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No story was too extravagant to command credence. Men who had never earned more than a dollar a day before they came to California were dissatisfied when they were here clearing twenty dollars, and they were always ready to start off on some expedition in search of distant diggings reputed to be rich. Although the miners of to-day have better ideas of the auriferous deposits than they had sixteen years ago, and no longer expect to dig up the pure gold by the shovelful, they are now, as they have been since the discovery of the mines, always prepared for migration to any new field of excitement.

10.-GOLD LAKE AND GOLD BLUFF.

In the spring of 1850 a story was circulated that gold was lying in heaps on the bank of Gold lake, a small body of water eastward of where Downieville now is. Thousands of men left good claims to join this rush, but after weeks or months they returned much poorer than they started. The next year witnessed a rush to Gold Bluff, on the ocean shore about latitude 41°.

The sea beating against a high auriferous hill had left a wide beach containing much gold, which was mixed with sand that was very rich in spots, but was shifted about under the influence of a heavy surf. A gentleman of much intelligence, secretary of a mining company which claimed a portion of the beach, examined the place and seriously wrote to his associates that each one would receive at least $43,000,000 if the sand proved to be only one-tenth as rich as that which he had examined.

Several other similar statements were made in corroboration. The mining population were wonderfully excited by these reports, and preparations were made for a large migration to the golden beach; but more precise information was soon published, and most of the adventurers who had started were disenchanted before the vessels in which they were to sail could get to sea.

11.—THE “TOM."

The construction of hundreds of ditches within three or four years after the successful experiment at Coyote Hill gave a great impulse to placer mining, and had much influence to change its character. Before the water had been carried in artificial channels to the tops or high upon the sides of the hills, nearly all the miners spent their summers in washing the dirt in the bars of the rivers and their winters in working the beds of gullies, which were converted into brooks during the rainy season. In the gullies the supply of pay-dirt was usually small, and the claims were exhausted in the course of a few weeks.

On the bars the water was below the level of the pay-dirt, and had to be dipped or pumped up by hand.

These circumstances were favorable to the use of the rocker; but the ditch brought the water to places where the dirt was far more abundant and could be obtained with more facility, though it was poorer in quality, and, therefore, the washing of a larger quantity would be necessary to yield an equal profit.

New modes of working and new implements must be introduced to accomplish the greater amount of work, and the tom and the sluice came rapidly into use. The tom had been employed for years in the placers of Georgia, and some Georgians had their sluices in Nevada county in the latter part of 1849, and in February of the following year a party at Gold Run, in that county, finding that the bed of the ravine did not give them enough fall, made a long board trough on the hill-side leading down to their tom, and the pay-dirt from the claim was thrown up to a board platform, and from that thrown up to the head of the trough, and the water carried the dirt down to the tom.

I am indebted for information on this point to B. P. Avery, esq.

The purpose of this trough was mainly to save the labor of carrying the dirt by hand from the claim to the tom; but the trough having been once built, its

value in washing gold was soon apparent. It was, however, the ditch that gave opportunities for the general introduction of the tom and sluice, and in most districts they were unheard of until late in 1850 or 1851.

The tom is a trough about twelve feet long, eight inches deep, fifteen inches wide at the head and thirty at the foot.

A riddle of sheet iron punched with holes half an inch in diameter forms the bottom of the tom at the lower end, so placed that all the water and their mud shall fall down through the holes of the riddle and none pass over the sides or end. The water falls from the riddle into a flat box with transverse cleets or riffles, and these are to catch the gold.

A stream of water runs constantly through the tom, into the head of which the pay-dirt is thrown by several men, while one throws out the stones too large to pass through the riddle, and throws back to the head of the tom the lumps of clay which reach the foot without being dissolved.

12.-THE SLUICE.

The tom was a great improvement on the rocker, but it was soon superseded by a still greater, the sluice, which is a board trough, from a hundred to a thousand feet long, with transverse cleets at the lower end to catch the gold. With a descent of one foot in twenty the water rushes through it like a torrent, bearing down large stones and tearing the lumps of clay to pieces. The miners, of whom a dozen or a score may work at one sluice, have little to do save to throw in the dirt and take out the gold.

Occasionally it may be necessary to throw out some stones, or to shovel the dirt along to prevent the sluice from choking, but these attentions cost relatively very little time. The sluice is the best device heretofore used for washing gold, and is supposed to be unsurpassable. It has been used here more extensively than elsewhere, although it has been introduced by men who have been in our own mines, into Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia, Transylvania, and many other countries.

The sluice, though an original invention here, had been previously invented in Brazil; but it was never brought to much excellence there nor used extensively, and no such implement was known in 1849 in the industry of gold mining.

