irsute, and thorny. These
we speedily cleared away, and selecting one of the largest of the old
smelting houses, we soon put in order for work. Besides our "quartz"
mining in the old shafts and in new ones which we opened we also
engaged in "gulch" and "surface" mining in the vicinity.

As some account of the different modes employed to get at the precious
metals, with which the rocks and soils of the far western states are so
richly stored, may not be uninteresting to the reader, I will briefly
give it.

Mining for gold alone is divided into two general classes: that which
seeks the metal from the solid rock or quartz, and that which finds it
in sand, gravel, or soil. The former process is the universal and
familiar one of all rock mining, following the rich veins into the
bowels of the earth with pick and powder, crushing the rock and
separating the infinitesimal atoms of metal from the dusty, powdered
mass.

The theory of the geologists is, that this is the original form or
deposit of the precious metals; that the gold found in gravel, sand, or
soil, lying as it does almost universally in the beds of rivers, or
under the caves of the mountains, has been washed or ground out of the
hard hills by the action of the elements through long years. Washing
with water is the universal means of getting at these deposits of the
gold. But the scale on which this work is done, and the
instrumentalities of application vary from the simple hand-pan, pick,
and shovel of the original miner, operating along the banks of a little
stream, to grand combination enterprises for changing the entire course
of a river, running shafts down hundreds of feet to get into the beds
of long ago streams, and bringing water through ditches and flumes, and
great pipes for ten or twenty miles, and withall to wash down a hillside
of golden gravel, and extract its precious particles. The simple
individual pan-washers are the first in the field, but it soon ceases to
be profitable to this class of operators, and they soon move on in
search of richer "diggings." The other means are employed on greater or
less scales of magnitude, by combinations of men and capital. All the
forms of gold-washing run into each other, indeed; and companies,
sometimes consisting of only two or three persons, with capitals of a
few hundred dollars merely, buy a sluice claim, or seize a deserted bed,
and with shovel and pick, and a small stream of water, run the sands
over an