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He could, without inconvenience, have given away a million just as you and I might give away a shilling. It was in developing the early placer-mining enterprises in California that our worthy speculator had laid the solid foundations of his incalculable fortune. He was the principal associate of Captain Sutter, the Swiss, in the localities, where, in 1848, the first traces were discovered.
Well, it's no engagement at the Good Luck Dance Hall yonder, you can bet on that. The fact is I've quit the business, and am going to take a flier in mining." "Mining? That sounds like money in these days. They tell me there is no placer-mining any longer, and that it requires a fortune to develop. I wouldn't suppose a chorus girl "
He was as like you to look at," he turned to the earl, "as one star is like another. I cannot tell you how it has moved me to meet you. We were in a place called Grub Gulch, placer-mining half a dozen of us. I came down with the scarlet fever. The others bolted, all but Charlie Stuart. He stayed. But by the time I was up, thanks to him, he was down thanks to me. He died of it."
The buildings are almost necessarily all of wood, the cost of brick and stone construction being prohibitive. No one can guarantee ten years of life to a placer-mining town, and there would be no warrant for the expenditure of the sums required for fireproof building even were the capital available.
Placer-mining was a subject upon which Toy felt qualified to speak, since, after a cramped journey from Hong Kong, smuggled in his uncle's clothes hamper, he had started life in America at fourteen, carrying water to his countrymen placering in "Chiny" Gulch; after which he became one of a company who, with the industry of ants, built a trestle of green timber one hundred and fifty feet high to carry water to the Beaver Creek diggings and had had his reward when he had seen the sluice-box run yellow with gold and had taken his green rice bowl heaping full upon the days of division.
Within its limits the tom, sluice, under-current sluice, and crinoline hose were invented, and the ditch and hydraulic power were first applied to placer-mining; and quartz-mining was first undertaken extensively. In 1859 there were thirty-two quartz-mills in the county, and twenty-eight mining-ditches, with an aggregate length of three hundred and ninety-four miles.
It was reported that there were no less than fifteen thousand men in the Black Hills district placer-mining and prospecting for the yellow metal. The authority of the United States was defied almost openly by the frontier press and people.
He threw open the door of the adjoining room with a wide gesture, his face radiant with elation. The company stared, and well it might, for at a signal a miniature placer mine started operation. The hotel porter shovelled imported sand into a sluice-box through which a stream of water ran and at the end was the gold-saving device invented by Mr. Sprudell which was to revolutionize placer-mining!
"The paper ran thus: 'We, the undersigned citizens of the United States, have discovered placer gold in the ground hereinafter described, and hereby claim for placer-mining purposes twenty acres on the tundra west of Nome and 100 feet north of the cemetery. Then followed the distance between stakes, the name of the witness, our own names, and that of Leroy as our agent, the date of the location, etc.
What do you suppose those wretches were arguing about in the dining-room last night, over their whisky and soda? Sentiment was "not in it," as they would say. They were talking up a scheme a scheme that Tom has had in mind ever since he first saw the Thousand Springs six years ago, when he had the Snake River placer-mining fever.
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