At first the sluices were made short, and afterwards lengthened, until some were a mile long, the length being greater as the gold was finer; that is, if the surface of the earth in the direction of the sluice was favorable. There were many little variations in the form of the sluice, to suit different circumstances. The ground sluice is a mere ditch on a hill side or slope, and the miners dig up the bottom and dig down the banks, while the water carries away the clay and leaves the gold; but the dirt at the bottom of the ground sluice must afterwards be washed in a board sluice.

The ground sluice has been used to grade roads and to carry away snow from the streets of mining towns, as well as to wash gold.

In claims where many large stones were found in the pay-dirt, and had to be carried by the water through the board sluice, or where the sluice was to be used for a long period, they were paved with stones, because any wooden bottom was rapidly worn out. Sometimes the bed of a stream into which many sluices emptied was converted into a "tail sluice," which yielded a large revenue, with no labor save that of occasionally "cleaning up" or washing out the metal from the sand deposited in the crevices between the stones.

13.—PLACER LEADS TRACED TỔ QUARTZ.

The placer gold had originally been confined in rocky veins which were disintegrated by the action of chemical or mechanical forces, and the lighter

material was swept away by the water, while the heavier remained near its primeval position.

The gold found in the bars of large streams far from the mountains, after having been carried a long distance, is in small smooth particles, as though it had been ground fine and polished by long attrition.

In small gullies in the mountains the gold is usually coarse and rough, as if it had suffered little change after being freed from the quartz by which it was once surrounded.

In hundreds of instances the abundance of gold in a gully has been traced unmistakably to an auriferous quartz lode in the hill-side above it, and the placer miners, following streaks of loose gold, have been brought to the rocky source from which it came.

In this manner the Allisen mine and the Comstock lode, not to mention other less celebrated mines or veins, were found. Such discoveries were made in 1850, and in the following year capitalists in New York and London, anxious to get their share of the marvellous wealth of the Sierra Nevada, formed companies to work the quartz mines at Grass valley and at Mariposa.

Millions of dollars were invested in machinery, and superintendents, with the wildest ideas, were sent to erect mills and to take charge of the precious metals. All these ventures proved complete failures. In most instances the machinery was utterly useless, and the superintendents utterly incompetent.

The castings for the mills lay about the wharves of San Francisco for many years, objects of curiosity for experienced miners, and of ridicule for the general public.

In one mill the metal was to be caught in a course sieve, and in another the quartz was to be crushed by a rolling ball. The mismanagement was so gross and the losses so severe that foreign capitalists became very shy of California quartz mines, and the development of that branch of industry was much retarded.

14.—A GOLD-DREDGING MACHINE.

It was not, however, in quartz mining alone that ridiculous blunders were made. Large sums of money were expended in the eastern States by men who had never seen a placer mine, and had no correct idea of the nature of the gold deposits, in making machinery to take gold more expeditiously from the river beds and bars than could be done by hand. One enterprising New York company sent a dredging machine to dig the metal from the bottom of the Yuba river, never questioning whether that stream was deep enough in the summer to float such a machine, or whether the tough clay and gravel in its bed could be dug up by a dredger, and entirely ignorant of the fact that the gold is mostly in the crevices of the bed-rock, where the spoon and knife of the skilful and attentive miner would be necessary for cleaning out the richest pockets.

15.-DECREASE OF WAGES.

With the introduction of the sluice, the ditch, and the hydraulic process, it became customary to hire laborers. The pan and the rocker required every

man to be his own master.

In 1849 each miner worked for himself, or the exceptions were so few that they were almost unknown.

The method of working made it impossible for the employer to guard against the dishonesty of the servant, who could always make more in his own claim than any one could afford to give him. Men become servants usually because they have no capital, and cannot get into profitable employment without it; but there was no lack of profitable employment for the miner in 1849, nor did

he need any capital, even if he had it. But the sluice brought deep diggings, with large masses of pay-dirt, into demand, and the claims were held at high prices, so that their possession was in itself a capital.

There had been an abundance of rocker claims in 1849; but there were not enough good sluice claims three years later to supply one-third of the miners. The erection of a long sluice, the cutting of drains, often necessary to carry off the tailings, and the purchase of water from the ditch company, required capital, and the manner of cleaning up rendered it possible for the owner of a sluice to prevent his servants from stealing any considerable portion of his gold before it came to his possession. Thus it was that the custom of hiring miners for wages became common in the placer diggings.

In 1832 the wages were $6 or $7 per day; the next year about $5, since which time they have gradually fallen, until now they are from $2 to $3 50 per day; the skilful quartz miner commanding the latter sum.

16.-GROWTH OF THE QUARTZ INTEREST.

