THE FORTY-NINERS
Several days elapsed before Jim took up his story, Owens preferring to
wait until the prospector grew stronger. The mine-owner was shrewd
enough to see that if he did not show too much haste, Jim would be
less suspicious.
When the time arrived, Jim was up and dressed, though the doctor would
only allow him out of doors for a few minutes at a time. The
prospector had evidently been thinking out the beginning of his story,
for, when his visitors arrived, he opened without preface.
"There's a lot o' wild yarns been told about the findin' o' gold in
Californy," he began. "I've heard some, an' wild an' woolly they was;
an' I've read some in books, an' they was wilder yet; an' I've seen
some in the movies, an' they was a crime!
"Not but what them days wasn't tough! They was! The crowds what hit
the minin' camps o' the Sierras in the fifties was out for gold an'
nothin' else, an' they didn't much care how they got it. Father, he
was a forty-niner himself, an' he was a rough un if anything got in
his way. But he had more sense'n most, an', without any book-l'arnin'
to speak of, he knew a heap about gold. If he'd been alive when I made
my strike, old as he was, he'd ha' gone there, an' he'd ha' got there,
too.
"I come o' Mormon stock, I do. My grand-pap, he made the trail to Salt
Lake City wi' Brigham Young. Grandma, she used a rifle to defend the
home camp, when the Illinois and Indiana folk came to massacre the
women an' children, after the men were gone. Judgin' from what I've
heard about her shootin', there wasn't many bullets wasted. Some o'
these days, when you ain't got nothin' better to do, I'll tell you the
story o' my grand-pap. He come to be one o' the Danites, later.[4]
[Footnote 4: For the relation of the Mormons and the Danites to the
forty-niners and the emigrant trains going west, see the author's "The
Book of Cowboys."]
"You'll know the story o' Sutter's Mill, likely, Mr. Owens,"--Jim
returned to the "Mr." in Clem's presence,--"but Clem, he don't know
nothin' about it, an' he ought to be put wise if he's goin' to take a
hand in this game.
"It all come about in queer fashion, a good deal like it did in
Australia, as Mr. Owens was a-tellin' me a few days ago. The first
signs o' gold was found on the Americanos River, which runs into the
Sacramento. Found by accident, they was, too.
"There was a chap out them parts--an Indian-fighter--Cap'n Sutter by
name. He owned a lot o' land an' used to run cattle in a small way,
for the time I'm tellin' about was long afore the days o' the cowboys
an' the ol' Texas-Drive trail.[5] This Sutter had a foreman called
James W. Marshall, who, besides his reg'lar job o' handlin' cattle an'
greasers, looked after the runnin' of a one-horse saw-mill on the
Americanos. It was an over-shot water-wheel mill, an' jest roughly
chucked together.
[Footnote 5: For the history of the Texas trail and the winning of the
West for the United States, see the author's "The Book of Cowboys."]
"By-'n'-by Marshall begin to notice that the ol' mill wasn't workin'
any too good. A lot o' sand an' gravel had come down wi' the water,
chokin' up the tail-race some. The run-off wouldn't get away fast
enough an' churned up under the water-wheel, causin' a loss o' power.
"To get the tail-race clear an' to widen her out a bit, Marshall,
he throws the wheel out o' gear, pulls up the gate o' the dam, an'
lets the whole head o' water in the mill-pond go a-flyin'. That water
hit into the tail-race like a hydraulic jet an' scooped her out clear,
carryin' a mass o' sand an' gravel into the river below.
[Illustration: SUTTER'S MILL.
Where Marshall discovered gold, January 19, 1848.]
[Illustration: THE RUSH TO THE GOLD MINES.
Scene in San Francisco in 1849.]
"Next day, that was January 19, 1848, Marshall goes down to the river
below the tail-race to see how she's shapin' an' if the cut-out is big
enough. He's walkin' along the bank when he notices something glitter.
He looks again, an' sees what he thinks is a bit o' Spanish opal, not
the real gem, Clem, but a soft stone they find out there which looks
even prettier'n an opal, but wears off an' gets dull in no time. They
sell 'em to greenhorns, still.
"Marshall don't worry none about that, but by-'n-by, seein' a lot
more, as he thinks, he figures to pick up some, jest to show.
