labor, used a stream of water under pressure. For this purpose water was conveyed to the claim in rawhide hose and discharged through a wooden nozzle against a bank. Torn by the water, the earth was carried into the sluices and shovelling was thus avoided. A large saving in the cost of mining was effected, a greater amount of material being washed in a shorter time. This was the first step in hydraulic mining.

Canvas Hose.- Mattison's experiments were imme diately appreciated and his method adopted. Hose made of canvas was widely used, the canvas being strengthened by netting and bound with rope.

Iron Pipe.-Towards the end of 1853 pipes made of light sheet iron were introduced as a substitute for canvas hose. The first iron pipe was used by R. R. Craig, on American Hill, Nevada County. It consisted of about one hundred feet of stove-pipe. In 1856 a firm in San Francisco commenced the manufacture of wrought iron pipes for hydraulic mining, and during the years 1856 and 1857 a large sheet-iron pipe forty inches in diameter was laid for a water-conduit across a depression at Timbuctoo, in Yuba County.

Inverted Siphons. In 1869 a wire suspension bridge across the Trinity River, near McGillivray's, was constructed by Joseph McGillivray. This bridge supported a fifteen-inch wrought-iron pipe which conducted water from a ditch situated at an elevation of about two hundred and forty feet above the bridge. The length of the pipe was nineteen hundred and eighty feet, and the outlet was one hundred and thirty-three feet below the level of the inlet. In the fall of 1870 the Spring Valley Company, of Cherokee, Butte County, laid the first large "inverted siphon " in the mining regions. The siphon was made of wrought iron, riveted. It was thirty inches in diameter and fourteen thousand feet long, crossing a depression of nearly one thousand feet.

Improved Nozzles.-With the substitution of sheet

iron pipe for canvas it was found necessary to retain a short piece of canvas hose in order to obtain a flexible discharge piece. This was inconvenient and troublesome. The ingenuity of miners was aroused, and the result was the introduction of a nozzle called the Goose Neck, which was a flexible iron joint formed by two elbows working one over the other.

The first Rifle. The radius-plate, or rifle, was patented by C. F. Macy in 1863, and was subsequently introduced and used in all metallic jointed discharge pipes which had elbows.

The next improved hydraulic nozzle was invented by the Messrs. R. R. & J. Craig, of Nevada County. It was called Craig's Globe Monitor. This nozzle proved a success and was adopted at once by the miners. Subsequently the Hydraulic Knuckle-joint and Nozzle was invented by H. Fisher, of Nevada County, and took the place of the Craig machine. In 1870 Mr. Richard Hoskins obtained a patent for his Dictator, a one-jointed machine, having an elastic packing in the joints instead of the metallic faces. A few months later Hoskins patented the noz zle called the Little Giant, which was an improvement on the Dictator, and has to a great extent superseded the older inventions.

Deflector. The next advance in hydraulic discharge machines was an attachment to the nozzle called the "deflector," the invention of Mr. H. C. Perkins, and patented May, 1876. This is a short piece of pipe, about an inch larger in diameter than the nozzle, attached to the latter by a gimbal joint and operated with a lever. This improvement has been followed by the invention of the Hoskins Deflector. This latter is a flexible semi-ball joint between the end of the discharge pipe and the nozzle. It is operated by a lever.

In 1852 and 1853 placer-mining was at the height of its prosperity. Labor was well paid, and employment was easily obtained by all who sought it. At this period

there still remained a few of the rich surface deposits which had formerly been so numerous.

First Drift-Mining. The first extensive drift-mining in the old river channels was cominenced in 1852 at Forest Hill, Placer County; though in 1851 a surface claim at Brown's Bar, on the Middle Fork of the American River, was drifted out by Joseph McGillivray.

In 1854, in consequence of the reported discovery of gold-diggings in Kern County, California, numbers of miners flocked to the southern part of the State, only to find there poor deposits of a very limited area.

Table Mountain.-Some miners engaged in sinking a shaft near Jamestown, Tuolumne County, where the gravel had been washed away, discovered gold at Table Mountain. Simultaneously other miners traced a seam of gravel containing gold along its sides, and it was found that this seam ran into a deep, rocky channel lying under the mountain. The presence of water in great quantity frustrated all attempts to work this deposit.

Deep Tunnels. Further explorations developed the existence of channels running under this ridge, which were found to have a westerly course and to pitch deeper as work advanced. After several ineffectual attempts to drain the deposit, the gravel, which proved later to be exceedingly rich, was finally bottomed by a deep tunnel. "Ten square feet, superficial measurement, yielded $100,000, and a pint of gravel not unfrequently contained a pound of gold.” *

An impetus to deep gravel mining or drifting was given by these developments, and extensive explorations of a similar character were undertaken subsequently in other parts of the State.

During the years 1856 and 1857 river, bar, and gulch. mining were less productive, but quartz and ditch interests became more valuable.

The Frazer River excitement of 1853 caused a stam

* See Ross Browne, "Reports on the Mineral Resources of the United States," 1867.

52 HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF PLACER-MINING.

pede of miners and speculators to British Columbia. The subsequent developments of these gravel fields occasioned loss to those who had been attracted thither by the desire of gain.

In 1859-60 came the exodus to the Comstock, and in 1862 the rush to Idaho followed.

Hydraulic mining gained ground steadily from 1852 to 1865. As the river bars and surface diggings one after another were exhausted, the working of the old river deposits by the hydraulic process became a necessity. At the present time it is by this modern method of mining that the bulk of the gold of this State is produced, and in this business nearly $100,000,000 of capital are invested.

The hydraulic process is now carried on upon such a gigantic scale and to so vast an extent as to require the assistance of the science of hydraulics and engineering. Heretofore, apart from the construction of ditches and tunnels necessary for washing the gold-bearing dirt, engineers have had but little to do with the management of hydraulic claims.

The primitive placer-mining of 1852 to 1865 has passed into history. Forty-inch wrought-iron pipes have been substituted for canvas hose and stove-pipe, and with the replacing of one-inch streams by a mass of water discharged through nine-inch nozzles under 450-foot pressure the last remnants of the early methods disappeared.

CHAPTER III.

GENERAL TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF CALIFORNIA.*

THE topographical features of central California, as demonstrated by the explorations of the State Geological Survey, are found to be exceedingly simple. Four equidistant parallel lines can be used in conveying a general idea of the physical geography of the State.

The Three great Belts of California.-A “main axial line," whose course would be N. 31° W., passing through the culminating peaks of the Sierra Nevada for a distance of nearly five hundred miles, can be assumed as the eastern boundary of the gold region. A second parallel, drawn fifty miles west of the "main axial line," will skirt the west base of the Sierra Nevada, along the edge of the foot-hills, from Red Bluff to Visalia. A third parallel, run equi-distant from the second, will follow very closely the eastern edge of the Coast Ranges from the neighborhood of Clear Lake to that of Kern Lake, a distance of over three hundred miles. A fourth equi-distant parallel will represent, as nearly as possible, the coast line of the Pacific, the western base of the Coast Ranges. These parallels divide the central portion of the State between Red Bluff (about lat. 40° N.) and Fort Tejon (about lat. 35° N.) into three belts-viz., the Sierra, the Great Valley of California, and the Coast Ranges.

This arrangement of the physical features holds good for a length of four hundred miles in the direction of the "main axial line." This division of California is the largest and by far the most important, embracing almost

* See vol. i., "Geological Survey of California," and Whitney's Auriferous Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California," which are the principal authorities for this chapter.