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Updated: June 26, 2025
On Horse Fly Creek up from Quesnel Lake five men washed out in primitive rockers a hundred ounces of nuggets in a week. The gold-fever, which had subsided when all the bars of the Fraser were occupied, mounted again. Great rumours began to float out from the up-country. Bank facings seemed to indicate that the richest pay-dirt lay at bed-rock.
Nobody knows yet what there is in the rocks up yonder, but we have heard of other prospectors striking pay-dirt and making nothing of their discovery. Rumors about mysterious lodes are common in a mineral belt, and while they're often imaginative, my notion is that now and then there's some fact behind the fiction. Fur-traders in Alaska heard such tales long before the Klondyke strike."
The pay-dirt is usually covered by layers of barren dirt, which is sometimes washed, and sometimes left undisturbed, while the pay-dirt is taken out from beneath it through tunnels or shafts.
The pay-dirt is hauled to the bank of the river, where it is washed in machines turned by water power. Various machines have been devised for gold-washing, and the Russians are anxious to find the best invention of the kind. The one in most general use and the easiest to construct is a long cylinder of sheet iron open at both ends and perforated with many small holes.
Suppose you locate the ore, she'll need advice and further help. Now I know something about mining; I've paid pretty high for what I've learned. I understand Miss Strange hasn't much money, and we might save her some expensive mistakes. You see, I haven't much hope of getting down to pay-dirt here." Thirlwell pondered.
In the Eswá bed, where the gulch is choked by two mounds or hillocks, appear the usual 'women's washings, shallow pits like the Brazilian catas, whence the pay-dirt has been extracted. On the right bank, subtending the bed, their husbands have sunk the usual chimney-hole to scratch quartz from the bounding-wall of the reef.
The only thing that prevents it being generally practised is, that men require to work in companies, for the preliminary labour is severe, and miners seem to prefer working singly, or in twos and threes, as long as there is good `pay-dirt' on the banks."
Many of the miners were already at work when our little company passed up the ravine on their way to Holt's Gulch, presenting scenes of the greatest interest and novelty to the unaccustomed eyes of Thure and Bud, as they dug for the precious metal, sometimes up to their knees in mud and water, sometimes so far away from the water that all the pay-dirt had to be carried on their backs to the creek and there panned, but always cheerful and hopeful that they "sure would strike it big soon."
The riddle extends the whole length of the machine; and the stones, after being washed clean, fall off the riddle at the lower end. One man is employed constantly working with a shovel to keep the dirt on the riddle under the stream of water, and in throwing off the big stones. If the pay-dirt is very convenient, two men can shovel enough to keep the machine in operation.
He had already appraised Rand, from his twenty-dollar Stetson past his Burberry trench coat to his English hand-sewn shoes, and placed him in the pay-dirt bracket; however, from some remarks Rand had let drop, he decided that this customer knew pistols, and probably knew values. "Why, that is sixty dollars, Mr. Rand," he said, with the air of one conferring a benefaction.
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