Accordin' as he used to tell the tale, he didn't think it was worth
the trouble, but spottin' one that looks different from the rest, he
reaches down into the water an' fishes it out.
"It ain't no opal at all. It's a bit o' shiny white quartz wi' a line
o' yellow runnin' through. That's what makes the glitter. He hunts
around some, rememberin' that he'd seen other bits shinin' yellow the
same way, an' finds quite a few, all of 'em looking like scales o'
pure gold. They was jest about the size an' thinness o' the scales
that comes off a rattlesnake's skin after it's dry, an' for a while,
Marshall figured they was some kind o' scale or horn, washed down thin
by the water.
"In them times, the folks in Californy hadn't no idee o' minin'. It
was still Spanish territory, for one thing, an', for another, there
wasn't any minin' done. So Marshall wasn't thinkin' about gold. It was
jest curiosity what made him hunt up some more o' those queer yellow
scales.
"The more he found, the more puzzled he got. They was heavy; they bent
like a bit o' metal, a thing a stone won't never do; they could be
scratched with a pocket-knife; they didn't show no layers like horn
does when it's old. The biggest bit he found weighed less'n a quarter
of an ounce, an' this one was stickin' in the bank o' the tail-race,
where the water had been washin' the earth away.
"He puts this last bit on a flat rock an' hammers it with a stone. It
beats out flat quite easy. Marshall wasn't no fool, an' he knew there
wasn't no yellow metal acted that way but gold or copper, an' native
copper ain't that color.
"There was one o' the mill-hands wi' Marshall at the time, a chap
called Peter Wimmer. He didn't know any more about gold'n Marshall
did, but he'd heard said that every metal, savin' gold, gets black if
it's boiled in strong lye. Marshall gets Wimmer to keep quiet by
promisin' him a stake in whatever's found, an' tries the boilin'
trick. The flakes o' metal stays put, an' shows nary a sign o'
tarnishin'.
"By this time, Marshall was gettin' pretty sure that what he'd found
was gold. He hadn't no notion of a gold mine, though, seein' he'd
never heard of any. He reckoned that these flakes must be gold that
had been buried by the Indians, long ago, an' had been washed down;
from a grave, maybe, or some o' the treasure that the Spaniards had
been huntin'.
"Jest the same, he was curious. He strolled away from the tail-race,
idle-like, an' started huntin' promiscuous. He found specks o' gold
all over. That settled him. He jumped on a horse an' rode down to
Cap'n Sutter wi' the news.
"Sutter was a whole lot more excited than Marshall was. He was
educated an' knew the history o' Mexico. He knew the Indians in
Californy had possessed gold in the time o' the first comin' o' the
Spaniards, an' he reckoned that gold must ha' come from somewhere.
There'd always been some talk o' gold around where the Spanish
missions had started, and, jest three years afore, a Spanish don had
sent some ore to Mexico, sayin' that there was gold an' silver
a-plenty around, an' the government had better get busy an' develop
it. But the Spaniards weren't havin' any. Ever since they got so badly
fooled, a couple o' hundred years afore, in their hunt for the 'Golden
Cities o' Cibola,'[6] they let Californy alone.
[Footnote 6: For the gold-hunting expedition of the Spanish
Conquistadores in North America--records of extraordinary heroism and
adventure--see the author's "The Quest of the Western World." For the
gold-stories of Ancient Mexico, see the author's "The Aztec-hunters."]
"Sutter didn't waste no time. He rode right back to the mill wi' the
foreman. They didn't have to poke around long afore Sutter was plumb
sure it was the real stuff. There was some of it in the Americanos,
but the gold was even thicker in the dried-up creeks an' gulches that
run into the river on both sides. With his penknife, Sutter pried out
o' the rock-face a piece o' gold weighin' nigh two ounces.
"Some o' the mill-hands had got wise, too. Maybe Wimmer talked--though
he said he hadn't. Maybe they just got a hunch, when they saw Sutter
an' Marshall prospectin' around. They started huntin', too, but the
flakes were small an' took a long time to find. None o' them knew
enough to try washin' the sand, an' all they found didn't amount to
much.
"Sutter took samples o' the gold to the fort at Monterey, where
General Mason was in command. Mason was more interested in tryin' to
keep the Apaches an' Comanches quiet than he was in fussin' about
metals. He was a soldier, an' minin' wasn't his line. But he knew that
the federal authorities at Washington ought to be notified.
