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Updated: June 26, 2025
The pay-dirt, in whichever way obtained, is then shovelled into the sluice-boxes, a series of long troughs, set at the proper angle to prevent the gold from washing past, or the dirt from settling to the bottom.
Not unfrequently it happens that a rich streak of pay-dirt in a placer claim is followed up to the quartz vein from which it came. While miners are out walking or hunting, they occasionally will come upon lodes in which the gold is seen sparkling. Some good leads have been found by men employed in making roads and cutting ditches.
They go in until they reach the pay-dirt, and then a surveyor is employed to run the line between their claims, and the tunnel is continued through the pay-dirt. The dirt from the tunnel is washed for the joint account of the two companies. After the dividing line has been established, each company keeps on its own side, and each has its time to use the tram-way.
An hour later, just as they were riding out of the compound, Joan turned in the saddle for a last look at the Martha, a distant speck well over toward the Florida coast. "Won't Tudor be surprised when he finds we own the Martha?" she laughed. "Think of it! If he doesn't strike pay-dirt he'll have to buy a steamer-passage to get away from the Solomons."
After the board-sluice, with its various adjuncts of riffle-bars, stone bottoms, copper plates, and so forth, the next instrument of importance in the gold-mining of California, is the hydraulic hose, used to let water down from a considerable height, and throw it under the pressure of its own weight against the pay-dirt, which is thus torn down, broken up, dissolved and carried into the sluice below.
The clayey matter of ordinary pay-dirt is fully dissolved in a sluice two hundred feet long with a low grade, so the use of the boxes beyond that length is merely to catch the gold.
Steps again and this time coming from the direction of the elevator; then voices; then the opening of the door of the next room; then a voice, distinctly audible: "Pull up a chair, and we'll get down to business. You're late, as it is. We haven't any time to waste, if we're going to wash pay-dirt to-night." "Aw, dat's all right!" responded another voice quite evidently the Weasel's.
Dry digging is that mining where the miner, after using the shovel to strip off the barren dirt, scrapes the pay-dirt over with a knife, picking out the particles of gold as he comes to them, and throwing away the earthy matter. This is a slow process, but in rich placers may be profitable.
This is the philosophy of it," and he shoveled the pay-dirt into the hopper until it was a little over half filled, and then, picking up a long-handled dipper, began dipping water out of the reservoir and pouring it on the dirt in the hopper, while the other man constantly kept the cradle rocking back and forth.
"Yes," answered Dickson, grinning; "and it's the first pan that looks like pay-dirt that I've taken out of my new mine over yonder alongside of that big rock," and he pointed to a huge rock that jutted up above the ground a couple of rods away, where the boys could see a pile of dirt that had been thrown out of a hole dug down close to the upper side of the rock; "and so I am just a little anxious to see how it pans out."
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