The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-04-03
"POCKET-MINING." ]"
By |" Mark Twain.

In one little corner of California is found species of mining which Is sell dom or never mentioned in print It is called pocket-mining, and 1 am not
 aware that any of it is done outside of i that little corner, The gold is not evenly
 distributed through the surface dirt as
 ln ordinary placer mines, but 1t is col lected Tn little spots, and they are wide apart and exceedingly hard 10 find, but
 when you do find one you reap rich and sudden harvest. There are not now
 more than twenty pocket-miners in 1 that entire little region think know every one of them personally I have known one of them to hunt patiently i about the hillsiies for eight months
 without finding gold enough to make a i >nuif,boX, and his grocery bill running
 up relentlesSly all the time-and then have seen him find pocket and take
 ont oi Il Il thousand dollars in two dips
 of his shovel have seen him take
 ont three thousand dollar, in two hours.
 and 20 and pay up every cent of his in- i d15tSdneSs, then enter on dazzling i spree that finished the last of his treas
 ure before the night was gone, And i the next day he bought lis groceries on i credit as usual, and shouldered his pan
 and shovel and went oil to the hills i hunting pockets again happy and con i tent. This Is perhaps the most iascinat- i ing of all the different kinds of mining,
 and furnishes a very handsome percent | age of victims to the lunatic asylum 1 Honest toil and moderate gains in shops 1 and on farms have their virtues and ad-
 vantage- When man consents to
 seek for sudden riches he does So at his
 peril. No charge
 l Peeket-hunting k an ingenious pro
 cess. ! ou takea spadetu of earth from ] the hillside and put it in :, large pan and l dissolve and wash it gradually away i tlll nothing k left but teaspoonful
 ot fine sediment. Whatever gold was i ln that earth has remained, because, be- l ing tho heaviest, it has sought the bot i tom. Among the sediment you will find
 halt dozen shining particles no larger i than pln-heads, You are delighted
 ! ou move off to one side and wash an
 other pan. If you find gold again, you 1 move to one side further and wash third pan. If you find no gold this time i you are delighted again, because you i know you are on the right scent You i lay an imaginary plan shaped like a
 fan with its handle up the hill-for just
 where the end of the handle is, you ar
 gue that the rich deposit lies hidden
 whose vasrant grains of gold have es-
 capped, and been washed down the hill
 spreading farther and farther apart as i they wandered And so you proceed up i the hill washing the earth and narrow l ing your lines every time the absence of | lI in l. ,.I tl, side the spread of the fan and at last
 twenty yards up the hill, your lines have
 eonHersed to point-a single foot
 from that point you cannot find
 any gold Your breath comes short
 and quick, you are ieveriSh with eN-
 citement; the dinner-bell may ring
 its clappcr oil, you pay no attention;
 friends may die, weddings transpire
 houses burn down, they are nothing to
 you you sweat and dig and dclve with
 a frantic intcrcst-and all at once you
 strikel Up comes Il spadetul of earth
 and quartz that is all lovely with
 soiled humps and leaves and sprays of gold Sometimes that one spadctul is all-S1uu. Sometimes the nest contains $l0o0o and 1t takes you three or four
 days to get it all out. The pocket-min-
 CTS tell you of one nest that yielded S60,- 0Uo and two men exhausted it i'll two
 weeks, and then sold the ground for Sl0oOO to party who never got $30O
 out of 1t atterward.
 The hogs are good pockct-hunters. All the summer they root around among the bushes, and turn up a thousand lits tie piles of dirt, and then the miners wish
 for rain; for the rains beat upon 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. 1 One had 5000 in it and the other $S,-
 O0o The man could appreciate 1t, for he hadn't had cent for about year.
 In Tuolumne lived two miners who
 used to go to the neighboring village in 1 the afternoon and return at night with household supplies Part of the dis
 tance they travelled trail, and nearly i always sat down on great bowldcr that i lay besides the path In the course of 1 thirteen years they had worn that bowl 1 der tolerahly smoot, sitting on it. By
 and by two vagrant Mexicans came i along and occupied the seat. They be- i gan to amuse themselves by chipping
 of flakes from the bowlder with sledge 1 hammer They examined one of these
 flakes and found it rich with gold. The 1 bowlder paid them $500 atterward But i the aggravating circumstances was that i these Greascrs knew that there must l be more gold where that howlder came
 from and so they went banning up the
 hill and found what was probably the
 richest pocket that region has vet pro l luced It took three months to exhaust l it, and it yielded Sl20,00o The two i American miners who used to sit on i that bowlder are poor vet, and they take
 turns about in getting up early in the
 morning to curse those Mexicans--and
 when it comes down to pure ornamental 1 cursing the native American miner Is i gifted above the sons of men
 1 have dwelt at some length upon this
 matter of pocket-mining because 1t is 1 ;s ,l.