"There weren't no post nor telegraph in them times--that was 'way
afore the days o' the Pony Express,[7] even--an' Mason sent a special
messenger. Politics were queer in Californy around that time. Spain
claimed the territory, the United States claimed it, an' for a
while--a month, maybe--Californy was a republic on her own. The
messenger reached Washington, all right, an' his report hurried up the
signin' o' the treaty which made Californy American. That happened
jest six weeks after Marshall had picked up his first bit o' gold an'
only two weeks after the messenger arrived. Word was sent to Mason to
be sure an' keep law an' order, no matter what happened. It was a bit
too late, then; goin' an' comin' from Washington took months.
[Footnote 7: See the author's "The Boy with the U. S. Mail."]
"Things were happenin' out 'Frisco way. Geo. Bennett, who'd been
workin' at the mill, left there about the middle o' February, takin'
some flakes o' gold with him. When he got to 'Frisco, he met Isaac
Humphrey, who'd worked on the Dahlonega strike, in Georgia, in 1830.
Humphrey took jest one look at the stuff, an' said right away that it
was gold.
"Bennett an' Humphrey hot-footed it back to the mill. They found it
workin' jest as usual. Some o' the men had picked up more gold, but
casual-like, after workin' hours. Marshall hadn't done any more
prospectin'. Sutter was waitin' to hear from Mason.
"Humphrey, bein' a gold miner, panned up an' 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 panned for dust.
_Courtesy of the Grand Trunk Railway._]
[Illustration: FLUME AT THE MELONES MINE.
To carry 600 miner's inches of water from the Stanislaus River to the
120-stamp mill.]
"Always supposing that there was some gold there to start with," put
in Owens. "How many times have you panned, Jim, without finding any
color?"
"Millions, I reckon! I panned every day an' all day, once, for two
years, without gettin' enough gold dust to fill a pipe-bowl, an' then
I got a double-handful in half a day. In general, you're doin' all
right if you can get out of each pan enough dust to cover a
finger-nail. So now you know what pannin' is, Clem."
"It's not such a cinch, at that!" the young fellow commented.
"But you may strike it rich any day, any hour, any minute!" Jim
exclaimed, the fever of search in his eyes. "When Humphrey got up to
Sutter's Mill, the first man to know anything about gold-washin' that
got there, he was takin' out a thousand dollars a day, easy, for a
month or more. The placers were rich."
"A 'placer,' Clem," Owens interrupted to explain, "is a deposit where
there is gold mixed with sand, or gravel or mud. It is always a
deposit which has been washed down by water, either a river which is
actually running, or which is found in a dry bed where a river used to
run. Mining people call it an 'alluvial or flood deposit.' Most of the
gold-strikes have been found in this way. Go ahead, Jim."
"Right about the time that Humphrey was prospectin' an' doin'
handsomely, an Indian, who had worked on placers in Lower California,
told another o' the mill-hands how to get hold o' the dust. Besides
that, a Kentuckian, who'd been spyin' on Marshall an' Sutter, had
noticed that they'd found gold not only in the tail-race, but up the
creeks. Both of 'em went down to 'Frisco.
"It was interestin', but nobody got excited. Gold strikes weren't
known yet. There'd only been two gold rushes in the United States
afore, neither of 'em big ones.
"The first was in North Carolina. A young chap, Conrad Reed, was
shootin' fish with a bow and arrow in Meadow Creek. He saw in the
water a good-sized stone with a yellow gleam. Pickin' it up, he found
it heavy--seventeen pounds it weighed--an' he reckoned it was some
kind o' metal, but he didn't think o' gold. That was in 1799. The
stone was used to prop open a stable door for a couple o' years.
"One day, runnin' short o' groceries an' bein' shy o' ready cash, Reed
thought he'd go into Fayetteville an' see if, maybe, he could raise a
few dollars on the stone, as a curiosity. He took it to a jeweler, who
said he thought there might be gold in it, an' told the young fellow
to come back in the afternoon.
"When Reed came back, the jeweler showed him a thin wire o' gold,
about as long as a lead pencil, an' said that was all the gold in the
chunk. He offered Reed $3.50 for the gold an' Reed took it. How much
the jeweler kept for himself, no one can't say.
