pade and washed some of the dirt from the bottom of the mill race in ere Marshall had found his specimens, and in a few hours Humphrey hat these mines were far richer than any in Georgia.

v made a rocker and went to work washing gold industriously, and y yielded him an ounce or two of metal. The men at the mill made or themselves, and all were soon busy in search of the yellow metal. hing else was abandoned; the rumor of the discovery spread slowly. iddle of March, Pearson B. Reading, the owner of a large ranch at the he Sacremento valley, happened to visit Sutter's Fort, and hearing of g at Coloma, he went thither to see it. He said that if similarity of à could be taken as proof, there must be gold mines near his ranch, so erving the method of washing, he posted off, and in a few weeks he was on the bars of Clear creek, nearly two hundred miles northwestward ma. A few days after Reading had left, John Bidwell, now representthe northern district of the State in the lower house of Congress, came a, and the result of his visit was that in less than a month he had a Indians from his ranch washing gold on the bars of Feather river, ive miles northwestward from Coloma. Thus the mines were opened tant points.

4. THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN PRINT.

rst printed notice of the discovery was given in the California newsblished in San Francisco, on the 15th of March, as follows: he newly made race-way of the saw-mill recently erected by Captain the American Fork, gold has been found in considerable quantities. son brought thirty dollars to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short

e 29th of May the same paper, announcing that its publication would nded, says:

whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the seathe base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the sordid cry of gold! old! while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everyglected but the manufacture of picks and shovels, and the means of tation to the spot where one man obtained one hundred and twenty-eight worth of the real stuff in one day's washing; and the average for all d is twenty dollars per diem."

owns and farms were deserted, or left to the care of women and children, ncheros, wood-choppers, mechanics, vaqueros, and soldiers and sailors deserted or obtained leave of absence, devoted all their energies to the auriferous gravel of the Sacramento basin. Never satisfied, howch they might be making, they were continually looking for new placers ight yield them twice or thrice as much as they had made before. Thus of their labors gradually extended, and at the end of 1848 miners were in every large stream on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, from her to the Tuolumne river, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, at Reading's diggings, in the northwestern corner of the Sacramento

5.-EXCITEMENT ABROAD.

irst rumors of the gold discovery were received in the Atlantic States reign countries with incredulity and ridicule; but soon the receipts of the metal in large quantities, and the enthusiastic letters of army officers nen in good repute, changed the current of feeling, and an excitement inparalleled ensued. Oregon, the Hawaiian islands, and Sonora sent ousands to share in the auriferous harvest of the first year; and in the

following spring all the adventurous young Americans east of the Rocky m ains wanted to go to the new Eldorado, where, as they imagined, every was rich, and gold could be dug by the shovelful from the bed of every st Before 1850 the population of California had risen from 15,000, as it w 1847, to 100,000, and the average increase annually for five or six years 50,000.

As the number of mines increased, so did the gold production and the e and variety of the gold fields.

In 1849 the placers of Trinity and Mariposa were opened, and in the fo ing years those of Klamath and Scott's valleys. During the last sixteen no rich and extensive gold fields have been discovered, though many placers have been found, and some very valuable deposits, previously unk have been brought to light in districts which had been worked previous to

6.-PAN WASHING.

In the first two years the miners depended mainly for their profits on thi and the rocker. The placer miner's pan is made of sheet iron, or tinned with a flat bottom about a foot in diameter, and sides six inches high, inc outwards at an angle of thirty or forty degrees.

We frequently see and hear the phrase "golden sands," as if the gold contained in loose sand; but usually it is found in a tough clay, which en gravel and large boulders as well as sand. This clay must be thoroughl solved; so the miner fills his pan with it, goes to the bank of the river, down there, puts his pan under water and shakes it horizontally, so as to g mass thoroughly soaked; then he picks out the larger stones with one and mashes up the largest and toughest lumps of clay, and again shak pan; and when all the dirt appears to be dissolved so that the gold can b ried to the bottom by its weight, he tilts up the pan a little to let the this and light sand run out; and thus he works until he has washed out all the metal which remains at the bottom.

7. THE ROCKER.

The rocker, which was introduced into the California mines at their disc is made somewhat like a child's cradle. On the upper end is a riddlewith a bottom of sheet-iron punched with holes. This riddle is filled wit dirt, and a man rocks the machine with one hand while with a dipper he water into the riddle with the other. With the help of the agitation, the dissolves the clay and carries it down with the gold into the floor of the where the metal is caught by traverse riffles or cleets, while the mud, wat sand run off at the lower end of the rocker, which is left open. The rid be taken off so that the larger stones can be conveniently thrown off.

