CHAPTER VII
THE FORTY-NINERS
Several days elapsed before Jim took up his story, Owens preferring towait until the prospector grew stronger. The mine-owner was shrewdenough to see that if he did not show too much haste, Jim would beless suspicious.
When the time arrived, Jim was up and dressed, though the doctor wouldonly allow him out of doors for a few minutes at a time. Theprospector had evidently been thinking out the beginning of his story,for, when his visitors arrived, he opened without preface.
"There's a lot o' wild yarns been told about the findin' o' gold inCaliforny," he began. "I've heard some, an' wild an' woolly they was;an' I've read some in books, an' they was wilder yet; an' I've seensome in the movies, an' they was a crime!
"Not but what them days wasn't tough! They was! The crowds what hitthe minin' camps o' the Sierras in the fifties was out for gold an'nothin' else, an' they didn't much care how they got it. Father, hewas a forty-niner himself, an' he was a rough un if anything got inhis way. But he had more sense'n most, an', without any book-l'arnin'to speak of, he knew a heap about gold. If he'd been alive when I mademy strike, old as he was, he'd ha' gone there, an' he'd ha' got there,too.
"I come o' Mormon stock, I do. My grand-pap, he made the trail to SaltLake City wi' Brigham Young. Grandma, she used a rifle to defend thehome camp, when the Illinois and Indiana folk came to massacre thewomen an' children, after the men were gone. Judgin' from what I'veheard about her shootin', there wasn't many bullets wasted. Some o'these days, when you ain't got nothin' better to do, I'll tell you thestory o' my grand-pap. He come to be one o' the Danites, later.[4]
[Footnote 4: For the relation of the Mormons and the Danites to theforty-niners and the emigrant trains going west, see the author's "TheBook of Cowboys."]
"You'll know the story o' Sutter's Mill, likely, Mr. Owens,"--Jimreturned to the "Mr." in Clem's presence,--"but Clem, he don't knownothin' about it, an' he ought to be put wise if he's goin' to take ahand in this game.
"It all come about in queer fashion, a good deal like it did inAustralia, as Mr. Owens was a-tellin' me a few days ago. The firstsigns o' gold was found on the Americanos River, which runs into theSacramento. Found by accident, they was, too.
"There was a chap out them parts--an Indian-fighter--Cap'n Sutter byname. He owned a lot o' land an' used to run cattle in a small way,for the time I'm tellin' about was long afore the days o' the cowboysan' the ol' Texas-Drive trail.[5] This Sutter had a foreman calledJames W. Marshall, who, besides his reg'lar job o' handlin' cattle an'greasers, looked after the runnin' of a one-horse saw-mill on theAmericanos. It was an over-shot water-wheel mill, an' jest roughlychucked together.
[Footnote 5: For the history of the Texas trail and the winning of theWest for the United States, see the author's "The Book of Cowboys."]
"By-'n'-by Marshall begin to notice that the ol' mill wasn't workin'any too good. A lot o' sand an' gravel had come down wi' the water,chokin' up the tail-race some. The run-off wouldn't get away fastenough an' churned up under the water-wheel, causin' a loss o' power.
"To get the tail-race clear an' to widen her out a bit, Marshall,he throws the wheel out o' gear, pulls up the gate o' the dam, an'lets the whole head o' water in the mill-pond go a-flyin'. That waterhit into the tail-race like a hydraulic jet an' scooped her out clear,carryin' a mass o' sand an' gravel into the river below.
SUTTER'S MILL.
Where Marshall discovered gold, January 19, 1848.]
THE RUSH TO THE GOLD MINES.
Scene in San Francisco in 1849.]
"Next day, that was January 19, 1848, Marshall goes down to the riverbelow the tail-race to see how she's shapin' an' if the cut-out is bigenough. He's walkin' along the bank when he notices something glitter.He looks again, an' sees what he thinks is a bit o' Spanish opal, notthe real gem, Clem, but a soft stone they find out there which lookseven prettier'n an opal, but wears off an' gets dull in no time. Theysell 'em to greenhorns, still.
