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"The beast stumbled and almost jerked me over. Then I guess the bridle either broke or pulled out." "Two horses and four bags of ore, and we're not through yet," commented the freighter. "Guess it's going to cost you something if you pack much pay-dirt out over Dead Pine trail. Anyway, you'll have to get that grading done before I come back here again." "Get on," said Weston, quietly.
Later, when the pay-dirt showed signs of merging into quartz, there passed away for ever the day of the penniless prospector seeking the golden fleece of the hills as his predecessor, the trapper, had sought the pelt of the little beaver.
The earth over the pay-dirt is broken up and carted off; its great depth causes immense wear of horseflesh. A small mine employs three or four hundred workmen, and larger ones in proportion. I heard of one that kept more than three thousand men at work. The usual estimate for horses is one to every two men, but the proportion varies according to the character of the mine.
The Aurora Borealis, as the mine was now called, had been working all winter, and gigantic dumps of red pay-dirt stood as monuments to the industry of its workmen. Rumor had it that the "streak" was rich, and that Doctor Slayforth, the owner, would be in on the first boat to personally oversee the clean-ups.
"Good old Jim," he murmured, "struck pay-dirt at last only to lose it and he needs me. By George, I think I'll go." And why should he not? Only twenty-nine, he could still afford to spend a few years in search of living.
And at each such cry he had seen the rush of others, and the feverish manner in which they took possession of the spot where the lucky individual was working and hustled him out. It was in these rushes that he saw the danger lying ahead. Hitherto these men had been accustomed to the slow process of washing "pay-dirt." It was not only slow, but unemotional.
After dividing placers into deep and shallow, the next classification will be according to their topographical position, as into hill, flat, bench, bar, river-bed, ancient river-bed, and gulch mines. Hill diggings are those where the pay-dirt is in or under a hill. Flat diggings are in a flat. Bench diggings are in a "bench" or narrow table on the side of a hill above a river.
If there be a fall of eight inches in twelve feet, the sluice has an "eight-inch grade," and if the fall be twice as great, it is a "sixteen-inch grade." The grade depends upon the character of the pay-dirt, the length of the sluice, and its position.
That classification was made while nearly all the mining was done near the surface, before the great deposits of pay-dirt in the hills had been discovered, and before ditches, sluices, and the hydraulic process had been introduced.
All the winter "pay-dirt" is thus excavated and stored; in the summer when the streams run the gold is sluiced out. But that phrase "when the streams run" covers a world of difficulty and expense to the miner. In some places in this Seward Peninsula, ditches thirty and forty miles long have been constructed to insure the streams running when and where they are needed.
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