under our tent. The gold rivers were not navigable. They were sunk way
down deep in the earth. When the rainy season sets in during the winter
months, and sometimes rains every day in the month, causing the snow to
melt on the Sierra Nevada mountains, where these streams take their
rise, will cause the water to rise often from ten to twenty feet in a
night, and in the course of ages has worn their depth down into the
earth, and is supposed to have washed out of the earth the scales of
gold that are found on the banks of the rivers. The first mining was a
very simple process. A party of three could work together to the best
advantage. A virgin bar was where the river had once run over and now
receded from it. Three persons worked together, one to clear off the
sand on the ground to within six inches of the hardpan. The top earth
was not considered worth washing, the scales of gold, being heavier, had
settled through it, but could not penetrate that portion of the earth
called the hardpan, so the earth within six inches of it was impregnated
with more or less gold, and one to carry the bucket to the rocker, and
the other to run the rocker, which was located close to the water. The
rocker was a trough about three feet in length with three slats in it
and a sieve at the upper end, on which the bucket of earth was thrown.
The man worked the rocker with one hand and dipped the water out of the
river with a tin-handled dipper. As he worked the rocker the fine earth
and scales of gold passed through the holes of the sieve and settled
behind the slats in the trough, and the stones and large lumps in which
there was no gold were caught in the sieve and thrown away. After a
certain number of buckets of earth had been run through in that way, the
settlings behind the slats in the trough were put in a milk-pan and the
water was allowed to run in the pan and the fine earth and sand would
float on the top of the water. You would let that run off.

After a few operations of that kind you would see the yellow scales of