"Marshall don't worry none about that, but by-'n-by, seein' a lotmore, as he thinks, he figures to pick up some, jest to show.Accordin' as he used to tell the tale, he didn't think it was worththe trouble, but spottin' one that looks different from the rest, hereaches down into the water an' fishes it out.
"It ain't no opal at all. It's a bit o' shiny white quartz wi' a lineo' yellow runnin' through. That's what makes the glitter. He huntsaround some, rememberin' that he'd seen other bits shinin' yellow thesame way, an' finds quite a few, all of 'em looking like scales o'pure gold. They was jest about the size an' thinness o' the scalesthat comes off a rattlesnake's skin after it's dry, an' for a while,Marshall figured they was some kind o' scale or horn, washed down thinby the water.
"In them times, the folks in Californy hadn't no idee o' minin'. Itwas still Spanish territory, for one thing, an', for another, therewasn't any minin' done. So Marshall wasn't thinkin' about gold. It wasjest curiosity what made him hunt up some more o' those queer yellowscales.
"The more he found, the more puzzled he got. They was heavy; they bentlike a bit o' metal, a thing a stone won't never do; they could bescratched with a pocket-knife; they didn't show no layers like horndoes when it's old. The biggest bit he found weighed less'n a quarterof an ounce, an' this one was stickin' in the bank o' the tail-race,where the water had been washin' the earth away.
"He puts this last bit on a flat rock an' hammers it with a stone. Itbeats out flat quite easy. Marshall wasn't no fool, an' he knew therewasn't no yellow metal acted that way but gold or copper, an' nativecopper ain't that color.
"There was one o' the mill-hands wi' Marshall at the time, a chapcalled Peter Wimmer. He didn't know any more about gold'n Marshalldid, but he'd heard said that every metal, savin' gold, gets black ifit's boiled in strong lye. Marshall gets Wimmer to keep quiet bypromisin' him a stake in whatever's found, an' tries the boilin'trick. The flakes o' metal stays put, an' shows nary a sign o'tarnishin'.
"By this time, Marshall was gettin' pretty sure that what he'd foundwas gold. He hadn't no notion of a gold mine, though, seein' he'dnever heard of any. He reckoned that these flakes must be gold thathad been buried by the Indians, long ago, an' had been washed down;from a grave, maybe, or some o' the treasure that the Spaniards hadbeen huntin'.
"Jest the same, he was curious. He strolled away from the tail-race,idle-like, an' started huntin' promiscuous. He found specks o' goldall over. That settled him. He jumped on a horse an' rode down toCap'n Sutter wi' the news.
"Sutter was a whole lot more excited than Marshall was. He waseducated an' knew the history o' Mexico. He knew the Indians inCaliforny had possessed gold in the time o' the first comin' o' theSpaniards, an' he reckoned that gold must ha' come from somewhere.There'd always been some talk o' gold around where the Spanishmissions had started, and, jest three years afore, a Spanish don hadsent some ore to Mexico, sayin' that there was gold an' silvera-plenty around, an' the government had better get busy an' developit. But the Spaniards weren't havin' any. Ever since they got so badlyfooled, a couple o' hundred years afore, in their hunt for the 'GoldenCities o' Cibola,'[6] they let Californy alone.
[Footnote 6: For the gold-hunting expedition of the SpanishConquistadores in North America--records of extraordinary heroism andadventure--see the author's "The Quest of the Western World." For thegold-stories of Ancient Mexico, see the author's "The Aztec-hunters."]
"Sutter didn't waste no time. He rode right back to the mill wi' theforeman. They didn't have to poke around long afore Sutter was plumbsure it was the real stuff. There was some of it in the Americanos,but the gold was even thicker in the dried-up creeks an' gulches thatrun into the river on both sides. With his penknife, Sutter pried outo' the rock-face a piece o' gold weighin' nigh two ounces.