"That started a little local talk, an' one or two men begun
prospectin' in a shiftless sort o' way. They found nothin'. In 1813,
some placers were found an' there was a mild rush, but it died right
out. There was gold there, sure enough, but scattered so's a man
didn't earn more'n a day's wages at washin'. Jest the same, all the
gold in the United States came from North Carolina for twenty years
after that, more'n a hundred thousand dollars' worth bein' sent to
the Mint. But that's durn little, when you come to look at it, less'n
fourteen dollars a day. An' that's not much for a bunch o' men!"
"No," admitted Owens, "you couldn't start a gold rush on that. And the
second strike, Jim?"
"That was the Georgia deposits, at Dahlonega, where Humphrey came
from. They're workin' yet, though small potatoes beside Californy an'
Colorado.
"Californy was jest about uninhabited, then. There was only fifteen
thousand folks in the whole durn State in 1848. Over a hundred
thousand more came in the two years followin'. O' that lot, ninety per
cent. was prospectors an' the rest was sharks, livin' off 'em. At the
time o' the strike, 'Frisco didn't boast a hundred houses wi' white
folks in them, an' they didn't know nothin' about Georgia an' Carolina
gold.
"On May 8th, though, one o' the mill-hands come down from Sutter's
Mill. He'd quit work to try gold-findin' on his own, an' takin' a tip
from Humphrey, he'd washed out 23 ounces in four days. A 'Frisco man
paid him $500 for his dust, cash down. That was good earnin's for four
days.
"Sudden, the fever hit! The news got over the little town like a
prairie fire durin' a dry spell. By night, half the town was talkin'
gold; next mornin', the other half. Nine out o' every ten men quit
work. A pick an' shovel an' a tin pan was worth a hundred dollars
before night. One man paid a thousand dollars for an outfit, includin'
a tent an' a month's grub. He was found dead half-way to the diggings,
murdered for his outfit.
"The more excited ones an' those with the least money an' sense,
started right off on foot, though it was all of a hundred an' fifty
miles to Sutter's Mill, an' no trail, sixty o' these miles across a
desert without water. No one ever did know how many o' that bunch
ended up by feedin' the turkey buzzards.
"On the 14th an' 15th, a whole fleet o' launches an' small boats
started out across San Francisco Sound an' Pablo Bay an' up the
Sacramento River, every boat loaded to the gunwales. They said there
was 2,000 men on the way.
"That wasn't jest a rush, it was a stampede. Not ten men in the entire
crowd knew the first durn thing about prospectin'. They had some fool
idee that pannin' gold was like pickin' flowers, all you had to do was
to find it. Any one what knew better could ha' told 'em, but there
wasn't any one to tell 'em, an' likely, they wouldn't ha' listened if
he had. What's the use o' talkin' to a crazy man? An' a gold-rush is a
bunch o' lunatics. I know! I've been that way myself, more'n once.
"Out Salt Lake City way, the winter had been bad. We Mormons had gone
to Utah to avoid bein' citizens o' the United States, an' the
government had took in Utah as soon as we made it worth takin'. My
grand-pap an' my father were sore at that, an' they decided to start
off with a party for Californy, which was still Spanish.
"Right around the 1st o' May, they reached the Sacramento River an'
heard about gold bein' found. They took it as a sign that Providence
was protectin' 'em, an' settled right down there to pan out the
stream. Travelin', as the Mormons always did, with a proper leader,
they pitched an organized camp. Trained to the last notch by their
wanderin's in the wilderness, there wasn't a tenderfoot or an idle man
in the bunch, an', workin' steadily, they begun to clean up pretty
good.
"Jest a month later come the first wave o' the rush from 'Frisco. They
struck the placers, their mouths fairly waterin' for gold, only to
find the Mormons there already. That was a bit too much! After all
their trouble an' misery, all the expense, all the deaths, they come
to find all the claims along the strike staked out by Mormons.
"Durin' this time, Californy had been taken over by the United States.
The 'Frisco bunch knew they'd be protected by law for anything they
did against the Mormons, an', after a short pow-wow, they tried to
rush the camp.
