The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1888-10-05
a GOLD MINERS STORIES.
"reminiscences of thu Days Of - and
Afterwarsl.

WILL WtNeV'S SVOhleos
"reminiscences of thu Days Of - and
| Afterwart.
Especial Correspondence.]
BosToN, Dec N.-Indian Bar, on the
Tuolumne, in 1857 was supposed to be worked
out. Only bank face, fronting the river,
of red dirt fifteen or twenty feet In height
and great bowlder piles as flung by the miners
remained. Out Of hundreds but. Ave or six
Of the most reckless and ''shiftless' miners
remained working for grub aGd whisky"
and satisfied with a couple Of do rs,per day
at rocking" One day one these con-
cluded to try slim streak Of vel which
showed itself under several I'd of "hard
pan" in the bank deserted byvits former
workers. "Hard pan" is red dirt almost as
hard as sun burned brick or the adobe of the
Mexican, which is frequently found lying
from ten to one hundred feet above the gold
bearing gravel Of the California dead river"
channels, and ''dead river" channel means
deposit or streak Of round, smoothly washed
pebble and bowlder showing the course
of the river at some remote geological
period; and, strangely enough, nearly
all these "dead river" channels in
California run at right angles and across the
present live ones, which, as you may nat
urally infer, means live running water and
wet gravel underneath. "Hard pan" was so
called by the miners because it was 80 hard
to wash-it was almost the attempt to soak
brickbats to mud consistency. Our srelic"
tried pan from the slim gravel streak. It
yielded three cents. He ''coyoted" in little
further. The gravel streak grew thicker. It
yielded ten cents more. The ledge pitched
inward. Over him was the steep side
Of one of the river hills 500 feet
high. It was another old river chan
mel and gave it's possessor after two
years working over 100000 Its permanent
possessor was not the ''relic" who found it,
1t was more cunning and far sighted man
from Massachusetts, who bought the claim
for a few hundred dollars, for the idiot val
ued the present pottage of barrel of whisky
far more than the financial possibilities
which his sober senses would have told him
were under the Indian Bar hill. Gold min
ing means digging, lifting rocks and pack
ing wet and heavy lumber in the shape of
sluices, like any other ''navvy's' work. Gold
washing is simply the shoveling of dirt into
an inclined trough full of running water.
The water does nearly all the work. It runs
off the stones and sands while the heavier
gold falls to the bottom of the sluce or
trough and brings up against the cleats
nailed at the bottom, mixed with quantity
of black sand. Look at the street cutters after
a heavy rain and you see there Illustrated
the whole gold washing principle The tacks,
pins, buttons rusty nails and other bits of
metal caught in the crevices of the paving
stones represent gold as the soil is washed
away from it. Said miner to me during
my first weeks mining experience in 1859,
There's no reasoning as to the whereabouts
of the darned stuff by analogy. The likeliest
looking places will fail, and after all gold is
about where you find it,"
So found it as he represented.
The richest deposit might be two feet I'M
foreground It might be 200 It may, as in
Springfield Flat, lay where the water after
reaching a certain depth comes into the
shaft SO fast that the expense of pumping it |
out forbids all risk Of capital. Yet the gold |
is there, hidden in crevices amid a tumble Of |
immense powders big as small houses, piled |
)ne atop the other to the depth before men |
Toned, and these same powders, though |
,olored red by long contact with the |
red earth in which for ages they
nave been buried, are all marble, ,s you may |
ind on chipping off bit, when .yo,,1Iolll see
The snowy whiteness of the stone revt&ded be-
leath That is on the "Bowlder r1inge,n
strange streak of rock running many Sliles
through southern California, from quarter |
20 half a mile in width, and all these rocks,
great and small, piled as they are on each
,ther beneath the soil, are water washed and
worn into varied and fantastic forms, as if
~ the action upon them of surf or water
all. A singular formation is the Bowlder
ange, for it has no secure bottom, and there
AVE been cases of shaft bottoms falling
tut at the depth of sixty or seventy
eet and showing running water beneath. On
his range, at a camp in Calaveras county,
he miners for years ran their mud and stone
rom the sluces mouth into crack in the
arth 1t never filed up. The gurgling of
unning water could be heard in it, During
me summer, while waiting for water (one-
bird of our time in the mines was passed in
his way, the ''boys" concluded to explore
his mysterious underground region They
'uilt small boat for the purpose, lowered it
own, and Johnny Ward, who had volun-
eered to navigate this underground river,
fter it. He did 60 little way, as far as he
AIRED, but the river disappeared amid low,
rocks and darkness, and Johnny
vas hauled up again and the boat left
o rot. / have seen the heaviest gold
AIKEN from a sort of 'top dressing" of
ght soil several feet from the ledge
IN the banks of the Tuolumne river
have, after washing painful of such dirt,
cen thousand specks Of fine flour gold"
ying on it's bottom. A microscope would
how thousands more, and the whole pros
ect wouldn't weigh half cent in value.
This "four gold" seems as light as the
tonic feathers of the butterfy's wing. It is
atural pulverized gilt leaf, ground to pow.
er as rolled over and over among the river
owlders for countless centuries bowl
ers which, during the fall freshets of the
tanislaus and Tuolumne, we could hear at
light rattling along the river bed above
he roar of the boiling current.
hat was always after our dams,
umes, sluices and water wheels, repre-
snting whole summers work and possibly
nat of the previous winter, had been swept
way, as swept away they were two seasons