In places where there was not water enough for washing, and where th was coarse, the miners sometimes scratched the metal from the crevices rocks with their knives; but the pan and rocker were their main relia three or four years.

In many places the rich spots were soon exhausted, and there was decrease in the profits of the miners. It was necessary that they should new and more expeditious methods of working, so that they could was in a day, and thus derive as much profit as they had obtained by wa little dirt.

8.-MINING DITCHES.

The chief want of the placer miner is an abundant and convenient su water, and the first noteworthy attempt to convey the needful elemen artificial channel was made at Coyote Hill, in Nevada county, in March

was about two miles long, and, proving a decided success, was imimany other places, until, in the course of eight years, six thousand nining canals had been made, supplying all the principal placer diswater, and furnishing the means for obtaining the greater portion of the of the State. Many of the ditches were marvels of engineering skill. oblem was to get the largest amount of water at the greatest altitude auriferous ground, and at the least immediate expense, as money was in three to ten per cent. per month interest. As the pay-dirt might be i within a couple of years, and as the anticipated profits would in a be sufficient to pay for an entirely new ditch, durability was a point importance. There was no imperial treasury to supply the funds for aqueduct in every township, nor could the impatient miners wait a n for the completion of gigantic structures in stone and mortar. The Le of their time and the scarcity of their money made it necessary heapest and most expeditious expedients for obtaining water should d. Where the surface of the ground furnished the proper grade, a s dug in the earth; and where it did not. flumes were built of wood ined in the air by frame-work that rose sometimes to a height of three feet in crossing deep ravines, and extending for miles at an elevation red or two hundred feet.

e devices known to mechanics for conveying water from hill-top to ere adopted. Aqueducts of wood and pipes of iron were suspended les of wire, or sustained on bridging of wood; and inverted siphons ater up the sides of one hill by the heavier pressure from the higher

nother.

itches were usually the property of companies, of which there were at four hundred in the State, owning a total length of six thousand miles = and flumes.

rgest of these, called the Eureka, in Nevada county, has two hundred miles of ditches, constructed at a cost of $900,000; and their receipts ne from the sale of water were $6,000 per day. Unfortunately these canals, though more numerous, more extensive, and bolder in design aqueducts of Rome, were less durable, and some of them have been ed and allowed to go to ruin, so that scarcely a trace of their existence save in the heaps of gravel from which the clay and loam were washed arch for gold.

eplacers in many districts were gradually exhausted, the demand for d the profits of the ditch companies decreased; and the more expensive hen blown down by severe storms, carried away by floods, or destroyed ecay of the wood, were not repaired.

9.-MINERS' "RUSHES."

ear 1850 was marked by the first of a multitude of "rushes" or sudations in search of imaginary rich diggings.

ainers, although generally men of rare intelligence as compared with rers in other countries, had vague ideas of the geological distribution of d the marvellous amounts dug out by them, sometimes ascending to thoudollars per day to the laborer, excited their fancy so much that they arcely have formed a sound judgment if they had possessed the informcessary for its basis. Many believed that there must be some volcanic rom which the gold had been thrown up and scattered over the hills, y thought that if they could only find that place, they would have to do but to shovel up the precious metal and load their mules with it. an once, long trains of pack animals were sent out in the confident exn that they would get loads of gold within a few days.

II. Ex. Doc. 29--2

No story was too extravagant to command credence. Men who h earned more than a dollar a day before they came to California were diss when they were here clearing twenty dollars, and they were always ready off on some expedition in search of distant diggings reputed to be rich. A the miners of to-day have better ideas of the auriferous deposits than th sixteen years ago, and no longer expect to dig up the pure gold by the ful, they are now, as they have been since the discovery of the mines, prepared for migration to any new field of excitement.

10.-GOLD LAKE AND GOLD BLUFF.

In the spring of 1850 a story was circulated that gold was lying in h the bank of Gold lake, a small body of water eastward of where Dow now is. Thousands of men left good claims to join this rush, but afte or months they returned much poorer than they started. The next y nessed a rush to Gold Bluff, on the ocean shore about latitude 41°.