"Some o' the mill-hands had got wise, too. Maybe Wimmer talked--thoughhe said he hadn't. Maybe they just got a hunch, when they saw Sutteran' Marshall prospectin' around. They started huntin', too, but theflakes were small an' took a lo
ng time to find. None o' them knewenough to try washin' the sand, an' all they found didn't amount tomuch.
"Sutter took samples o' the gold to the fort at Monterey, whereGeneral Mason was in command. Mason was more interested in tryin' tokeep the Apaches an' Comanches quiet than he was in fussin' aboutmetals. He was a soldier, an' minin' wasn't his line. But he knew thatthe federal authorities at Washington ought to be notified.
"There weren't no post nor telegraph in them times--that was 'wayafore the days o' the Pony Express,[7] even--an' Mason sent a specialmessenger. Politics were queer in Californy around that time. Spainclaimed the territory, the United States claimed it, an' for awhile--a month, maybe--Californy was a republic on her own. Themessenger reached Washington, all right, an' his report hurried up thesignin' o' the treaty which made Californy American. That happenedjest six weeks after Marshall had picked up his first bit o' gold an'only two weeks after the messenger arrived. Word was sent to Mason tobe sure an' keep law an' order, no matter what happened. It was a bittoo late, then; goin' an' comin' from Washington took months.
[Footnote 7: See the author's "The Boy with the U. S. Mail."]
"Things were happenin' out 'Frisco way. Geo. Bennett, who'd beenworkin' at the mill, left there about the middle o' February, takin'some flakes o' gold with him. When he got to 'Frisco, he met IsaacHumphrey, who'd worked on the Dahlonega strike, in Georgia, in 1830.Humphrey took jest one look at the stuff, an' said right away that itwas gold.
"Bennett an' Humphrey hot-footed it back to the mill. They found itworkin' jest as usual. Some o' the men had picked up more gold, butcasual-like, after workin' hours. Marshall hadn't done any moreprospectin'. Sutter was waitin' to hear from Mason.
"Humphrey, bein' a gold miner, panned up an' down the river, an' foundplenty o' color. He got quite excited an' declared it was richer'nthe Dahlonega field, which had been pretty good, though the surfacediggin's had petered out fast."
"What do you mean by 'he panned up and down the river and foundcolor?'" queried Clem.
Jim gave a short laugh of surprise.
"That's right," he said, "you don't know nothin' about prospectin', doyou? I'll tell you. Pannin' is how a prospector gets gold. It soundseasy, but there's a trick to it, jest the same.
"A prospector's pan is just like an ordinary tin wash-pan, wi' slopin'sides, only it's smaller; about a foot across at the bottom, an' madeof iron, not tin. Many a hundred men have got to be millionaires withnothin' but a pick, a shovel, an' a pan.
"Supposing now, you're at the gold diggin's. You fill your pan, nearfull, with sand or with gravel or earth, or whatever stuff you thinkmay have a little gold mixed up with it--"
"Can't you see the gold, then?" queried Clem.
"Not often, you can't. It don't lie around the ground liketwenty-dollar gold-pieces! Some o' the richest placers ever foundhave the gold ground down so fine that it ain't much bigger'n grainso' dust.
"Well, havin' nigh filled the pan, like I said, you take it to theriver, an' squattin' down, you hold it jest below the surface o' thewater, one side a trifle higher 'n the other, so the water jest flowscontinual over the lower lip o' the pan. Then you give it a sort ofrockin' an' whirlin' motion, so,"--he illustrated with his hands,Owens smilingly doing the same, "lettin' the lighter mud flow out overthe top.
"You keep on doin' that, without stoppin', for ten minutes or more. Bythe end o' that time, you're rockin' pretty hard, for the heavierstuff has got to be flicked out; but you've got to mind out, for ifyou go too hard, the gold--if there is any--will go out, too.
