CHAPTER V.
MINING.
Although the scope of this work does not include the very complex problem involved in the working of a great mine, prospecting and the simpler mining operations are so intimately connected that it would not be desirable to make mention of the one and ignore the other, because the prospector must perforce become a miner as soon as he discovers mineral, even though his operations should not go beyond a shallow trial shaft.
The simplest method of hoisting dirt or rock out of a shaft, after it has become too deep for the sinker to throw the stuff out with a spade, is by a bucket and windlass, which may be either single or double, according to the power required. In northwestern Canada, where the present gold excitement has attracted so many thousand pioneers, the miners have hitherto been content with a windlass. For their purpose it answers well, as they sink through gravel and not more than thirty feet at the most before reaching the bed rock. The alluvial flats in which the coarse gold of the upper Yukon has been discovered, are composed of gravel that is invariably frozen, summer as well as winter, and which requires to be thawed out before it can be worked with a pick. Strangely enough, dynamite cannot be used, as the ground is so elastic under the frost that the tamping simply blows out and the required effect is not produced. This peculiar condition has led the men, who are mining in that part of the continent, to adopt methods very similar to those used in Siberia, where, also, the ground is permanently frozen to a great depth. After scratching the surface of the soil, and removing the deep moss that invariably covers it, they light large fires over night and in the morning remove the few inches of thawed soil underneath the ashes. By this painfully slow method they eventually sink to the richer gravel, fifteen or twenty, or even thirty, feet below the surface, though there are few shafts of this depth on the Klondike and the other gold-bearing creeks about which we have heard so much. When the bed rock is reached and the few inches of decayed surface removed, the miner builds his fire against the side of the shaft, placing some inclined logs over it as a roof, and goes to bed. When he awakes next day several feet of the soil have fallen down over the logs, and this he has to hoist. It is at this stage that the windlass worked by his companion, or partner, demonstrates its value. In a very short time all the gravel that the fire has thawed out is hoisted to the surface, and added to the dump, where it must remain until the warmth of summer shall have thawed the streams and permitted sluicing.
MINER'S GOLD PAN.
A sluice is really nothing more nor less than a trough, open at the top, in which the gold is sorted from the lighter gravel and dirt by running water. The grade varies according to the coarseness of the gold. Very fine gold would be carried away by too swift a current, while coarse gold will resist almost a torrent. The sluice is built in joints, usually a dozen feet in length; the sides may be six inches or a foot deep, and the width varies from one to two feet. There is no rule in this matter, but owing to the extravagant price of lumber—as much as a hundred and fifty dollars a thousand feet, board measure—the tendency is to make the sluices very small and very short, thereby saving nothing but the very coarsest gold. A properly constructed sluice should be several hundred feet in length, and the inclination should not be more than one foot in twelve, while it may, in a case of fine gold, be advisable to diminish this inclination by at least a fourth. Riffles, or cross-pieces, are placed across the sluice at intervals of a few feet, and slats are placed lengthwise, filling up the intervals between the riffles. Into the crevices and interstices of these obstructions the heavy gold sinks by its own weight, and every few days, or weeks, as the case may warrant, the miner shuts off the water by closing the gate at the head of the sluice, removes the slats and riffles, beginning at the joint nearest the head and working towards the tail of the sluiceway, and collects all the gold that has accumulated.
This is a very simple form of mining, but it is not the simplest. Much gold has been recovered from the gravel in which nature has placed it by the aid of the pan, a sheet iron dish modeled on the housewife's bread pan.
Next to the pan the cradle is as little complicated as anything used in the winning of gold.
After this comes the long tom, a considerable improvement upon the cradle, but it necessitates more water and more men.
