The Republican journal., 1871-01-05
MARK TWAIN ON "POCKET" MINING

MARK TWAIN ON "PocKET" MINING.
In one corner of California is found q
species of mining which is seldom Or never
mentioned in print. 1t is called spocket'
mining, and l am not aware that any of it is
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 find one you reap rich and sudden
harvest. There are not now more than
twenty pocket miners in that little region.
think l know every one of them personally
| have known one of them to hunt patiently
about the hillsides every day for eight months
without finding gold enough to make snuff
box-his grocery bill running up relentlessly
all the time-and then have seen him find a
pocket and take out of it a thousand dollars
in two dips Of his shovel.
/ have seen him take out $4,000 in two
hours, and go away and pay up every cent of
his Indebtedness, then enter upon dazzling
spree that finished the last of his treasure be-
fore the night was gone. And the next day
he bought his groceries on credit rs usual
and shouldered his pan and shovel and went
off to the hills hunting pockets again, happy
and content. This is, perhaps, the most tas-
cinating of all the different kinds of mining,
and furnishes handsome per centage OF
victims to the lunatic asylum. Honest toll
and moderate gains in shops and on farms
have their virtues and their 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 hill
side and put it in large tin pan, and dis
solve and wash it gradually away, till moth
ing is left but a teaspoonful Of fine sediment
Whatever gold was in the earth has remain
ed, because being the heaviest, it sought the
bottom. Among the sediment you will find
than pin heads. You are delighted. You
move off to one side further, and wash q
third pan. If you find no gold this time, you
are delighted again, because yon know you
are on the right scent. You lay an imagin-
ary pan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up
the 'hill-for just where the handle is, you
argue that the 6ch deposit is hidden whose
vagrant grains of gold have escaped and
been washed down the hill, spreading further
and further 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, 30 yards up the hill, your lines
have converged into 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 off; you pay no atten-
ton; friends may die, weddings transpire,
houses burn down, they are nothing to you !;
you sweat and dig and delve with frantic
trily N
comes a spadeful Of earth and quartz that is
SPRAYS of gold. Sometimes that one spade
full is all-S5O0. Sometimes the next con-
tains $40 900, and it takes you three or four
days to get it all out. The pocket miners
tell of one nest that yielded 500, 900, and two
men exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold
the ground for $4,000 to party who never
GOT $500 out of it afterwards
The hogs are good pocket hunters. All
the summer they root around the bushes, and
turn up Il housand little piles Of dirt, and
then the miners long for the rains; for the
rains beat upon these little piles and wash
! tho,n down and oppose the gold, possibly
right over a pocket Two pockets were
found in this way by the same man in one
day. One had $1,000 in it, and the other
$4,000. That man could appreciate it, for
tlC LdlU ulu Il CcLI III aUOuJ IL Nc;tl
In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to
go to tho cighboring village in the afternoon,
and return every night with household sup
plies. Part of the distance they traversed q
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 perfectly smooth, sitting on it.
By-and-by two vagrant Mexicans came along
and occupied the seat. They began to amuse
themselves by chipping off flakes from the
boulder with sledge-hammer They exam
ined one of these flakes and found it rich
with gold. The boulder paid them $500 af
terwards. But the aggravating circumstance
was that these 'greasers" knew 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 pocket
that region has yet produced 1t took three
months to exhaust it, and it yielded $l20, 900.
The two American miners who used to sit
on the boulder are poor yet and they take
turns in 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.
| have dwelt at some length upon the mat
ter of pocket-mining, because it is a subject
that is seldom referred to in print, and there
fore l Judged that it would have for the
reader that interest which naturally attaches
to novelty.