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Updated: May 12, 2025
After that he sat himself upon the edge of the sluice-box for some thoughtful minutes, and his mind traveled back over many scenes and incidents. But it dwelt chiefly upon Jessie Mowbray and her dead father. And it struggled in a great effort to solve the riddle of the man's death. But, in view of his discoveries, just now it was a riddle that suggested far too many answers.
Fired by the spectacle of what appeared to be a new and utterly frivolous game, the men gayly leaped after him, and were soon engaged in a fascinating struggle with the impeded race. The Judge forgot his lameness in springing over a broken sluice-box; Union Mills forgot his whistle in a happy imitation of a Chinese coolie's song.
At length the work was finished, so I set my sluice-box in position below the vent. Then I spent some days in opening out shallow trenches from the dam along the sides of the mountains to left and right, so as to catch the storm water. But the rain still held off; an occasional thunderstorm would trail over the ranges, but none came to the saddle.
One way of getting rid of a mammoth boulder was by excavating a pit in the bedrock, sending the stuff dug out away through the sluice-box, and then rolling the monster into the excavation. But this was always dangerous work; the pit had to be sunk close to the boulder one wanted to bury, and the latter was apt to break down the soft edge and roll in, smashing the workers into jelly.
High cliffs face the rivers, all that is left of hills torn down at the point of the powerful hydraulic nozzles, with great heaps of cobbles at their base which Mother Nature, even in seventy years has been unable to change or cover. At the mouth of nearly every ravine there are countless little mounds which marked the end, or dump of the sluice-box in the placer mining.
The Golden Fleece very probably was the sheepskin bottom of an old-time sluice-box, in a day when they used wool, instead of blankets, below the rocker troughs. In the vast ruined civilization of Southeast Africa unknown men once mined probably $400,000,000 worth of gold.
Fired by the spectacle of what appeared to be a new and utterly frivolous game, the men gayly leaped after him, and were soon engaged in a fascinating struggle with the impeded race. The Judge forgot his lameness in springing over a broken sluice-box; Union Mills forgot his whistle in a happy imitation of a Chinese coolie's song.
Together they mounted the stairs to the gallery above. "Wal, w'at I tol' you?" 'Poleon Doret exclaimed, cheerfully. "Me, I'm cut off for poor man. If one dose El Dorado millionaire' give me his pay-dump, all de gold disappear biffore I get him in de sluice-box. Some people is born Jonah." Despite this melancholy announcement 'Poleon was far from depressed.
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!
She too was as untaught as a child in the life of this frontier land. Whatever she found here how much of hardship or happiness, of grief or woe she knew that she had left behind forever the safe harborage of quiet waters in which her life craft had always floated. It came on to rain in the afternoon. Heavy clouds swept across from the mountains, and the sodden sky opened like a sluice-box.
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