Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1888-09-15
CALIFORNIA; GOLD.
HOW THE MINERS sWEATED AND
DIED FOR IT 1s5o-60.

PSsepy ASAey Va oS~
cations
Taken from 1850 to 1850 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 flinty 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
years waiting for water" that is, waiting
either for the promised ditch to be com
pleted, or waiting fos the winter rains How
did they lve' Perhaps by packing buckets
of dirt half a mile TO the nearest creek or
river and there washing it. Or by rocking
outn 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 1t 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 or 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
drunk 1t was the only method of getting
temporary relief from lifetime of blasted
hopes-the only sslve 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 one was left, the only resident "on the
l 4 H. 3sk.. q. -:.l
was acting queerly, and Smiths next transi-
tion would be to the county hospital and
from thence to one of California's two insane
asylums.
Is there much gold yet in California;
Lots of it. Lots of it, though, where YOU
must put dollar and half in to get one
dollar out. Lots of it in places where, after
you dig a certain depth, you meet too much
rock TO blast and hoist out and water t.
pump out Like Springfield Flat in
. Tuolumne county-a geological curiosity
! | plain a mile square, out of which all tn,
b red pay dirt has in former years been taker
to depth OF ten or twelve feet, leaving ex
n posed great knobs and ridges of reddish rock
1 washed and worn by some great water powe
. untold ages ago into fantastic shapes. Thes
are all really loose powders from the size o
| a small church down. They are of marble
/. Break of piece and the fracture under tn
yellowish red Of the outside is as white as loa
sugar Rich gold, and plenty Of IL, has bee
taken from Springfield Flat 1t was wort
nearly $40 per ounce, when Tuolumne Rive
gold brought but sl7. But Springfield Fla
could never be bottomed on account of tn
enormous powders so strangely piled i
| = tbn -,ta hae; 10 -
gets grew bigger as they worked down int
the crevices 1t is on the ''bowlder range.
This is remarkable underground geologics
freak, running many miles In southern Cal
fornia, of great powders similarly piled Q
each other, and in places, as at Vallecit.
where shafts were sunk in 1t, the bottom
have tumbled out and revealed subterranea
streams running underneath.
There are ranges of low hills bordering Il
San Joaquin valley in Merced, Stanislal
and adjoining counties. where small ''pro
poets" Of gold may be obtained There a
miles of these washed gravel" mounds. b
a save in rainy weather, when the water com
right down on the spot where you want
use 1t, there is little working these placers
any profit. What with digging and Garth
the dirt half mile or more to the river al
there washing it, and possibly being und
the necessity of pudding" it before you CT
l. wash it, there is more than a dollar spent
getting dollar out. Yet gold lies in tho
G, hills-lots of it, could you get it out In
lump. And there is many another depo
locked up in Californias hills and mountai
which time may reveal, but to look for
now is to look for the needle in an acre
haystacks.
This side of the 'Rockies" has never be
''prospectedn for gold so thoroughly as
other There nine-tenths of the first settlt
have been miners more or less Whatey
their occupation, they have kept an eye op
for Surface Indications and a pick and p
handy to test gravel for gold whenever tn
had leisure and water to wash it. As
suit, from Cariboo to Mexico scarce gul
exists that a white man has visited but Il
. has felt the good seeking miners pick.
this side, and especially at the extreme ca
\, an idea prevails that because it is an OLE
settled country it can have no unknown m
eral deposits. Few people here know how
I prospect or wash pan Of dirt. Gold d
4, may be in your door yard for ages and G
no sign of its presence, and many peo
. ~ wouldn't know what it was if it did.-Pr
... tice Mulford in New York Star