"Then you stop, pick out any pebbles in the bottom, lookin' at 'emhard--for they might show color--an' rock an' whirl the pan some more.If you've done it right, when you're through, there isn't more'n ahandful o' sand an' grit at the bottom. You look at that as closely asyou know how, an' if here an' there's a little speck o' yellow, you'vefound color. That's gold. You spread that handful out in the sun todry an' blow away the lighter part. What's left is gold."
THE PROSPECTOR OF TO-DAY.
Gold-bearing stream of Western Canada being panned for dust.
_Courtesy of the Grand Trunk Railway._]
FLUME AT THE MELONES MINE.
To carry 600 miner's inches of water from the Stanislaus River to the120-stamp mill.]
"Always supposing that there was some gold there to start with," putin Owens. "How many times have you panned, Jim, without finding anycolor?"
"Millions, I reckon! I panned every day an' all day, once, for twoyears, without gettin' enough gold dust to fill a pipe-bowl, an' thenI got a double-handful in half a day. In general, you're doin' allright if you can get out of each pan enough dust to cover afinger-nail. So now you know what pannin' is, Clem."
"It's not such a cinch, at that!" the young fellow commented.
"But you may strike it rich any day, any hour, any minute!" Jimexclaimed, the fever of search in his eyes. "When Humphrey got up toSutter's Mill, the first man to know anything about gold-washin' thatgot there, he was takin' out a thousand dollars a day, easy, for amonth or more. The placers were rich."
"A 'placer,' Clem," Owens interrupted to explain, "is a deposit wherethere is gold mixed with sand, or gravel or mud. It is always adeposit which has been washed down by water, either a river which isactually running, or which is found in a dry bed where a river used torun. Mining people call it an 'alluvial or flood deposit.' Most of thegold-strikes have been found in this way. Go ahead, Jim."
"Right about the time that Humphrey was prospectin' an' doin'handsomely, an Indian, who had worked on placers in Lower California,told another o' the mill-hands how to get hold o' the dust. Besidesthat, a Kentuckian, who'd been spyin' on Marshall an' Sutter, hadnoticed that they'd found gold not only in the tail-race, but up thecreeks. Both of 'em went down to 'Frisco.
"It was interestin', but nobody got excited. Gold strikes weren'tknown yet. There'd only been two gold rushes in the United Statesafore, neither of 'em big ones.
"The first was in North Carolina. A young chap, Conrad Reed, wasshootin' fish with a bow and arrow in Meadow Creek. He saw in thewater a good-sized stone with a yellow gleam. Pickin' it up, he foundit heavy--seventeen pounds it weighed--an' he reckoned it was somekind o' metal, but he didn't think o' gold. That was in 1799. Thestone was used to prop open a stable door for a couple o' years.
"One day, runnin' short o' groceries an' bein' shy o' ready cash, Reedthought he'd go into Fayetteville an' see if, maybe, he could raise afew dollars on the stone, as a curiosity. He took it to a jeweler, whosaid he thought there might be gold in it, an' told the young fellowto come back in the afternoon.
"When Reed came back, the jeweler showed him a thin wire o' gold,about as long as a lead pencil, an' said that was all the gold in thechunk. He offered Reed $3.50 for the gold an' Reed took it. How muchthe jeweler kept for himself, no one can't say.
"That started a little local talk, an' one or two men begunprospectin' in a shiftless sort o' way. They found nothin'. In 1813,some placers were found an' there was a mild rush, but it died rightout. There was gold there, sure enough, but scattered so's a mandidn't earn more'n a day's wages at washin'. Jest the same, all thegold in the United States came from North Carolina for twenty yearsafter that, more'n a hundred thousand dollars' worth bein' sent tothe Mint. But that's durn little, when you come to look at it, less'nfourteen dollars a day. An' that's not much for a bunch o' men!"
"No," admitted Owens, "you couldn't start a gold rush on that. And thesecond strike, Jim?"
"That was the Georgia deposits, at Dahlonega, where Humphrey camefrom. They're workin' yet, though small potatoes beside Californy an'Colorado.