"But my grand-pap, an' some more o' the leaders, who were right handy
with their rifles, were standin' at the ready. They'd fought their way
across the plains, when the redskins were swarmin', an' they weren't
the kind to take back water before a crowd o' tenderfeet. The 'Frisco
men, city chaps a lot o' them, begun to waver, an' asked a parley.
"The Mormon leader, he told 'em, cold, what they'd get if they come
any farther, an' hinted, pretty broad, that there was more cold lead
around those diggin's than there was gold. But he told 'em, too, that
there was a lot o' the other placers around wi' no one washin' 'em.
The others grumbled but got out. Luckily, there was gold enough for
all, at first. Later on, there was a sure-enough fight over a sluice,
and the bullets went thick. The Mormons knew how to shoot, an' there
was fifty o' the Gentiles dead when they broke back. Our folks were
let alone on the Sacramento, after that.
"Durin' this month, John Bidwell struck it rich on the Feather River,
75 miles away from Sutter's Mill, and Pearson B. Reading on the Clear
River, 100 miles further on. The news scattered the 'Frisco crowd,
many a man leavin' a good claim in hopes to find a better. Others went
prospectin' on their own. By the end o' the year, along the whole
western slope o' the Sierra Nevada, from Pitt River to the Tuolumne,
there wasn't a stream or a creek or a dry ravine that didn't have some
one prospectin' or pannin' on it.
"Most o' those that got on to the diggin's in the first two months
made money an' made it fast. A few struck bonanzas and took out a
thousand dollars a day. Quite a lot got good pickin's an' cleaned up
at the rate of a hundred a day. The rest were doin' good if they
cleaned up twenty, an' that was jest about enough to live on, at
minin'-camp prices. I've seen potatoes sell at five dollars apiece to
be eaten raw, when the scurvy was ragin', an' three men were killed
in a fight over the buyin' of a fresh cabbage.
"Those was tough times, even for the first lot that come from 'Frisco.
There was no sort o' law an' order in the camps, no sanitation an' no
doctors. Typhoid an' dysentery got a good hold by the end o' June. You
could get the reek o' fever an' disease a mile away.
"Men too sick to walk crawled out to their claims an' died there,
scary lest some claim-jumper should seize their claims. Hope stuck
with 'em to the last. Scores fell dead into the stream, wi' the pan
still in their hands. One time, when they come to carry a dead man
from beside his pan, that he hadn't time to clean up afore death took
him, there was the first color in it that had been found on the claim.
It brought in a pile o' money later.
"Later, when the real forty-niners came, men o' red blood, vigilance
committees were organized an' the camps got sort o' human. But at the
start, it was ugly. If a man didn't clean up quick, he starved. If he
did, somebody jumped his claim, or put a bullet in him. If the body of
a miner was found floatin', it was called accidental death, even if
his head was blown off, for, the sayin' used to go, 'A miner ought to
carry enough gold dust on him to sink.' Scores, aye, hundreds, died o'
gun-play.
"About the fine breed o' men that come later, the forty-niners that
crossed the whole plains o' the West from Missouri to Santa Fe an'
beyond, men that brought their women an' children in long lines o'
prairie schooners, keepin' scouts out ahead an' one each side,
fightin' famine, thirst an' redskins all the way, you won't want me to
tell you. Every American knows their story.
"But every one don't know what them trains o' gold-seekers looked
like, when they reached the diggin's! My father's told me, though.
"He's seen 'em reach the Sacramento, half-scalped an' with wounds that
never healed. He's seen swingin' at their saddles the scalp-locks o'
Indians they'd scalped theirselves. He's seen women come in with nary
one o' their men-folk left alive. He seen 'em come in crazy, never to
be sane again, after the horrors o' that trail. He's seen a man come
in safe an' untouched, after wheelin' a wheelbarrow nigh three
thousand miles. He's seen seven men an' nine women get to the
Sierras out of a party of 118, leaving 102 dead on the road.
[Illustration: THE COMING OF THE FORTY-NINERS.]
[Illustration: DAVID EGELSTON.
A Forty-Niner, and the Discoverer of Gold Hill.]
"I've heard tell, an' I believe it, that across the desert stretch a
man could ha' walked for forty miles an' put his foot on a bone at
every step. An' o' those who did reach, most o' them were so weak that
camp fever an' dysentery took 'em off like flies. A good half died at
the diggin's before they ever found a bit o' gold.
