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Updated: June 15, 2025
Fires to thaw out the ground were unavailable for sheer lack of fuel; there was no driftwood between these forestless shores. What fuel could be spared was conserved for use under the boilers that melted ice to provide water for the cradles and flumes, and help to cook the meals that Tamada prepared out-of-doors for the workers.
The river had by this time entered a deeper gorge; walls of rocks rose perpendicularly on either side, picturesque rocks, painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It was not possible to climb out of the gorge; it was impossible to find a way by the side of the river; and getting down the bed, over the falls, and through the flumes, was not easy, and consumed time. Was that thunder? Very likely.
"Then we have to provide a stamp-mill, turbines, flumes and dam; and, though Mr. Weston suggests a wood-burning engine to supply the crushing power, the saving effected would be no great matter. The point is that we now discover that the cost of these things will in one way or another be nearly double what we stated in our prospectus." "That," said Wannop, dryly, "isn't altogether unusual."
The capacity of the flumes is 10,800,000 gallons per day. From Gold Hill the road runs through tunnels, twists and turns along the side of Mt. Davidson until it reaches Virginia City, the end of the line. Virginia City was first settled in 1859. It obtained its name from an old prospector, James Finney, nicknamed "Old Virginny." Its elevation is 6,205 feet above sea level.
Long sinuous lengths of canvas hose wound down the creek bottom from the dam, like gigantic serpents, while the roll of gravel through the flumes mingled musically with the rush of waters, the tinkle of tools, and the song of steel on rock.
These great beds of gravel have been since worked by hydraulic machinery, water being brought by small canals, or flumes, many miles along the face of the hills, to reservoirs situated one or two hundred feet above the gravel to be operated upon.
Our Saw-mill, which we now have in operation, is the wonder of the place, and is, of course, our salvation, for without that, of course, we could not construct flumes to put water upon our placer ground. We have partially constructed a wagon road to shorten and make less arduous the difficult trip into this paradise. Nevertheless, it is a paradise, when once within its charmed environments.
In the drifting fragments of one of their forgotten flumes washed from the bank, he fancied he saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the Lone Star claim. The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before a calm so inconsistent with that hour and the season as to seem portentous became more marked in contrast to the feverish rush of the turbulent watercourse.
In some cases iron tubes have been used, and although they are very expensive, yet they may pay for themselves, by preventing evaporation, leaking and soaking, which take away much of the water from flumes and ditches. Prospecting. "Prospecting" is the search for gold. The instruments used by the prospector for placer-mines are usually the pan, pick and shovel.
This game was no longer moving in those large, easy sweeps which characterize the more favorable aspects of high finance. Sad to relate, as in all the troubled flumes of life where vast currents are compressed in narrow, tortuous spaces, these two men were now concerned chiefly with the momentary care of small but none the less heartbreaking burdens.
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