"Californy was jest about uninhabited, then. There was only fifteenthousand folks in the whole durn State in 1848. Over a hundredthousand more came in the two years followin'. O' that lot, ninety percent. was prospectors an' the rest was sharks, livin' off 'em. At thetime o' the strike, 'Frisco didn't boast a hundred houses wi' whitefolks in them, an' they didn't know nothi
n' about Georgia an' Carolinagold.
"On May 8th, though, one o' the mill-hands come down from Sutter'sMill. He'd quit work to try gold-findin' on his own, an' takin' a tipfrom Humphrey, he'd washed out 23 ounces in four days. A 'Frisco manpaid him $500 for his dust, cash down. That was good earnin's for fourdays.
"Sudden, the fever hit! The news got over the little town like aprairie fire durin' a dry spell. By night, half the town was talkin'gold; next mornin', the other half. Nine out o' every ten men quitwork. A pick an' shovel an' a tin pan was worth a hundred dollarsbefore night. One man paid a thousand dollars for an outfit, includin'a tent an' a month's grub. He was found dead half-way to the diggings,murdered for his outfit.
"The more excited ones an' those with the least money an' sense,started right off on foot, though it was all of a hundred an' fiftymiles to Sutter's Mill, an' no trail, sixty o' these miles across adesert without water. No one ever did know how many o' that bunchended up by feedin' the turkey buzzards.
"On the 14th an' 15th, a whole fleet o' launches an' small boatsstarted out across San Francisco Sound an' Pablo Bay an' up theSacramento River, every boat loaded to the gunwales. They said therewas 2,000 men on the way.
"That wasn't jest a rush, it was a stampede. Not ten men in the entirecrowd knew the first durn thing about prospectin'. They had some foolidee that pannin' gold was like pickin' flowers, all you had to do wasto find it. Any one what knew better could ha' told 'em, but therewasn't any one to tell 'em, an' likely, they wouldn't ha' listened ifhe had. What's the use o' talkin' to a crazy man? An' a gold-rush is abunch o' lunatics. I know! I've been that way myself, more'n once.
"Out Salt Lake City way, the winter had been bad. We Mormons had goneto Utah to avoid bein' citizens o' the United States, an' thegovernment had took in Utah as soon as we made it worth takin'. Mygrand-pap an' my father were sore at that, an' they decided to startoff with a party for Californy, which was still Spanish.
"Right around the 1st o' May, they reached the Sacramento River an'heard about gold bein' found. They took it as a sign that Providencewas protectin' 'em, an' settled right down there to pan out thestream. Travelin', as the Mormons always did, with a proper leader,they pitched an organized camp. Trained to the last notch by theirwanderin's in the wilderness, there wasn't a tenderfoot or an idle manin the bunch, an', workin' steadily, they begun to clean up prettygood.
"Jest a month later come the first wave o' the rush from 'Frisco. Theystruck the placers, their mouths fairly waterin' for gold, only tofind the Mormons there already. That was a bit too much! After alltheir trouble an' misery, all the expense, all the deaths, they cometo find all the claims along the strike staked out by Mormons.
"Durin' this time, Californy had been taken over by the United States.The 'Frisco bunch knew they'd be protected by law for anything theydid against the Mormons, an', after a short pow-wow, they tried torush the camp.
"But my grand-pap, an' some more o' the leaders, who were right handywith their rifles, were standin' at the ready. They'd fought their wayacross the plains, when the redskins were swarmin', an' they weren'tthe kind to take back water before a crowd o' tenderfeet. The 'Friscomen, city chaps a lot o' them, begun to waver, an' asked a parley.
"The Mormon leader, he told 'em, cold, what they'd get if they comeany farther, an' hinted, pretty broad, that there was more cold leadaround those diggin's than there was gold. But he told 'em, too, thatthere was a lot o' the other placers around wi' no one washin' 'em.The others grumbled but got out. Luckily, there was gold enough forall, at first. Later on, there was a sure-enough fight over a sluice,and the bullets went thick. The Mormons knew how to shoot, an' therewas fifty o' the Gentiles dead when they broke back. Our folks werelet alone on the Sacramento, after that.
