The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1870-01-05
Mark TWnin On Mining.


"poCKET "MISING.
In one little corner of California is foun
n species of mining which is seldom or neve
mentioned in print. Il is called "pocket
MINING" and am not aware that any
it is done outside of that little corner. Tn
gold is not evenly distributed through thu
surface dirt, as in ordinary placer mines
but is collected in little spots, and they ar
very wide apart and exceedingly hard t
find. but when you do find one you reap
rich and sudden harvest. There are no
now more than twenty pocket-miners in tina
entire little region. think know ever.
one of them personally. have known ONT
of them to hunt patiently about the hill
sides every day for eight months withou
finding gold enough to make snutt-box,-
his grocery bill running up relentleSsl ~ al
the time-and then | have seen him find
pocket and take out Of it O thousand dol
| lars in two dips of his shovel.
have seen him take out $4,000 in two
hours, and 90 away and pay mp every cent
of his Indebtedness, then enter upon daz'
cling spree that finished the last Of his
treasure before the night was gone. And
the next day he bought his groceries on
credit as usual, and shouldered his pan and
shovel and went off to the hills hunting
pockets again, happy and content. This Is
| perhaps the most fascinating OF all tue uit-
ferent kinds of mining, and furnishes a
handsome per centagc OF victims to tue lu-
matte ASYLUM. Honest toll and moderate
gains in shops and on farms have tier
| virtues and their advantages. hen nun
consents to seek for sudden riches he does
it at his peril. No charged
Pocket hunting is an ingenious process.
You take spadeful of earth from the hill
side aud put it in a large tin pan, and dis
solve and wash ii gradually away, till no.
thug Is left but teaspoonlul OF fine sedl-
mcnt. Whatever gold was III that earth has
remained, because, being the heaviest, it
sought the bottom. Among the sediment
you will find half dozen shining particles
10 larger than pin-heads. You arc de-
lighted. You move of to one side further,
and wash o third pan. If you find no gold
this time, you are delighted again, because
YOU know you gre on the right scent. You
lay en- imaginary pan. shaped like fan,
with its handle up the hill-for just where
the end Of the handle is, you argue that the
rich deposits hidden, whose vagrant grains
OF gold have escaped and been washed
down the hill, spreading further and fur
Their 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 the spread Of the fan
and at last, twenty yards up the hill, your
lines have conycrgcd into point-a single
foot from that point you cannot find any
gold. Your breath comes short ard quick,
you arc fcverish with excitement; the din
ncr-bcll may ring its clipper off, you pay
10 attention friends may die, weddings
tsanspirc, houses burn down, they are
nothing to you; you sweat and dig and
dcIye with frantic intcreSt--and all at
once you strike it Up comes 4 spadoful
of earth and quartz that is all lovely with
soiled Jumps and leaves and sprays OF gold
Sometimes that one spadeful is all-$5G0
Sometimes the nest contains SIC, 1000, and it
takes you three or four days TO get it all
out. The pocket miners tell Of one nest that
yielded $50, 900, and two men exhausted il
in two weeks, and then sold the ground for
$4,000 to Il party who never got $500 out
OF it atterward.
The hogs are good pocket-huntere. All
the summer they root around the bushes,
and turn up thousand little piles of dirt,
and then the miners long for the rains for
the rains beat upon these little piles and
wash them down and expose the gold, pos
s!bly right over Il pocket. Two pockets
were found in this way by the same man
in one day. One had $4,000 in it, and the
other S., 900. That man could appreciate
it, for he hadn't had cent in about q
year.
In Tuolumne lived two miners who used
to 20 to the neighboring village in the after
noon, and return every night with house
hold supplies. Part of the distance they
traversed u 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 tolcrably
smooth, sitting On it. By-Hnd-byc two Va,
grant Mcxicans came along and occupied
the seat. They began to amuse themselves
by chipping of fakes from the boulder
with sledge-hammer. They examined
one Of these flakes and found it rich witt
gold. That boulder paid them $500 after.
ward. But the aggravatins circumstance
WAC tiiut tuSoS SiShESIo hdSh tuSlS
must be more gold whore that boulder came
from, and so they went panning up the hill
and found what was probably the riches:
pocket that region has yet produced !,
took three months to exhaust it, and il
yielded $780, 900.
The two American miners who used to
sit on the boulder are poor yet, aud they
take turn about i'll getting up early
in the morning to curse those Mexicans
and when it comes down to pure ornamental
cursing, the native American miner is gifted
above the SONS of men.
I have dwelt at some length upon this
matter of pocket-minine because it is a
subject that is seldom referred to in print
and therefore / judged that it would have
for the reader that interest which naturally
attaches to novelty.