belittle the
results of his work. He is the pioneer of civilization; and personally
he is generally a fine fellow. At the same time, as in every other
profession, the ranks of the prospectors include their share of the
riff-raff. It was so in our district, and we were destined shortly to
come in contact with one of them.

Tom Connor in his letter instructed us as to what he wished us to do: it
was very simple. He asked us to walk up the little canyon along which our
stream flowed, when it did flow, and to examine the bed of each of its
feeders as we came to them, to determine, if possible, which of the
branch streams it was that brought down the powdered lead-ore. He also
suggested that we get out some more of the black sand from the bottom of
the pool for him to see, and at the same time ascertain, if we could,
how much of a deposit there was there.

The last request we performed first. Taking down to the pool a long,
pointed iron rod, we lowered it into the water, marking the depth by
tying a bit of string round the rod at high-water-mark, and then bored a
hole down through the frozen sand until we struck bed-rock. By this
means we discovered that the deposit was five inches thick at the upper
end of the pool. A few feet further from the waterfall, however, the
deposit was thicker, but we noticed at the same time that the ground ice
which came up carried with it more or less yellow sand. The further we
retreated from the waterfall, too, the larger became the proportion of
yellow sand, until towards the edge of the pool it had taken the place
of the black sand altogether.

Having done this, we poked up a lot of the ground ice, which we
collected and put into a tin bucket, and taking this home we melted the
ice, poured off the water, and made a little parcel of the sand that
remained.

A few days later we had finished our ice-cutting and had stowed away the
crop in the ice-house, when we were at length free to go off and make
the little prospecting expedition that Tom had asked us to undertake.

First walking up the bed of the canyon, where the water was now
represented by sheets of crackling white ice, we arrived presently at
the first branch creek which came in on the right. This we ascended in
turn, going some distance up it before we found a likely patch of sand,
into which we chopped a hole with the old hatchet we had brought for the
purpose, disclosing a little of the black material at the bottom; though
the