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It is used to the most advantage for washing where the water is abundant for only a few weeks after heavy rains, and where it would not pay to erect large sluices. A few cobble-stones should be left or thrown at intervals in the bed of the ground-sluice to arrest the gold, for if the bed were smooth clay, the precious metal might all be carried off. Quicksilver is not used in the ground-sluice.
"Them thought jewels and wads of repartee was piling up in me fast, like tailings from a ground-sluice, till I could feel myself getting bloated and pussy with langwidge, but I thought, 'No! to-morrow Kink 'll be safe, and then I'll throw a jolt into this man's camp that'll go down in history. They'll think some Chinaman's been thawing out a box of giant powder when I let out my roar.
After the dirt has all been put through the ground-sluice, it is cleaned up in a short board-sluice, or a tom. Long Tom. The tom or long tom, an instrument extensively used in the Californian mines in 1851 and 1852, but now rarely seen, is a wooden trough about twelve feet long, eighteen inches wide at the upper end, and widening at the lower to thirty inches, with sides eight inches high.
All the sluices hitherto mentioned and described have wooden boxes, but the ground-sluice has no box: the water runs on the ground. The place selected for the ground-sluice is some spot where there is a considerable supply of water, a steep descent for it, and much poor dirt.
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