"How many o' the forty-niners died at sea? There's no tellin'. Ships
set out from all corners o' the globe. There was a wild rush from
England. That meant goin' round the Horn, an' there weren't many
steamships, then. Sailin'-ships, so rotten that their owners were glad
to get rid of 'em, were sold to forty-niners at fancy prices. In one
week, eighteen ships sailed from England to go round the Horn to
Californy an' seven arrived. The gold o' Sutter's Mill called many a
good man to leave his bones on the ocean bottom.
"But it wasn't all bad luck an' dyin'. Lots o' the diggers struck it
rich an' spent it quick. Gamblin' an' drinkin' an' work--that's all
there was to a minin' camp in them days. Spendin' freely give a man a
minute's glory. Treatin' the crowd was the only way to be popular.
An', in a minin' camp, where there's no women to live with, no
children to think of, no homes to go to, what is there but the saloon,
an' what's the use o' the saloon without friends! A bag o' gold-dust
was enough for a spree.
"Gold-diggin' don't go to make a man careful. It's always to-morrow
that's goin' to be the lucky day. What's the use o' savin' ten dollars
when a stroke o' the pick or a swirl o' the pan may suddenly give a
man a thousand? So they thought. One miner found a pocket that netted
him $60,000 in two weeks, an' when he sobered up, he hadn't six
dollars' worth o' dust left.
"There was some that stuck to their earnin's, just the same, but they
was either quick with a gun or slow wi' their tongues. Six brothers
come out from England, none o' them ever havin' roughed it before, but
they stuck together an' stayed sober. They were let alone, because to
touch one meant to fight six. They went back to England, at the end o'
the first season, with a million dollars between 'em.
"One man, who started out from 'Frisco wi' a drove of a hundred hogs,
figurin' on sellin' 'em in the minin' camps for fresh meat, reached
Feather River wi' five. But he sold those five for more'n twice as
much as he'd paid for the hundred. An' that was only the beginnin'! On
the way, his hogs rootin' in the ground had uncovered two pockets. He
covered the places an' marked 'em wi' crosses, so's folks should think
they was graves. On his way back, he took $5,000 out o' one pocket an'
$10,000 out o' the other. An' then some folks try to make out that
there ain't no such thing as luck!"
"But is it all so chancy as that?" queried Clem. "Surely if a chap
knew in what sort of ground or near what sort of rock gold was
generally found, he'd have some idea where to look."
"Sure he would," agreed Jim, "but gold goes where it durn pleases, an'
that's the only rule I know. O' course, every prospector has his own
idees, same as he has for playin' poker, but he don't win any quicker
because o' that. Leastways, not so far as I've seen.
"As for judgin' by the rock an' the color o' the soil, why, you can
take your pick. Take San Diego County, Californy, where I've worked,
the gold lies in schist, sometimes blue, green, or grey. In the
Homestake, South Dakota, red looks good, a sort o' rotten quartz
stained with iron. Black flint's a good sign in Colorado. Snow-white
quartz is often lucky. Purple porphyry sometimes has veins that work
up rich. An' I've seen gold come out o' pink sandstone, yellow
sandstone, all shades o' granite, an' even coal!"
Clem turned an incredulous glance at Owens, but the mine-owner nodded
agreement.
"Jim's right," he said, "color isn't any clue. Gold can be found in
any kind of rock. So far as that goes, it shows up in strata of any
geological age. There's gold everywhere. There isn't a range of hills
in any country of the world which may not contain gold. There isn't a
bed of sand or gravel that may not be auriferous. Even the sea beach,
in places, has yielded fortunes. For that matter, there's gold in
every bucket of water you dip up from the sea.
"But there's not much of it. Geologists have figured that there's
about one cent's worth of gold to every ton of rock in the earth's
crust, but it would take fourteen dollars a ton to handle it. There's
about a hundredth of a cent's worth of gold in a ton of sea water, and
it would cost about ten dollars a ton to get it out. Not much chance
of getting rich that way, is there?"
"I should say not," declared Clem, with decision.
"But, as Jim has been pointing out, gold isn't scattered evenly all
through the earth. In some places, it's moderately plentiful, in
others it's scarce or entirely absent. Prospecting for gold, Clem,
doesn't mean looking for a place where there is gold, but looking for
a place where the proportion of gold to the soil or to the rock is
high enough to give a profit in the working of it.
