Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/17



quickened pace across the mine, up the hill, into the boarding-house, and begin to eat.

Here, only, do you discover that the miner can hurry. But a half-hour is given for the heartiest of dinners, and he knows it, feels it, shows it in the railroad method of his eating. Here only, too, does the miner's boyhood come back tohim. He eats as he ate at his father's table. He eats with delight, with conviction that he is doing the best thing he can do, and has but the shortest possible time to do it in. He becomes, in fact, an eating automaton.

Dinner over, the miner relapses into his work-time thought and movement, winds down into the mine, and repeats the operations of the forenoon: naught during the day but a blast, a dinner, or a case of emergency disturbs his imperturbable gravity.

Six o'clock, the bell rings, the tools of the miner drop abruptly, and the day's work is over.

Saturday is a counterpart of Monday in the nature and manner of the miner's work, and the last day of the month is a faithful photograph of the first. A "clean-up" only brings a change to him, which occurs about once in six weeks, and invariably tickles his fancy, whether its coming be in the balmy May or gloomy February, as he is then paid for his labor.

By a "clean-up" in one of these hydraulic mines is meant the work of taking the gold from the sluices, or rather the amalgam and quicksilver, and the processes of retorting and smelting.

The "clean-up" proper might, perhaps, include nothing but the removal of the amalgam from the sluices, but as the miners generally add the two latter processes, we shall also include them.

The first work to be done is to clear the sluices of the blocks and stones, and is done by separate parties of miners, who have a given Civision of the sluice

assigned them; the simple clearing of the flumes in this manner taking from one and a half to two days, or longer, if the "clean-up" be a large one. This done, a number of riffles are placed at irregular intervals in the bottom of the flume —a riffle being a small, strong board, about ten inches wide, placed across the bottom of the flume to intercept the amalgam, quicksilver, and general débris. A few inches of water are now run into the flume, and a miner enters the head of a section, as formed by the given riffles, carefully sweeping its contents to the lower riffle of the section with a common broom. Immediately below the lower riffle, another man is stationed, who, with a heavy four or sixtined fork, removes the dédris that is stopped by it, and which consists principally of pins, rusted nails, pieces of old iron, wood, and cobble-stones. This process thoroughly completed, the next step is the removal of the amalgam, quicksilver, and remaining débris into the pails on the bank of the flume, and is done with a small, iron hand-shovel. Here also is a large wooden tub filled with water, used in further freeing the amalgam from refuse matter. A small portion of the amalgam is then put into a pan closely resembling a common milkpan, but differing from it in being made of iron, and with sides somewhat more flaring. The loose quicksilver is turned from it into the flasks near by, and the miner carefully washes it in the water of the tub, picking out with-his fingers the iron pyrites and other débris—a process which is the only vestige we have of the old pan system everywhere common in the primitive history of California mining.

After a thorough washing in this manner, which effectually frees it from the coarser débris, it is taken to the place of retorting. Here it undergoes a second operation of cleaning. It is washed again, and then carefully passed betweer