og cabin in which to live. Then he made his
general survey. He went on foot up every gulch, even every little
transverse wrinkle that lay tributary to his valley, to the shallow top
of it filled with loose stones; he followed the sky-line of every ridge
which bordered and limited these gulches; he seized frequent
opportunities of making long diagonals down the slopes. Nothing escaped
him. In time he knew the general appearance of every bit of drift or
outcrop in his district. Then he sat down in his cabin and carefully
considered the probabilities. If they had not happened to please him, he
would have repeated the whole wearisome process in another valley; but
as in this case they did, he proceeded to take the next step. In other
words, he went over the same ground again with a sampling-pick and a
bundle of canvas bags. Where his theories or experience advised, he
broke off quantities of rock from the ledges, which he crushed and mixed
in the half of an old blanket; dividing, and recrushing again and again,
until an "average" was obtained in small compass. The "average" he took
home, where he dumped it into a heavy iron mortar, over which he had
suspended a pestle from a springy sapling. By alternately pulling down
and letting up on the sapling he crushed the quartz fragments with the
pestle into fine red and white sand. The sand he "panned out" for
indications of free gold.

The ledges whose averages thus showed the colour, he marked on his map
with a cross. Some leads which did not so exhibit gold, but whose other
indications he considered promising, he exploited still further,
penetrating to a layer below the surface by means of a charge or so of
powder. Or perhaps he even spent several weeks in making an irregular
hole like a well, from which he carried the broken rock in bags,
climbing up a notched tree. Then he selected more samples. This is hard
work.

Thus Peter came to know his country, and when he knew it thoroughly,
when he had made all his numerous speculations as to horses, blowouts,
and slips--then, and not until then, did he stake out his claims; then,
and not until then, did he consider himself ready to _begin_ work.

He might be quite wrong in his calculations. In that case, it was all to
do over again somewhere else. He had had this happen. Every prospector
has. The claims which Peter selected were four in number. He started in
without delay on the proof. Foot by foot the shafts descended through
th