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Once it was collecting sealskins off other people's beaches, and there was zest enough in that, in view of the probability of the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder.
Well, seh, yu' would not have pleasured in his company. And this year Hank is placer-mining on Galena Creek, where we'll likely go for sheep. There's Honey Wiggin and a young fello' named Lin McLean, and some others along with the outfit. But Hank's woman will not look at any of them, though the McLean boy is a likely hand.
Henry Plummer A Northern Bad Man The Head of the Robber Band in the Montana Mining Country A Man of Brains and Ability, but a Cold-Blooded Murderer. Henry Plummer was for several years in the early '60's the "chief" of the widely extended band of robbers and murderers who kept the placer-mining fields of Montana and Idaho in a state of terror.
Although Cook's claim to have reached the summit of Denali met with general acceptance outside, or at least was not openly scouted, it was otherwise in Alaska. The men, in particular, who lived and worked in the placer-mining regions about the base of the mountain, and were, perhaps, more familiar with the orography of the range than any surveyor or professed topographer, were openly incredulous.
I don't understand this placer-mining either, when it comes to that." Adolph Gotts, who had been a butcher, specializing in sausage, before he became a city contractor, was about to say the same thing, when Sprudell interrupted triumphantly: "Ah, but you will before I'm done." It was the moment for which he had waited. "Follow me, gentlemen."
The Colonel staked No. 1 Above the Discovery, and the Boy was in the act of staking No. 1 Below when "No, no," says that kind mackinaw man, "the heavier gold will be found further up the gulch stake No. 2 Above"; and he told them natural facts about placer-mining that no after expert knowledge could ever better. But he was not as happy as a man should be who has just struck pay.
Washing it from the gravel is called placer-mining; and if the gravel is deep and a powerful stream of water is required, the work is called hydraulic mining. Everyone has heard of the Mother Lode of California.
Mexicans were there enveloped in their sarapes; Chinamen in their large-sleeved tunics, pointed shoes, and conical hats; one or two Kanucks from the coast; and even a sprinkling of Black Feet, Grosventres, or Flatheads, from the banks of the Trinity river. The scene is in San Francisco, the capital of California, but not at the period when the placer-mining fever was raging from 1849 to 1852.
In 1900, at first, the general complaint was "no water," although later, when the heavy rains came, it was "too much water." Placer-mining is a delicate and uncertain business, and is very hard work. Gold is not "picked up" anywhere, and mother earth yields her treasure very stubbornly.
And, lastly, the sluice begat the jet, or hydraulicking proper, which is at present the highest effort of placer-mining. We thus reverse the primitive process which carried the wash-dirt to the water; we now carry the water to the wash-dirt.
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