Mower County transcript., 1869-12-30


of a Prince of the blood royal. The exc
cutioncr oonfesses, protests his innocence,
is led out by two of the soldiers into the
courtyard, and two dvtonations Of argue
busies are heard.
That was On the night Of the 23d OF Feb
ruary, 1868
s"Pocket'' Mining.
From Mark Twain's "Around tho World.
In one little corner of California is found
/. species OF mining which is seldom or
never mentioned in print. 1t is called
"pockot mining" and am not aware that
any of it il done outside OF that little cor
ner. The gold is not evenly distributed
through the surface dirt, as in ordinary
placer mines, but is collected in little spots.
and they are very wide apart and exceed
ingly hard to find, but when you do find one
you reap a rich and sudden harvest. There
are not now mora than 20 pocket miners III
that entire little region. I think know
every one OF them personally. l have
known ono of them to hunt patiently about
the hi!Isides every day Tor months without
finding gold enough to make a snuif-boA-
his grocery bill running up relentlessly oil
the time-and then I have seen him find
a pocket and take ont of it a thousand dol
lar, in two dips Of his shovel. l have seen
him take out $4,000 i'll two hours, and go
and pay up every cent of his indebtness,
then enter on q dazzling spree that finished
the last of his treasure before the night was
gone. And the next day he bought his gro
ceries OH credit Us usual, and shouldered
his pan and shovel and went off to the
hills hunting pockets again happy and con-
tent. This is perhaps the most fascinating
of all the different kinds OF mining, and
furnishes very handsome percentage of
victims to the l,lnatic asylum. Honest toll
and moderate gains in shops AID on farms
have their virtues and their advantages
When man consents TO seek tor sudden
riches he does it at his peril. No charge.
You take Il spadeful of earth from the hill
side and put it in Il large tin pan and dis
solve and wash it gradually away Till MOTH
ing is left but {. teaspooniul OF fine sedi
ment. Whatever gold was in that earth
has remained, because, being the heaviest.
it has sought the bottom. Among the sedi-
mcnt you will find a half dozen shining
particles no larger than pin-heads. You
are delighted. You move off to one side
and wash another pan. If you find gol.l
again, you move to one side further, and
wash third PAN If you find no gold this
time, you are delighted again, because you
know you are on the right scent. You lay
an imaginary plan, shaped like q fan, with
its handle up the bill-for just where the
end of the handle is, you argue that the rich
deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains OF
gold have escaped and been washed down,
spreading farther and farther apart as
they wandered. And so you proceed up
the hill, washing the earth and narrowing
your lines every time the absence of gold
in the pan shows that you are outside OF
the fan and at last, 20 yards up the hill
your lines have corverged to u point-a
single foot from that point you cannot find
any gold. Your breath comes short and
quick, you are feverish with excitement
the dinner-bc)l may ring lis c}apper off, you
pay no attention friends may die, we'd
dings transpire, houses burn down, they
are nothing to you you sweat and dig and
delve with frantic intelest-anl oil at
once you strike it Up comes O spade full
Of earth and quartz that is all lovely with
soiled humps and leaves and sprays of gold.
Sometimes that one spadefnl is all-$500.
Sometimes the hest contains S10,O and
it takes you three or four days to get it all
out. The pocket-niuers tell Of one nest
that yielded SEQ, 600 and two men exhaust
ed it in Two weeks, and then sold the
ground for $4,000 to q party who never
got $500 out OF it afterward.
The hogs are good pocket hunters. All
the summer they root around the bushes,
and turn up thousand little piles of dirt,
and then the miners long tor the rains; for
the rains beat upon these little piles and
wash them down and expose the gold, DOS
sibly right over a pocket. Two pockets
were found in this way by the same mau in
one day. One had $4,000 in it and the
other $1,000. That man could appreciate
it, for he hadn't had a cent for about a year.
In Tuolumne liyed two miners who used
to go to the neighboring village in the Of
hold supplies. Part OF the distance they
traversed trail, and nearly always sat
down to rest on a great boulder that lay
beside the path. In the course of thirteen
years they had worn that boulder tolerably
smooth. sitting ONT. BY and by TWO vagrant
Mexicans came along and occupied the seat.
They began to amuse themselves by chip
ping off fakes from the boulder with
sledge hammer. They examined one of
these flakes and found it,rich with gold.
That boulder paid them $500 afterward
But the aggravating circumstance was that
these "Greasers" knew that there must be
more gold where that boulder came from,
and SO they went panning up the hill and
found what was probably the richest pock-
ct that region has yet produced. 1t took
three months to exhaust it, and it yielded
$4,000. The two American miners who
used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and
they take turn about in getting up early in
the morning to curse those Mexicans-and
then it comes down to pure ornamental
wheing, the native American is gifted above
turssons of men.