down the river, an' found
plenty o' color. He got quite excited an' declared it was richer'n
the Dahlonega field, which had been pretty good, though the surface
diggin's had petered out fast."

"What do you mean by 'he panned up and down the river and found
color?'" queried Clem.

Jim gave a short laugh of surprise.

"That's right," he said, "you don't know nothin' about prospectin', do
you? I'll tell you. Pannin' is how a prospector gets gold. It sounds
easy, but there's a trick to it, jest the same.

"A prospector's pan is just like an ordinary tin wash-pan, wi' slopin'
sides, only it's smaller; about a foot across at the bottom, an' made
of iron, not tin. Many a hundred men have got to be millionaires with
nothin' but a pick, a shovel, an' a pan.

"Supposing now, you're at the gold diggin's. You fill your pan, near
full, with sand or with gravel or earth, or whatever stuff you think
may have a little gold mixed up with it--"

"Can't you see the gold, then?" queried Clem.

"Not often, you can't. It don't lie around the ground like
twenty-dollar gold-pieces! Some o' the richest placers ever found
have the gold ground down so fine that it ain't much bigger'n grains
o' dust.

"Well, havin' nigh filled the pan, like I said, you take it to the
river, an' squattin' down, you hold it jest below the surface o' the
water, one side a trifle higher 'n the other, so the water jest flows
continual over the lower lip o' the pan. Then you give it a sort of
rockin' an' whirlin' motion, so,"--he illustrated with his hands,
Owens smilingly doing the same, "lettin' the lighter mud flow out over
the top.

"You keep on doin' that, without stoppin', for ten minutes or more. By
the end o' that time, you're rockin' pretty hard, for the heavier
stuff has got to be flicked out; but you've got to mind out, for if
you go too hard, the gold--if there is any--will go out, too.

"Then you stop, pick out any pebbles in the bottom, lookin' at 'em
hard--for they might show color--an' rock an' whirl the pan some more.
If you've done it right, when you're through, there isn't more'n a
handful o' sand an' grit at the bottom. You look at that as closely as
you know how, an' if here an' there's a little speck o' yellow, you've
found color. That's gold. You spread that handful out in the sun to
dry an' blow away the lighter part. What's left is gold."

[Illustration: THE PROSPECTOR OF TO-DAY.

Gold-bearing stream of Western Canada being pa