"Durin' this month, John Bidwell struck it rich on the Feather River,75 miles away from Sutter's Mill, and Pearson B. Reading on the ClearRiver, 100 miles further on. The news scattered the 'Frisco crowd,many a man leavin' a good claim in hopes to find a better. Others wentprospectin' on their own. By the end o' the year, along the wholewestern slope o' the Sierra Nevada, from Pitt River to the Tuolumne,there wasn't a stream or a creek or a dry ravine that didn't have someone prospectin' or pannin' on it.
"Most o' those that got on to the diggin's in the first two monthsmade money an' made it fast. A few struck bonanzas and took out athousand dollars a day. Quite a lot got good pickin's an' cleaned upat the rate of a hundred a day. The rest were doin' good if theycleaned up twenty, an' that was jest about enough to live on, atminin'-camp prices. I've seen potatoes sell at five dollars apiece tobe eaten raw, when the scurvy was ragin', an' three men were killedin a fight over the buyin' of a fresh cabbage.
"Those was tough times, even for the first lot that come from 'Frisco.There was no sort o' law an' order in the camps, no sanitation an' nodoctors. Typhoid an' dysentery got a good hold by the end o' June. Youcould get the reek o' fever an' disease a mile away.
"Men too sick to walk crawled out to their claims an' died there,scary lest some claim-jumper should seize their claims. Hope stuckwith 'em to the last. Scores fell dead into the stream, wi' the panstill in their hands. One time, when they come to carry a dead manfrom beside his pan, that he hadn't time to clean up afore death tookhim, there was the first color in it that had been found on the claim.It brought in a pile o' money later.
"Later, when the real forty-niners came, men o' red blood, vigilancecommittees were organized an' the camps got sort o' human. But at thestart, it was ugly. If a man didn't clean up quick, he starved. If hedid, somebody jumped his claim, or put a bullet in him. If the body ofa miner was found floatin', it was called accidental death, even ifhis head was blown off, for, the sayin' used to go, 'A miner ought tocarry enough gold dust on him to sink.' Scores, aye, hundreds, died o'gun-play.
"About the fine breed o' men that come later, the forty-niners thatcrossed the whole plains o' the West from Missouri to Santa Fe an'beyond, men that brought their women an' children in long lines o'prairie schooners, keepin' scouts out ahead an' one each side,fightin' famine, thirst an' redskins all the way, you won't want me totell you. Every American knows their story.
"But every one don't know what them trains o' gold-seekers lookedlike, when they reached the diggin's! My father's told me, though.
"He's seen 'em reach the Sacramento, half-scalped an' with wounds thatnever healed. He's seen swingin' at their saddles the scalp-locks o'Indians they'd scalped theirselves. He's seen women come in with naryone o' their men-folk left alive. He seen 'em come in crazy, never tobe sane again, after the horrors o' that trail. He's seen a man comein safe an' untouched, after wheelin' a wheelbarrow nigh threethousand miles. He's seen seven men an' nine women get to theSierras out of a party of 118, leaving 102 dead on the road.
THE COMING OF THE FORTY-NINERS.]
DAVID EGELSTON.
A Forty-Niner, and the Discoverer of Gold Hill.]
"I've heard tell, an' I believe it, that across the desert stretch aman could ha' walked for forty miles an' put his foot on a bone atevery step. An' o' those who did reach, most o' them were so weak thatcamp fever an' dysentery took 'em off like flies. A good half died atthe diggin's before they ever found a bit o' gold.
"How many o' the forty-niners died at sea? There's no tellin'. Shipsset out from all corners o' the globe. There was a wild rush fromEngland. That meant goin' round the Horn, an' there weren't manysteamships, then. Sailin'-ships, so rotten that their owners were gladto get rid of 'em, were sold to forty-niners at fancy prices. In oneweek, eighteen ships sailed from England to go round the Horn toCaliforny an' seven arrived. The gold o' Sutter's Mill called many agood man to leave his bones on the ocean bottom.
