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Collection: Books and Periodicals
Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)
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Page: of 423
SHAW’S FLATS. 343
place, but it has since been discovered to be immensely
rich.
A break in this long narrow Table Mountain was
formed by a place called Shaw’s Flats, a wide extent
of perfectly flat country, four or five miles across, well
wooded with oaks, and plentifully sprinkled over
with miners’ tents and shanties.
The diggings were rich. The gold was very coarse,
and frequently found in large lumps‘; but how it got
there was not easy to conjecture, for the flat was on
a level with Table Mountain, and hollows intervened
between it and any higher ground. Mining here
was quite a clean and easy operation. Any old
gentleman might have gone in and taken a turn at it
for an hour or two before dinner just to give him an
appetite, without even wetting the soles of his boots :
indeed, he might have fancied he was only digging in
his garden, for the gold was found in the very roots
of the grass, and in most parts there was only a depth
of three or four feet from the surface to the bedrock, which was of singular character, bemg composed of masses of sandstone full of circular cavities,
and presenting all manner of fantastic forms, caused
apparently by the long-continued action of water
in rapid motion.
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