Go where you will, in the mining region, you are seldom a mile distant
from past or present “diggings.” Speaking generally, every ravine,
gully, or water-course has been prospected; each has, at some point,
been dug open to the “bed-rock,” and the overlaying earth or gravel run
through a “rocker,” “tom,” or “sluice,” in the hope of making it yield
the shining dust. Many of these water-courses have been deeply and
widely dug up for miles in extent. If any are left entirely undisturbed,
the presumption is strong that the subjacent rock is so near the
surface, that gold has had no chance to deposit itself thereon. In some
instances, basins or depressions in the rock have been gradually filled
up with earth—probably auriferous—through thousands of years, and the
gold which might otherwise have been strown down the valley for miles is
here collected, so that it would be sheer waste to mine throughout those
miles. But the more general opinion seems to be, that gold is diffused
throughout the soil of the entire mining region, especially upon, and
just above the surface of, the bed-rock, though only in certain
localities is it sufficiently abundant to justify efforts to extract it.
I find no one seeming to cherish any apprehensions that California will
cease to produce gold abundantly, at least within the next quarter of a
century. On the contrary, the current belief seems to be, that the
influx of population will in time so reduce the wages of labor, or the
progress of invention and discovery so increase its efficiency, that
extensive districts will ultimately be mined with profit, which are now
necessarily avoided. If the amount of available water were doubled, with
a considerable reduction of price, the gold product of California would
thereupon be increased several millions per annum. At present, mining
enterprises of considerable promise and indefinite magnitude remain in
abeyance, simply because the price of labor, the rate of interest, and
other elements of the cost of mining, are deemed too high to justify
their prosecution.