"But it wasn't all bad luck an' dyin'. Lots o' the diggers struck itrich an' spent it quick. Gamblin' an' drinkin' an' work--that's allthere was to a minin' camp in them days. Spendin' freely give a man aminute's glory. Treatin' the crowd was the only way to be popular.An', in a minin' camp, where there's no women
to live with, nochildren to think of, no homes to go to, what is there but the saloon,an' what's the use o' the saloon without friends! A bag o' gold-dustwas enough for a spree.
"Gold-diggin' don't go to make a man careful. It's always to-morrowthat's goin' to be the lucky day. What's the use o' savin' ten dollarswhen a stroke o' the pick or a swirl o' the pan may suddenly give aman a thousand? So they thought. One miner found a pocket that nettedhim $60,000 in two weeks, an' when he sobered up, he hadn't sixdollars' worth o' dust left.
"There was some that stuck to their earnin's, just the same, but theywas either quick with a gun or slow wi' their tongues. Six brotherscome out from England, none o' them ever havin' roughed it before, butthey stuck together an' stayed sober. They were let alone, because totouch one meant to fight six. They went back to England, at the end o'the first season, with a million dollars between 'em.
"One man, who started out from 'Frisco wi' a drove of a hundred hogs,figurin' on sellin' 'em in the minin' camps for fresh meat, reachedFeather River wi' five. But he sold those five for more'n twice asmuch as he'd paid for the hundred. An' that was only the beginnin'! Onthe way, his hogs rootin' in the ground had uncovered two pockets. Hecovered the places an' marked 'em wi' crosses, so's folks should thinkthey was graves. On his way back, he took $5,000 out o' one pocket an'$10,000 out o' the other. An' then some folks try to make out thatthere ain't no such thing as luck!"
"But is it all so chancy as that?" queried Clem. "Surely if a chapknew in what sort of ground or near what sort of rock gold wasgenerally found, he'd have some idea where to look."
"Sure he would," agreed Jim, "but gold goes where it durn pleases, an'that's the only rule I know. O' course, every prospector has his ownidees, same as he has for playin' poker, but he don't win any quickerbecause o' that. Leastways, not so far as I've seen.
"As for judgin' by the rock an' the color o' the soil, why, you cantake your pick. Take San Diego County, Californy, where I've worked,the gold lies in schist, sometimes blue, green, or grey. In theHomestake, South Dakota, red looks good, a sort o' rotten quartzstained with iron. Black flint's a good sign in Colorado. Snow-whitequartz is often lucky. Purple porphyry sometimes has veins that workup rich. An' I've seen gold come out o' pink sandstone, yellowsandstone, all shades o' granite, an' even coal!"
Clem turned an incredulous glance at Owens, but the mine-owner noddedagreement.
"Jim's right," he said, "color isn't any clue. Gold can be found inany kind of rock. So far as that goes, it shows up in strata of anygeological age. There's gold everywhere. There isn't a range of hillsin any country of the world which may not contain gold. There isn't abed of sand or gravel that may not be auriferous. Even the sea beach,in places, has yielded fortunes. For that matter, there's gold inevery bucket of water you dip up from the sea.
"But there's not much of it. Geologists have figured that there'sabout one cent's worth of gold to every ton of rock in the earth'scrust, but it would take fourteen dollars a ton to handle it. There'sabout a hundredth of a cent's worth of gold in a ton of sea water, andit would cost about ten dollars a ton to get it out. Not much chanceof getting rich that way, is there?"
"I should say not," declared Clem, with decision.
"But, as Jim has been pointing out, gold isn't scattered evenly allthrough the earth. In some places, it's moderately plentiful, inothers it's scarce or entirely absent. Prospecting for gold, Clem,doesn't mean looking for a place where there is gold, but looking fora place where the proportion of gold to the soil or to the rock ishigh enough to give a profit in the working of it.
