Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/466

388 cropped out on the surface of the hills, mountains or gorges, and been worn and smoothed by the action of water. In these positions the gold still remains entire in pieces of all shapes and sizes, from a single grain to lumps weighing several pounds. Placeres, or gold locations of this latter character, are styled "the dry diggings," in contradistinction to the "washings" of the streams, and are spread over large valleys which appear to have been subjected to the violent action of water. In the dry diggings the operation of extracting metal is performed by the hand alone or with a pick axe, hammer and knife; but the fine dust or scale-gold of the river bottoms is rescued from the earth by washing the whole mass in common tin pans, or vessels of every kind that can be substituted. The gyratory motion given to these primitive implements, removes the finest portions of soil; gravel is taken out by the hand, and the gold is left in the vessel united with a black ferruginous sand not unlike that used at the writing desk. This residuum is left on a board or cloth to dry, when the sand is blown off either by the mouth or a common bellows, leaving the gold whose gravity retains it on the board. Much of the very finest gold is, however, lost with the sand in this rude process. Vast numbers of rough machines resembling cradles, are also used in the business. The rocking of the cradle answers to the gyration of the pan, and as the mud, water and sand escape from one end of the machine through a series of small cross-bars, the coarser particles of gold are retained in the instrument. On the head of the cradle is a common sieve, upon which the auriferous earth is placed; water is then poured on it, and as soon as the machine is set in motion, the gold, sand and dust are carried into the body of the cradle, while the gravel is rejected.

But many experienced Californians do not look to the placeres or common gold diggings and washings for the continuation of that prosperity to which they gave birth. For its permanence they rely on the mines, whose development has but just commenced. This species of mineral riches lies in that region where the auriferous quartz has been discovered of nearly uniform richness, from the 40th to the 35th degree of latitude, upon the waters of the Feather river, and on the American, the Mokelumne, the Mariposa, and the desert upon the south-eastern borders of California, east of the Sierra Nevada. In all these localities, within a range of three hundred and fifty miles, it is already known to exist, and the strongest analogy would carry it through the remaining distance. An assay of the ore of the Mariposa mines, now worked with a Chilian mill, afforded an average yield from washing, of forty cents per pound