Collection: Books and Periodicals

About This Item:

Title: A Memorial and Biographical History of Northern California (1891) Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Publisher: Lewis Publishing Company Published: 1891 Copyright: In the public domain or published before 1925 Source(s): Google Books # of Pages: 713 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-07-22 00:25:09 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:11:29 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 06:30:36

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 713  

HISTORY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. 65 continuous stream of water was permitted to flow from a pond above. Other men below assisted in dissolving the dirt by stirring it with shovels or forks and in removing gravel. The puddling-box obtained favor where water was scanty and the clay tough. This was a box about six feet equare wherein the dirt could be stirred in the same water for some time, with a rake and frequently with animal power. By removing a plug a few inches from the bottom the muddy water could be run off and fresh water introduced. As an aid to the foregoing processes the quicksilver machine for saving fine gold which the simple crossbar failed to catch, was found of great utility. It was a long rocker with perforated iron top throvghont. above the rifflebox, above each of whose bars come quicksilver was placed to absorb the gold, which was regained by squeezing the mercury through buckskin and retorting its amalgam. But both of the above were replaced within two or three years by the more effective permanent sluice, an extension of the tom, and either constructed of boards, or as a simple inclined ditch, with rocks instead of wooden riffles for retaining the gold. To the sluice and its auxiliary apparatus is due the immense increase in the production of gold during the early mining period. Operations on river bars soon led to explorations of the bed itself, to which end the stream was turned into artificial channels to Jay bare the bottom. The water was turned by wing. dams into flumes, which are usually cheaper than ditches, owing to the rocky character of the banks. The flume current supplied water for sluicing and power to pump the bed. Boulders were lifted by derricks. At times the stream was confined to one-half of the bed while the other was worked, and this operation was permitted in the dry season. The cust and risk of deviating the river course caused the introduction of dredges with fair snecess, the buckets of which discharged the dirt into huge rocker riffles. Along the northern coast of California the auriferous bluffs, worn away by the surf, deposit very fine gold in the deep sand, which is carried away on mule-backs and washed at the nearest stream. The saving effected by the rocker was four times that of the pan, and the tom was about four times greater still, while the sluice was found to be three times cheaper than the tom, reducing the cost to about thirty-five cents per cubic yard. But even this price was too heavy to permit the mining of the largest gold-hearing deposits with profit in the gravelly banks and hills, which had moreover to be removed before richer underlying strata could be profitably worked. The celebrated hydraulic process was invented in 1853, to undermine and wash down banks by directing against them a stream of water through a pipe, under great pressure. The same stream did the work of a host of pick-men and shovelers, and supplied the washing sluices so that in course of time, with cheaper labor and machinery, the cust of extracting gold from a cubic yard of gravel was reduced as low as half acent, while the cost under the old rocker system of 1848-49 was estimated to cost several dollars. The year previous, however, a Frenchman named Chabot used a hose without a nozzle upon his claim at Buckeye Hill, Nevada County, to sluice away the gravel which had been lovsed by the pick; and a similar method is said to have been used at Yankee Jim’s, the same season. The water, of course, was obtained by damming the cafion. After many checks from lack of experience, the hydraulic system acquired in Calitornia a greater expansion than in any other country, owing to the vast area of the gravel-beds and the natural drainage provided by the Sierra Nevada slopes; but an immense preliminary outiay was generally required in bringing water through flumes, ditches and tunnels, sometimes for many miles. The ofticial report for 1855 gave a total of 5,000 miles of canal in California for hydraulic mining, costing $6,842,000. But on account of this process throwing down