s collapse; in ten years thereafter the stock of the Comstock
lode shrank from $3,000,000 to $2,000,000. This Comstock fever belongs
to Californian rather than to Nevadan history, and is one of the most
extraordinary in mining annals.

First the "rocker," then the "tom," the "flume," and the hydraulic
stream were the tools of the miner. Into the "rocker" and the "tom" the
miner shovelled dirt, rocking it as he poured in water, catching the
gold on riffles set across the bottom of his box; thus imitating in a
wooden box the work of nature in the rivers. The "flume" enabled him to
dry the bed of a stream while he worked over its gravels. The hydraulic
stream came into use as early as 1852 (or 1853) when prospecting of the
higher ground made it certain that the "deep" or "high" gravels--i.e.
the detrital deposits of tertiary age--contained gold, though in too
small quantities to be profitably worked in the ordinary way. The
hydraulic process received an immense development through successive
improvements of method and machinery. In this method tremendous blasts
of powder, sometimes twenty-five or even fifty tons, were used to loosen
the gravel, which was then acted on by the jet of water thrown from the
"pipes." To give an idea of the force of the agent thus employed it may
be stated that when an eight-inch nozzle is used under a heavy head,
more than 3000 ft. may be discharged in a minute with a velocity of 150
ft. per second. The water as it thus issues from the nozzle feels to the
touch like metal, and the strongest man cannot sensibly affect it with a
crowbar. A gravel bank acted on by such tremendous force crumbled
rapidly, and the disintegrated material could be run readily through
sluices to the "dumps." Hydraulic mining is no longer practised on the
scale of early days. The results were wonderful but disastrous, for the
"dumps" were usually river-beds. From 1870-1879 the bed of Bear river
was raised in places in its lower course 97 ft. by the detritus wash of
the hydraulic mines, and that of Sleepy Hollow Creek 136 ft. The total
filling up to that time on the streams in this vicinity had been from
100 to 250 ft., and many thousand acres of fine farming land were buried
under gravel,--some 16,000 on the lower Yuba alone. For many years the
mining interests were supreme, and agriculture, even after it had become
of great importance, was invariably worsted when the two clashed; but in
1884 the long and bitter "anti-deb