The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1897-08-25
What is Placer Mining.

To give q homcly description Of
PAGER mining, take a bushel Of coarse
sand mixed with gravel, q bushel of
earth, a considerable proportion of clay,
a little cement, a double handful Of
shot varying in size from the smallest
bird shot to the end of your little
finger, and imagine all the stuff to be
mixed thoroughly together. How
would you go at it to extract the shot
in the least possible time and at the
least expenditure Of labor7 If you
had heard of placer mining you would
wash the earth away and save the
shot.
All you need is a pan and plenty Of
water. Any sort of a fat vessel, from
soup plate to a dishpan, will answer
the purpose. The miners pan is
shaped like a cakepan with a fiat bot
tom. When a prospector starts out
he will take one made of copper.
Gather with your hands or a pick or a
shovel a quart of this mixture Of soil
just described and put it in the pan.
Fill the pan nearly full of water. The
earth will be softened into mud. Add
more water. Then tilt your pan over
a very little and the soft mud will run
out over the top Of the pan. Continue
the operation and in ten or fifteen
minutes the earth has run off and all
that you have left in the pan is the
shot, which, being heavier than the
earth, have sunk to the bottom, to-
gether with any gravel you may have
thrown in originally. The work of
separating the shot from the gravel
! after the earth has been washed away
is very easy.
Substitute particles Of gold for your
leaden globules, and the widest kind
of a mountain country for Chicago,
and you know just what the men in
the Klondyke region have been doing
all winter that has electrified the
world. In the manner above described
they haveubeen washing the precious
metal from earth found on a very
rough, broken region larger than the
city limits of Chicago. The miners
have had no appliances but the pan
and the water of the creeks flowing
through the Klondyke district. What
makes the authentic reports from
Alaska so startling is the extraordi-
nary yield of gold to the pan. Moth
ing like it or nearly approaching it has
ever been heard Of before. In the
creeks beds they have picked up
chunks of solid gold as large as your
hand, single nuggets worth $1,000 or
more.
In the language Of miners the earth
from which gold is extracted is called
''dirt." Any earth which yields ten
cents of gold to the pan is known as
pay dirt " fifteen to the pan is good,
and twenty cents is rich. A miner
working in dirt that runs six to ten
cents to the pan earns from $3.50 to
$3.50 a day, as he is able to wash
about forty panfuls a day, the num-
Der depending on the character of the
dirt. In Klondyke the lowest yield
to the pan reported is thirty cents.
This would give the miner not less
than $40 day for his work. Some
panfuls yield 500 in precious metal.
The gold that remains in the pan after
the earth has been washed away is
called "dust." Some of it is fine as
the finest sand, some the size Of a
pinhead and some as large as a pea or
the end of your little finger but it is
all known as dust. Jumps the size Of
a hazel nut, a walnut and larger are
called nuggets.
The gold itself is the measure of the
days, or the months or the seasons
profit. An ounce of it is worth, bar
ring fractions, $40 any place in civil
cation. You can buy as much of any
thing you want for an ounce of dust
as you can for q $40 gold piece. All
stores in mining districts are provided
with gold scales, and the miners gold
is accepted as so much coin OF the
realm. The quantity Of gold it takes
to make a dollar is surprising to one
not accustomed to handling the metal.
So much dust as you can hold on the
largest blade of your pocketknife IS
worth s. to $3.50. When you con-
slider that this small quantity is the
yield of thirty or forty pans, you may
imagine how little bulk there is to the
gold saved in one pan. A coined gold
dollar is smaller than a silver dime.
Now, if q miner can save in one pan.
full of dirt the tenth part of a gold
dollar he is making fair wages.
Some Of the gold is in such hne
particles that it floats and does not
sink to the bottom like shot. A con:
siderable portion of such floating gold
runs over the top of the pan and III
lost. It is estimated that in the first
placer mining in California about one.
fourth Of the gold was thus lost. To
this day Cinnamon are engaged in
banning the refuse dirt of early miners,
and they make from s1.25 to 81 a day
in tie operations. In Klondyke,
where so much Of the gold is coarse,
the miners lose very little of the
precious metal by reason Of its floating
away. Placer mining is the simplest
of all processes for getting gold out OF
the ground and can be carried on only
where there is an ample supply OF
water. All reports from Klondyke
agree that the best 'sdiggings' are in
the beds of the creeks, and that the
farther down they get the richer the
| dirt until bedrock is reached Chicago
Ti;mcs-WcraM
Scasick Women.