The sea beating against a high auriferous hill had left a wide beach ing much gold, which was mixed with sand that was very rich in spots, shifted about under the influence of a heavy surf. A gentleman of mu ligence, secretary of a mining company which claimed a portion of the examined the place and seriously wrote to his associates that each on receive at least $43,000,000 if the sand proved to be only one-tenth as that which he had examined.

Several other similar statements were made in corroboration. The population were wonderfully excited by these reports, and preparatio made for a large migration to the golden beach; but more precise inf was soon published, and most of the adventurers who had started we chanted before the vessels in which they were to sail could get to sea.

11. THE "TOM."

The construction of hundreds of ditches within three or four years successful experiment at Coyote Hill gave a great impulse to placer and had much influence to change its character. Before the water h carried in artificial channels to the tops or high upon the sides of the hill all the miners spent their summers in washing the dirt in the bars of t and their winters in working the beds of gullies, which were conver brooks during the rainy season. In the gullies the supply of payusually small, and the claims were exhausted in the course of a few we On the bars the water was below the level of the pay-dirt, and h dipped or pumped up by hand.

These circumstances were favorable to the use of the rocker; but brought the water to places where the dirt was far more abundant and obtained with more facility, though it was poorer in quality, and, there washing of a larger quantity would be necessary to yield an equal pro

New modes of working and new implements must be introduced t plish the greater amount of work, and the tom and the sluice came rap use. The tom had been employed for years in the placers of Georgia, a Georgians had their sluices in Nevada county in the latter part of 1849 February of the following year a party at Gold Run, in that county that the bed of the ravine did not give them enough fall, made a lon trough on the hill-side leading down to their tom, and the pay-dirt from was thrown up to a board platform, and from that thrown up to the he trough, and the water carried the dirt down to the tom.

I am indebted for information on this point to B. P. Avery, esq. The purpose of this trough was mainly to save the labor of carrying by hand from the claim to the tom; but the trough having been once

washing gold was soon apparent. It was, however, the ditch that ortunities for the general introduction of the tom and sluice, and in icts they were unheard of until late in 1850 or 1851.

in is a trough about twelve feet long, eight inches deep, fifteen inches he head and thirty at the foot.

le of sheet iron punched with holes half an inch in diameter forms the f the tom at the lower end, so placed that all the water and their mud down through the holes of the riddle and none pass over the sides or e water falls from the riddle into a flat box with transverse cleets or 1 these are to catch the gold.

im of water runs constantly through the tom, into the head of which irt is thrown by several men, while one throws out the stones too large rough the riddle, and throws back to the head of the tom the lumps hich reach the foot without being dissolved.

12. THE SLUICE.

m was a great improvement on the rocker, but it was soon superseded greater, the sluice, which is a board trough, from a hundred to a feet long, with transverse cleets at the lower end to catch the gold. lescent of one foot in twenty the water rushes through it like a bearing down large stones and tearing the lumps of clay to pieces. ers, of whom a dozen or a score may work at one sluice, have little e to throw in the dirt and take out the gold.

nally it may be necessary to throw out some stones, or to shovel the to prevent the sluice from choking, but these attentions cost relatively e time. The sluice is the best device heretofore used for washing is supposed to be unsurpassable. It has been used here more extenan elsewhere, although it has been introduced by men who have been n mines, into Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia, Transylvania, - other countries.

ice, though an original invention here, had been previously invented ; but it was never brought to much excellence there nor used extenad no such implement was known in 1849 in the industry of gold

the sluices were made short, and afterwards lengthened, until some ile long, the length being greater as the gold was finer; that is, if the the earth in the direction of the sluice was favorable. There were le variations in the form of the sluice, to suit different circumstances. round sluice is a mere ditch on a hill side or slope, and the miners dig ttom and dig down the banks, while the water carries away the clay es the gold; but the dirt at the bottom of the ground sluice must after, washed in a board sluice.

ound sluice has been used to grade roads and to carry away snow streets of mining towns, as well as to wash gold.

ms where many large stones were found in the pay-dirt, and had to be y the water through the board sluice, or where the sluice was to be long period, they were paved with stones, because any wooden bottom lly worn out. Sometimes the bed of a stream into which many sluices was converted into a "tail sluice," which yielded a large revenue, with save that of occasionally "cleaning up" or washing out the metal from deposited in the crevices between the stones.

13.-PLACER LEADS TRACED TO QUARTZ

lacer gold had originally been confined in rocky veins which were ted by the action of chemical or mechanical forces, and the lighter