Year: 1870




In one little corner of California is found
species of mining which is seldom or
never mentioned in print. It is called
sfpocket-miDing, and | am not aware that
any of it Is done outside of that little cor
ner. The gold is not evenly distributed
through the surface dirt, as in ordinary
placer mines. but is collected in little spots
and they are very wide apart and exceed
inely hard to find, but when you do find one
YOU reap rich and sudden harvest. There
are not.now more than 20 pocket miners In
that entire little region. | think I know
every one of them personally. I have
known one of them to hunt patiently about
the hillsides every day for 8 months without
finding gold enough to make 3 snuf-boX-
his grocery bill running up relentlessly all
the tinle-and then [ have seen him find
a pocket and take out of it thousand dol
lars in two dips Of his shovel. I have seen
him take out SO, 900 in two hours, and go
and pay up every cent of his indebtness,
then enter on dazzling spree that finished
the last of his treasure before the night was
gone. And the next day he bought his gro
ceries on credit as usual, and shouldered
his pan and shovel and went off to the
hills hunting pockets again happy and con-
tent. This is perhaps the most fascinating
of all the different kinds of mining, and
furnishes very handsome percentage of
victims to the lunatio asylum. Honest toll
and moderate gains in shops and on farms
have their virtues and their advantages.
When man consents to seek for sudden
riches he does it at his peril. No charge. !


Pocket hunting Is an ingenious process.
You take a spadeful of earth from the hill
side and put it in large tin pan and dis
solve and wash it gradually away till moth
ing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sedi-
ment. Whatever gold was in that earth
has remained, because, being the heaviest,
it has sought the bottom. Among the sedi-
mint you will find half dozen shining
particles no larger than pin-heads. You
are delighted. You move off to one side
and wash another pan. If you find gold
again, you move to one side further, and
wash third pan. If you find no gold this
time, you are delighted again, because you
know you ere on the right scent. You lay
an imaginary plan, shaped like fan, with
its handle up the hill-for just where the
end of the handle is, you argue that the rich
deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains OF
gold have escaped and been washed down,
spreading farther and farther apart as
they wandered And 50 you proceed up
the hill, washing the earth and narrowing
your lines every time the absence of gold
in the pan shows that you are outside OF
the fan and at last, 20 yards up the hill
your lines have converged to point-a
single foot from that point you cannot find
any gold Your breath comes short and
quick, you are feverish with excitement
the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you
pay no attention; friends may die, we'd
dings transpire, houses burn down, they
are nothing to you you sweat and dig and
/ ~ Il. q. 100 -
once you strike it Up comes spade full
of earth and quartz that is all lovely with
soiled Jumps and leaves and sprays of gold.
Sometimes that one spadeful is all-$500-
/ Sometimes the nest contains SIC. 600, and
it takes you three or four days to get it all
| out The pocket-miners tell Of one nest
that yielded $50, 900 and two men exhaust
ed it in Two weeks, and then sold the
ground for $4,000 to party who never
got $500 out of 1t afterward.


The hogs are good pocket hunters. AL
the summer they root around the bushes,
and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt,
and then the miners long for the rains; for
the rains beat upon these little piles and
wash them down and expose the gold, pos
sibly right over q pocket. Two pockets
were found in this way by the same man il
one day One had $4,000 in it and the
other So, 900. That man could appreciate
it, for he hadn't had a cent for about year


In Tuolumne lived two miners who useG
to go to the neighboring village in the af
ternoon and return every night with house
hold supplies. Part Of the distance they
traversed trail, and nearly always sa
down to rest on great boulder that la,
beside the path. In the course Of thirteer
years they had worn that boulder tolerabl,
smooth, sitting omit. BY and bytwo vagran
Mexicans came along and occupied the seat


They began to amuse themselves by chip
ping off fakes from the boulder with {
sledge hammer They examined one o
these fakes and found it rich with gold
That boulder paid them $500 afterward
But the aggravating circumstance was tha
these "Greasers" knew that there must bt
more gold where that boulder came from
and so they went panning up the hill anc
found what was probably the richest pock
ct that region has yet produced. 1t tool
three months to exhaust it, and it yielded
$4,000. The two American miners who
used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, anG
they take turn about in getting up early ii
the morning to curse those Mexicans-anC
then it comes down to pure ornaments
wheing, the native American is gifted abovt
surssons of men.