This is a composite engraving, a very interesting feature of which is the Indians and their wicker baskets, the latter going out of use when metal pans were obtainable, which also displaced wooden bowls and homely makeshifts. This feature is resketched from a rare old print in the possession of the Van Ness family of San Francisco. The huts are specimens of ramadas, popular with the Spanish-speaking miners, and frequently mentioned by Shirley.
| 2. Sutter's Mill, Coloma, where Gold was Accidentally Discovered in January, 1848 | faces page 42 |
This fine engraving follows closely, in all essential details, that in the Voyages en Californie et dans l'Orégon, par M. de Saint-Amant, Envoyé du Gouvernement Français, en 1851-1852 (Paris, 1854). The engravings in that volume, although poorly printed on a cheap grade of book-paper, are noted for their accuracy, and are interesting as showing the methods etc. of the miners while Shirley was writing her Letters. The tail-race, in the foreground, is where James Wilson Marshall and Peter L. Wimmer first saw the nuggets, but Marshall was the first to pick up a specimen. Much has been written of Marshall; the Wimmers were of the Western pioneer type.
| 3. Ground-sluicing | faces page 86 |
This spirited engraving is resketched, in essentials, from a woodcut in Henry De Groot's Recollections of California Mining Life (1884), also in his Gold Mines and Mining in California (1885). Ground-sluicing is done in winter, when water is abundant and the ground soft, the pay-dirt being thrown into a channel made for the purpose, and down which the water rushes. The gold settles on the bed-rock, and is collected later, when the water-run has subsided.
| 4. Pan, Cradle or Rocker, Long-tom, Sluice-washing—Drifting, Windlass and Shaft | faces page 132 |
The varied and animated scene depicted in this plate is resketched from De Groot's Gold Mines and Mining in California. (See note to plate 3.) In the foreground, on the left, a miner washes dirt in a pan. Above, and to the left, a miner washes in a rocker or cradle, the pay-dirt coming in a tram-car from the tunnel, in which are drift-diggings. The men at the windlass are sinking a shaft, prospecting for drift-deposits. To the right, in the foreground, three men are working a long-tom, which, in point of time, followed the rocker. One of the miners is keeping the dirt stirred up in the tom, under which is set a riffle-box with quicksilver to catch the gold. In the background miners are hand or shovel sluicing, in which the riffle-box of the long-tom is dispensed with.
| 5. Interior of Miners' Log Cabin—One Partner Cooking for Night-faring Visitors | faces page 176 |
This interesting engraving also follows, in all essentials, that in de Saint-Amant's Voyages. (See note to plate 2, supra.) The owners of the cabin had evidently retired for the night, and were awakened by their visitors. The upper bunk, or berth, has been vacated by the miner cooking. We will say two of the visitors have been prospecting, and are reasoning with the third, who appears to have come from that state of the Union "where one must demonstrate." The rifle close to the bunk of the sleeping miner, the mining implements littered over the floor, the bottles etc. on the shelf-table, are features that require no explanation.
| 6. Saloon in a Mining-camp—Monte-dealer, Miners, Española and Mexicana | faces page 258 |