The development of the quartz mining interest of the State has been slow and steady, unlike the placer mining, which, rising suddenly to gigantic proportions, soon reached its culminating point, and then began to decline rapidly.

The placers had been discovered by miners who were searching for them, and who spent much time and labor in the. search; but in early years most of the richest auriferous lodes were found by men who were not looking for quartz.

Hunters, travellers, placer miners and road makers occasionally came, without thinking of it, upon valuable veins, which they immediately claimed, and proceeded to work or sell.

The first quartz miners in California were Mexicans, who knew how goldbearing rocks were reduced in their native country.

They pounded up the quartz in mortars, or, if not rich enough to pay for reduction in that way, they made an arrastra or little circular stone pavement in the centre of which stood a post. To an arm extending out from this was hitched a mule which dragged round a heavy piece of granite, between which and the pavement, the quartz was pulverized, and, when fine, the gold was caught with quicksilver and separated from the base matter by washing.

This process required neither capital nor skilled labor, nor delay, nor a number of laborers. The owner of the arrastra could dig out his own rock one day, and reduce it the next.

As a matter of profit he usually selected only the richest pieces to work in the arrastra, throwing aside those portions that would not yield at the rate of $75 or more per ton.

With experience in the observation of quartz, and a mode of working in which failure was almost impossible, these Mexicans frequently did very well.

17.—FAILURE IN QUARTZ.

Their success excited the envy of the Americans, who would purchase the claims at high prices, and tell the Mexicans to see the wonders that would be done by American enterprise

The common result was that a large and costly steam-mill was erected; a multitude of laborers were employed; they did not know how to select the rich from the poor quartz; the mill was so large that it could not be kept going at its full capacity without receiving all the poor as well as the rich rock accessible in the vein; the amalgamator did not understand his business; the rich rock in which the Mexicans had been at work was soon exhausted; the creditors who had loaned money for the erection of the mill brought suit to foreclose

their mortgage; the work stopped; the title of the property was insecure; and the people in the neighborhood said quartz mining was a very uncertain business. And so it is under that system of management; and that system, leading to failure, was followed in more than a hundred cases. Mills were built in places where only a little pocket of rich quartz had been found, and if the payquartz was abundant it was not properly selected; or, if selected, the amalgamation was intrusted to a man who knew nothing of the business, and the gold was lost.

Horace Greeley was near the truth when he said, "I am confident that fully three out of every four quartz mining enterprises have proved failures, or have at best achieved no positive success."*

And yet in nearly every case prudent and competent management would have secured success, perhaps on only a small scale, because in many instances the quantity of pay-rock was small. But the failure of three-fourths of the quartz mills built in early years did not prevent the continuous increase of mills, and of the yield of gold from quartz. When a miner found a vein yellow with gold, he could not turn his back on it because his neighbor's mill did not pay. Gradually more caution was used; competent miners and metallurgists became numerous, and the veins were carefully examined as to the quantity of pay-rock before mills, were built.

As the placers declined the miners were compelled to turn their attention to quartz, and prospecting for quartz became a regular business.

18.-IMPROVEMENT IN QUARTZ MINING.

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In the mode of pulverizing and reducing quartz comparatively few changes have been made. In some mills the same machinery and processes have been used without alteration or addition for ten years. There is, however, a general belief that the business has not been properly studied by any one, and it is certain that there is much difference of opinion in regard to the various important questions involved in the reduction of ores. The practice is not uniform either in regard to the fineness of pulverization, or the size and speed of the stamps, or the mode of amalgamation. Wood, as a material for the shafts of stamps, has given way to iron; the square form has been replaced by the cylindrical; and the stamps, instead of falling with a simple downward motion, now come down with a twist. The mortar into which the stamps fall is now always of iron, and the stamps stand in a straight line instead of forming a circle, as they did in some mills years ago.

Two of the main improvements in gold quartz mining have been in the concentration and the chlorination of sulphurets.

19. THE HYDRAULIC PROCESS.

The sluice, though perfect as a device for washing the dirt, was not the last invention in placer mining.

The shovel did not furnish earth to the sluice fast enough, and the wages of a dozen workmen must be saved if possible. In 1852, Edward E. Mattison, a native of Connecticut, invented the process of hydraulic mining, in which a stream of water was directed under a heavy pressure against a bank or hill-side containing placer gold, and the earth was torn down by the fluid and carried into the sluice to be washed; thus the expense of shovelling was entirely saved.

The man with the rocker might wash one cubic yard of earth in a day; with the tom he might average two yards; with the sluice four yards; and with the hydraulic and sluice together fifty or even a hundred yards.

* An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco, in the summer of 1859, by Horace Greeley, page 289.

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