Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1888-10-05
CALIFORNIA; GOLD.
HOW THE MINERS SWEATED AND
DIED FOR 1T $4,000.

A Lifetime of Blasted Hopes for Thou
sands Who Left the States Full of Elk.
pectancy-Plenty of Gold Left-Indi
cations.
Taken from 1850 to 1860 the great majority
of diggers did not, in my belief, average 81
per day for their work and time. There
was often SO much time used up before the
actual gold bearing earth could be worked
or washed. Men worked one, two, and some
times three years in digging bitches to get
water on their claims. Water is almost as
necessary for gold workings as is air for
human breathing. bitches had to be dug
canals would be the more appropriate name)
over 100 miles in length to tap the snow fed
streams in the highest Sierras. Digging up
there in places was of no avail There was
little to dig in, and the water was in places
brought in immense fumes, bolted to the
sides of precipices 200-feet from the valley
below. In river mining years were some
times spent in blasting races through quar-
ter of mile Of finty rock, and then, when
the river bed was finally laid bare, little gold
was found. In river mining certainly one
claim out of three proved total failure On
dry, upland surface diggings men spent
y
either for the promised ditch to be com
pleted, or waiting fos the winter rains. How
did they liver Perhaps by packing buckets
of dirt half mile to the nearest creek or
river and there washing it. Or by ''rocking
out" dollar or two a day from the oft
turned over gravel on some rivers banks.
And miserable, squalid life it was for thou
sands who had come out from the states full
Of the expectancy of returning home in five
years at least with ''pile," and marry the
girl left behind
But they stayed ten and fifteen and twenty
years in cabins which here would not be
deemed fit for stables, cooking for them
selves, washing for themselves, forgetting
what it was to sleep in clean sheets or any
other kind; living on tough beef, beans and
bacon, working like packhorses summer and
winter; getting yearly more gray and
grizzled and angular; looking year after
year ON the same gloomy, sterile, chaparral
covered hillside, their only recreation the
Sunday trip to the nearest store or camp for
their provisions, where they might OF might
not, but generally did, wind up with more
Or less of a drunk, aad then for two, three
or five miles over hill and down gulch
trudge home again. Little wonder they got
temporary relief from a lifetime of blasted
hopes-the only salve to apply to the old
longing for their eastern homes. These were
the men whose eastern relatives sometimes
thought strangely of because they did not
make or send home money. Most of them
now are buried and enriching the soil they
dug in. Many of them are in nameless and
unknown graves Many went insane, Some
times laft no A.
Bar" Then it would be reported that Smith
was acting queerly, and Smiths next tra,lsi-
ton would be to the county hospital and
from thence to once of CALIFORNIA; two insane
asylums.
Is there much gold yet in California?
Lots of it. Lots of it. though where YOU
must put q dollar and half in to get one
dollar out. Lots of it in places where, after
you dig certain depth, you meet too much
rock to blast and hoist out and water to
pump out. Like Springfield Flat in
Tuolumne county-a geological curiosity
a plain mile square, out of which all the
red pay dirt has in former years been taken
to depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving ex-
posed great knobs and ridges of reddish rock.
washed and worn by some great water power
untold ages ago into fantastic shapes. These
are all really loose powders from the size of
a small church down. They are of marble.
Break off piece and the fracture under the
yellowish red of the outside is as white as loaf
sugar. Rich gold, and plenty of it, has been
taken from Springfield Flat. 1t was worth
nearly $40 per ounce, when Tuolumne River
gold brought but SIT. But Springfield Flat
could never be bottomed on account of the
enormous powders SO strangely piled in
there and the water beside, though the mug
gets grew bigger as they worked down into
the crevices. 1t is on the ''bowlder range"
This is a remarkable underground geological
freak, running many miles in southern Cali
fornia, of great powders similarly piled on
each other, and in places, as at Vallecito,
where shafts were sunk in it, the bottoms
have tumbled out and revealed subterranean
streams running underneath.
There are ranges of low hills bordering the
San Joaquin valley in MERGED, Stanislaus
and adjoining counties. where Small sspros-
poets" of gold may be obtained There are
miles of these "washed gravel" mounds. But
save in rainy weather, when the water comes
right down on the spot where you want to
use it, there is little working these placers to
any profit. What with digging and carting
the dirt half mile or more to the river and
there washing it, and possibly being under
the necessity of pudding" it before you can
wash it, there is more than dollar spent in
getting a dollar out. Yet gold lies in those
hills-lots of it, could you get it out in a
lump. And there is many another deposit
locked up in CALIFORNIA; hills and mountains
which time may reveal, but to look for it
now is to look for the needle in an acre of
haystacks.
This side of the s'Roclies" has never been
''prospected" for gold so thoroughly as the
other. There nine-tenths of the first settlers
have been miners more or less. Whatever
their occupation, they have kept an eye open
for surface Indications" and pick and pan
handy to test gravel for gold whenever they
had leisure and water to wash it, AS a re-
suit, from Cariboo to Mexico scarce gulch
exists that white man has visited but that
has felt the good seeking miners pick. On
this side, and especially at the extreme east,
an idea prevails that because it is an older
settled country it can have no unknown min
eral deposits Few people here know how to
prospect or wash pan of dirt. Gold dust
may be in your door yard for ages and give
no sign of its presence, and many people
wouldn't know what it was if it did.-Pren-
tice Milford in New York Star.
Fighting His Own Image.
An amusing test of the difference of dispo-
sition in barnyard fowls may be made by
placing piece of looking glass against the
trunk of large tree and laying tyain of
corn in front of it. Some hens will discover
what they all take for new arrival with
mild curiosity and merely look at it intently,
perhaps peering around behind the tree, and
then walk quietly away. Others peck the
glass angrily and insiSt upon fighting, while
a few nervous females show much of the
same noisy excitement that seizes upon most
hens when they spy snake We tried the
valiant old autocrat of the farm yard with
this trick and he was at once reused to fury.
Dropping his head when some ten feet in
front of the glass he began the cautious ad-
vance by parallels, which every one familiar
with poultry has seen before a fight. But,
of course, he soon lost his enemy by moving
too far to one side. After Growing fiercely
and looking around uneasily for few mo-
ments he returned to the train of corn and
almost instantly saw the strange cock nearer
than before. More stealthy approach, an
other failure to keep sight of the foe and
greater excitement, and third time he
began to eat, only to be startled by the hos
tile presence nearer than ever.
At last he worked right up to the glass and