"It isn't always the place where the gold is most plentiful that givesthe greatest profit, either. A low-grade ore, that is a rockcontaining only a small proportion of gold, may be worth a great dealif it is near the surface, if the rock is easily crushed, if it isnear water-power, and if transportation is not too difficult.
"A high-grade ore, in which there is a large proportion of gold, maybe worth a good deal less, if it is more difficult to work and lesseasy of access. The richest gold-field in the world, that of the Rand,in South Africa, which gives one-third of the total gold output of theworld, is of an ore so poor that a forty-niner would have turned uphis nose at it, and the machinery, even of thirty years ago, couldhave done nothing with it. Nearly all the big mines of to-day arewinning wealth out of low-grade ore.
"Some of these days, Clem, I'll explain the geology of gold to you,and show you how it is that the mines which give the richest specimensare sometimes the poorest mines to work. But I'm breaking into Jim'sstory."
"I was jest a-sayin'," continued Jim, who had listened with impatienceto Owens' explanation, "that them as says there ain't no luck inminin' ain't never done no minin'. I've been showin' you how some mengot rich in a minute an' hundreds got nothin'.
"But there was some fields that was a frost, right from the start.They promised big an' give big for the first scratch or two.Then--nothin'! Kern River was one o' those an' Father got bit.
"My grand-pap, he'd gone back to Utah to take command of a band o''Destroyin' Angels', as the Gentiles called the Danites, leavin'Father to go on pannin' on the Sacramento. The claims was peterin' outfast, but there was good day's wages to be got, still.
"Then, in 1855, come the news o' the Kern River strike. If folk hadgone crazy in forty-nine, they got crazier still this time. There wasall the fame o' the last strike to lure 'em on. The same ol' story o'desert trails without water, o' minin' camps that were death-traps,was repeated, only ten times worse. Twenty thousand started in thesame week. The last few miles was a trail o' blood. Men stabbed theirfriends in the back to get to the diggin's first. The stakin' o'claims was done, six-shooter in hand.
"And, o' the twenty thousand, there wasn't twenty that cleaned uprich. My father, he wasn't one o' the twenty. He prospected, up an'down, until he'd spent the last ounce o' gold-dust he'd got from fiveyears' work, an' all but starved to death on his way across thedesert, headin' for Utah.
"When he got into Nevada, he didn't have a pound o' flour left. Hedidn't have nothin' left, nothin' but his pick an' shovel an' pan. Allthe rest was gone. He didn't have no trade but prospectin'. Wellenough he knew he'd leave his bones on the trail if he tried to footit to Salt Lake City.
"He'd heard about gold being found on the Carson River, in Nevada, in1850, by Prouse Kelly and John Orr, an' he knew that they'd gone backan' done well. Several other small placers had been found, nowaysrich, but still enough to keep a busy man goin'. He'd learned from hisKern River experience that a man did better, stickin' to a smallclaim'n tryin' for the big prizes, an' he made for the small placerso' the Carson River. A store-keeper grub-staked him, to start with,an' in a month or two, he was clear.
"Next year, that was '56, his pard struck what looked like a silvervein, an' started off to the city wi' some samples. Father, he stuckby the gold. That's where he lost out. He prospected in Six Mile Canyonan' found little color--his bad luck again, for, in '57, twoprospectors made a rich strike less'n a quarter of a mile away fromwhere he'd been pannin'. They found signs o' silver, too, but chuckedthe stuff aside. Father plugged along, an' at last struck a littlepocket in a creek off the Carson. A month's work gave him near athousand dollars' worth o' dust, an' he reckoned he'd go back to SaltLake City. He'd been away eight years.
"Grand-pap was still alive an' told Father to stay home an' gofarmin'. But it didn't go. The prospectin' bug had hit Father toohard. In the spring o' '59 he started back for the Carson Riveragain, an' Mother come along. She reckoned she might never see himagain, if she didn't.
"That summer, there was three folks on the claim. Another pard hadcome, a little one, what had for his first toy a nugget o' gold tiedon a bit o' string. I was born on a minin' claim, for that little pardwas--me!"