"It isn't always the place where the gold is most plentiful that gives
the greatest profit, either. A low-grade ore, that is a rock
containing only a small proportion of gold, may be worth a great deal
if it is near the surface, if the rock is easily crushed, if it is
near water-power, and if transportation is not too difficult.
"A high-grade ore, in which there is a large proportion of gold, may
be worth a good deal less, if it is more difficult to work and less
easy of access. The richest gold-field in the world, that of the Rand,
in South Africa, which gives one-third of the total gold output of the
world, is of an ore so poor that a forty-niner would have turned up
his nose at it, and the machinery, even of thirty years ago, could
have done nothing with it. Nearly all the big mines of to-day are
winning wealth out of low-grade ore.
"Some of these days, Clem, I'll explain the geology of gold to you,
and show you how it is that the mines which give the richest specimens
are sometimes the poorest mines to work. But I'm breaking into Jim's
story."
"I was jest a-sayin'," continued Jim, who had listened with impatience
to Owens' explanation, "that them as says there ain't no luck in
minin' ain't never done no minin'. I've been showin' you how some men
got rich in a minute an' hundreds got nothin'.
"But there was some fields that was a frost, right from the start.
They promised big an' give big for the first scratch or two.
Then--nothin'! Kern River was one o' those an' Father got bit.
"My grand-pap, he'd gone back to Utah to take command of a band o'
'Destroyin' Angels', as the Gentiles called the Danites, leavin'
Father to go on pannin' on the Sacramento. The claims was peterin' out
fast, but there was good day's wages to be got, still.
"Then, in 1855, come the news o' the Kern River strike. If folk had
gone crazy in forty-nine, they got crazier still this time. There was
all the fame o' the last strike to lure 'em on. The same ol' story o'
desert trails without water, o' minin' camps that were death-traps,
was repeated, only ten times worse. Twenty thousand started in the
same week. The last few miles was a trail o' blood. Men stabbed their
friends in the back to get to the diggin's first. The stakin' o'
claims was done, six-shooter in hand.
"And, o' the twenty thousand, there wasn't twenty that cleaned up
rich. My father, he wasn't one o' the twenty. He prospected, up an'
down, until he'd spent the last ounce o' gold-dust he'd got from five
years' work, an' all but starved to death on his way across the
desert, headin' for Utah.
"When he got into Nevada, he didn't have a pound o' flour left. He
didn't have nothin' left, nothin' but his pick an' shovel an' pan. All
the rest was gone. He didn't have no trade but prospectin'. Well
enough he knew he'd leave his bones on the trail if he tried to foot
it to Salt Lake City.
"He'd heard about gold being found on the Carson River, in Nevada, in
1850, by Prouse Kelly and John Orr, an' he knew that they'd gone back
an' done well. Several other small placers had been found, noways
rich, but still enough to keep a busy man goin'. He'd learned from his
Kern River experience that a man did better, stickin' to a small
claim'n tryin' for the big prizes, an' he made for the small placers
o' the Carson River. A store-keeper grub-staked him, to start with,
an' in a month or two, he was clear.
"Next year, that was '56, his pard struck what looked like a silver
vein, an' started off to the city wi' some samples. Father, he stuck
by the gold. That's where he lost out. He prospected in Six Mile Canyon
an' found little color--his bad luck again, for, in '57, two
prospectors made a rich strike less'n a quarter of a mile away from
where he'd been pannin'. They found signs o' silver, too, but chucked
the stuff aside. Father plugged along, an' at last struck a little
pocket in a creek off the Carson. A month's work gave him near a
thousand dollars' worth o' dust, an' he reckoned he'd go back to Salt
Lake City. He'd been away eight years.
"Grand-pap was still alive an' told Father to stay home an' go
farmin'. But it didn't go. The prospectin' bug had hit Father too
hard. In the spring o' '59 he started back for the Carson River
again, an' Mother come along. She reckoned she might never see him
again, if she didn't.
"That summer, there was three folks on the claim. Another pard had
come, a little one, what had for his first toy a nugget o' gold tied
on a bit o' string. I was born on a minin' claim, for that little pard
was--me!"