“Away with all this gravel and shingle—these are all newcomers—the real bed of the stream is below all this, and we must go down to that.”
Trowel and spade and tomahawk went furiously to work, and soon cleared away the gravel from a surface of three or four feet.
Beneath this they found a bed of gray clay.
“Let us wash that, captain,” said Jem eagerly.
“No! Jem,” was the reply; “that is the way novices waste their time. This gray clay is porous, too porous to hold gold—we must go deeper.”
Tomahawk, spade and trowel went furiously to work again.
“Give me the spade,” said George, and he dug and shoveled out with herculean strength and amazing ardor; his rheumatism was gone and nerves came back from that very hour. “Here is a white clay.”
“Let me see it. Pipe-clay! go no deeper, George; if you were to dig a hundred feet you would not find an ounce of gold below that.”
George rested on his spade. “What are we to do, then? try somewhere else?”
“Not till we have tried here first.”