The union Democrat., 1870-02-26
NUMBER 3s.
Mark Twaiur' ea Psekes Heating.


In one little corner of California ia found
species Of mining which is seldom or never
mentioned in print. 1t is called "pocket min
ing" and l am not aware that any of il 10
done outside Of that little corner. The gold
is not evenly distributed through the surface
dirt. as in ordinary placer mines, but is col
lected in little spots, and they are very wide
apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when
you do Ind one you reap o rich and sudden
harvest. There are not more than twenty
pocket miners in that entire little region.
think know every one Of them personally.
have known one Of them to hunt patiently
about the hill-sides every day for eight
months. without finding gold enossh to make
a snuff-box-his grocery bill running up re-
lentlessly all the time-and then l have seen
him find pocket and take out Of il q thou
sand dollars in two dips Of his shovel.
have seen him take out three thousand dollars
in two hours, and 60 and pay up every cent
of Indebtedness, and then enter on dazzling
spree that finished the last of his treasure be-
fore the night was gone. And the next dsv
he bought his groceries on credit as usual,
shouldered his pan and shovel and wont off
to the hills hunting pockets again, happy and
contented. This is, perhaps, the most iasc-
|
and furnishes handsome percentage Of vic
tins to the Lunatic Asylum. Honest toll and
moderate gains in shops and on farms have
their virtues and tLeir advantages. When
man consents to seek for sudden riches, he
does it at his peril. No charge.
| Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You
take spadeful of earth from the hillside and
put it in large pan, dissolve and wash il grad
ually away till nothing is left but teaspoon
full of fine sediment. Whatever gold Was in
that earth has remained, because, being tho
heaviest, it has sought the bottom. Among
the sediment you will find half dozen shin
ing particles. no larger than pin heads. You
are delighted. You move off to one side and
wash another pan. IL you fnd gold again,
you move to one side further, aud 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 imagin-
ary plan. shaped like fan, with its handles
up the hill-for Just where the handle is, yon
argue that the rich deposit lies hidden, whose
vagrant grains Of gold have ESCAPED and
washed down the hill, 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 the spread Of the fan;
and, at last twenty yards up the hill your
lines have converged to 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 bell
may ring Its clapper of. you pay NO attention;
friends may die, weddings trsnspire, houses
burn down, they are nothing to you; you
sweat, and dig. and delve with frantic inte-
rest-and all at once You strike il! Up comes
a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all love-
ly with soiled Jumps, and leaves, and sprays
of gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is sll
$500. Sometimes the nest contains $lO,-
600, and it takes you three or four days to
get it all out. The pocket miners tell Of one
nest that yielded sec, 200, and two men ex-
hausted it in two weeks, snd then sod the
! ground for $40, 900 to party who never got
$500 ont Of it afterward
| The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the
Summer they root around the bushes and
turn up thousand piles Of dirt, and then the
miners long for rain, for the rains beat up
these little piles and wash them down, and
expose the gold, possibly, right over pocket
Two pockets were found in this way BY the
same man in one day. One bad IS, 900 in it,
and the other $1,000. That man could ap-
preciate it, for he hadn't had cent for aboui
year.
In Tuolumne county lived two miners, who
used to 60 to the neighboring village in the
afternoon and return every night with
household supplies. Part of the distance
they trarersed a trail. and nearly always sat
down on great bowlder that lsy beside the
path. in the course of thirteen years they
had worn that bowlder tolerably smooth, set
ting upon it. By and by two Mexicans came
along and occupied the seat. They began to
amuse themselves by chipping of flakes from
the bowlder with q sledge hammer. They
examined one Of these flakes and found it
| rich with gold. That bowlder paid them
$500 afterward. But the aggravating cir
cumstarce was that these 'greasers" knew
| that there must be more gold where that
bowlder came from, and so they went pan
ming up the hill and found what was proba-
bly, the richest pocket that region has vet
produced. 1t took three months TO exhaust
it, and it yielded Sl2O, 900. The two Ameri
can miners who used to sit on the bovlder are
poor yet, and they take turn about getting
up early in the morning to curse those Mexi-
cans-and when il comes down to pure orna-
mental cursing, the native American miner
is gifted above the sons OF men.
have dwelt at some length upon this mat
ter of pocket mining. because it is subject
that is seldom referred to in print, and there
fore Judged that j: would have for the reader
that interest which naturally attaches to nov
elty.-Bufolo Express.
On Woon Tha