim should consist of a certain horizontal block of the vein,