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Lance's experience as a gold-digger now served the party in good stead, for he had no sooner taken the dull yellow lumps into his hand than he pronounced them to be veritable nuggets of pure gold; and after extracting from the fair finders as accurate a description as they could give him of the locality in which the discovery had been made, he declared his belief that one or more "pockets" of gold existed in the immediate vicinity of the pool, and said he would take an early opportunity of personally inspecting the spot.
The storekeeper promptly produced the little balance which he used for weighing gold-dust, and the diggers crowded round with much interest to watch, while Lantry, with a show of unwonted care, dusted the scales, and put the three nuggets therein. "Three-quarters of an ounce," said the storekeeper, when the balance ceased to vibrate.
But gold in such minute particles would not satisfy the men who were hunting nuggets. It required treatment by quicksilver. Though Maclean, the chief factor at Kamloops, kept all the specks and flakes brought to his post as samples from 1852 to 1856, he had less than would fill a half-pint bottle.
And again, further on "never did I see so much gold whether in dust, nuggets, or worked articles. I imagine it must be worth millions, but at that time gold was the last thing with which I wished to trouble myself." After this entry many pages were utterly effaced.
They had heard a great deal about the dark, keen-looking young Oregon lawyer, for Salaman was the most envied man in Minóok. "Come over to my dump and get some nuggets," says Mr. Salaman, as in other parts of the world a man will say, "Come into the smoking-room and have a cigar."
Just before leaving London I had occasion to call on the gentleman who had the management of the recovered gold, and he told me several interesting things. First of all, the whole of the gold that could be identified was handed at once over to its owners; but this matter of identification was not easy, for much of the gold was found quite loose in the form of sovereigns and nuggets and dust.
Each man had a dim feeling in the back of his head that, after all, the hillock of gold was an illusion, and his own hand upon the dazzling pile would clutch the empty air. "Where's your dust?" asked the Boy. Dillon stared. "Why, here." "This is all nuggets and grains." "Well, what more do you want?" "Oh, it'd do well enough for me, but it ain't dust." "It's what we call dust."
Besides, what a deceitful fellow Smith was, and how he defrauded me." "And how she has restored it!" "I hope Harold will not go and get those nuggets changed into specie. They would make splendid ornaments so distingue with such a story attached to them."
Crossley's Diary and Correspondence of Worthington, so far as it has gone, is one of the best edited books known to me, the footnotes being very nuggets of biographical lore; and it is to be regretted that the connected notices of Worthington, Hartlib, and Durie, postponed by Mr.
Then they set out for Angel's Camp, never to return. It kept on raining, and a letter came from Steve Gillis, saying he had settled all the trouble in San Francisco. Clemens decided to return, and the miners left Angel's without visiting their claim again. Meantime the rain had washed away the top of the pan of dirt they had left standing on the hillside, exposing a handful of nuggets, pure gold.
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