472
APPE\DIX.
Most of the streams upon which gold is found, are mountain torrents, flowing through rocky and precipitous channels, and a yellowish red soil. There is apparently much iron in the earth, and where most of the gold is obtained, the bed and banks of the rivers are composed of coarse gravel intermingled with sand and a yellowish earth. So far as I have observed, or can ascertain from others, the gold is always found in the stratum of " drift" or " diluvium," unless it has been displaced by mountain torrents, or through other comparatively modern agencies. The fine gold is found in the lower portions of the streams, and is extracted from the earth by means of washing in common tin pans, and vessels of every kind which can be substituted for them. The finest portions of the earth are removed by washing, and a kind of gyratory motion of the pan: the gravel is taken out with the hand, and the gold is left in the vessels, with a kind of black, ferruginous sand, not unlike that used in writing. The residue (gold and sand) is then left upon a board or cloth to dry, when the sand is blown off with a common bellows or the mouth, while the greater specific gravity of the gold causes it to remain behind. Much of the finest of the gold is thus blown off with the sand and lost.
Vast numbers of the machines resembling nursery cradles are used in this business. The rocking of the cradle answers to the gyratory motion of the pan; the water, mud, and fine sand escaping from the foot of the machine over a series of small cross-bars on its bottom, which are sufficient impediments to stop the more coarse particles of gold. Over the head of the cradle is a coarse sieve, upon which the auriferous earth is placed, and the machine being in motion, water is poured upon the sieve, and the gold, sand, and fine earthy matter is thus taken into the body of the machine, while the gravel is rejected. All these methods are more or less imperfect, and the process by amalgamation with quicksilver has not been adopted up to this date. It is supposed that at least one-half the gold contained in a given quantity of earth is lost, by the imperfect measures taken for cleaning it.
As the workmen ascend the streams into the mountains, the gold becomes coarser and more massive. On the lower portions of the streams, it is found in thin flat particles, resembling small golden fish scales. Higher in the mountains it is found varying in size, from the finest particles to pieces of five or six ounces in weight, and of all conceivable forms. Many of the largest pieces contain small portions of quartz and other granite rock imbedded in them. The coarse gold is dug out of the crevices among the rocks, in the dry beds of mountain torrents, with pickaxes, small iron bars, spades, butcher-knives, sticks, Sic. &c. In many places the streams flow over strata of coarse slate or shale standing vertically, and between the different layers the gold is deposited by the water.
As no one has yet found the gold in its native matrix, a question