History of the big bonanza

by Dan De Quille

After these explanations Tom and Pike shook hands and called it even. Peace being restored, we set forward along the trail on which our companions had preceded us, but did not overtake them until we had reached the mouth of El Dorado Cañon, the gulch on which we expected to find the diggings. Up this cañon we travelled a considerable distance, when we found our friends had halted for dinner. Most of the way we had found the cañon but a few rods in width and walled in by almost perpendicular piles of granite and slate, but where our party had halted there was a beautiful little valley, several springs, and two or three small groves of willows and cottonwoods.

It does not take long for a party of prospectors to prepare a meal. The mules are first unpacked and turned out to graze; wood is then collected and a fire built, and by the time this is blazing several cooks are getting ready for business. Self-rising flour is placed in the same pans that are used in prospecting for gold; water is then added, and the whole is then stirred up with a spoon until of the proper consistency for pancakes. Soon two or three men, each with a frying-pan, are at work baking slapjacks, while as many more are frying the savory bacon; tea is being made in a coffee-pot, and soon all is ready. Each man then hunts up his tin plate, puts a handful of earth upon it and scours away all traces of the last meal, when he is ready for his allowance of bacon and slapjacks. Tin cups are used for the tea. These meals in the wilds of the mountains are eaten with a relish by the hardy prospector. There are generally a few raw onions to go with the bacon, and when a camp is made at night beans are cooked.

Of nights, too, when there is more time for cooking than during the noon halt, bread is baked. In making bread the miner mixes it in his prospecting-pan, as for slapjacks, and when it has been properly kneaded, takes it between his huge paws, and hammers it out in the shape of a large flat cake. This cake he places in his frying-pan and then stands it in front of his fire to bake, turning it over when one side is done.

Sometimes a regular loaf is made. When a loaf is decided upon, a large hole is dug in the ground, and a fire made in it. By the time the fire has burnt down and there is nothing left but a bed of coals, the loaf is manufactured. The coals are raked out of the pit, and the loaf is placed in a gold-pan and set in its bottom. Another gold-pan is turned over that containing the loaf, when the whole is covered with live coals, hot ashes and earth. In this way is made a loaf that is as sweet as any that ever came out of the oven of the baker. Beans—after they have been boiled until soft—are often baked in the same way, the camp-kettle containing them being buried in a pit in which a fire has been made.

THE SLAPJACK FEAT.

In making slapjacks a miner considers himself a greenhorn if he is not able to turn them without doing it with a knife, after the fashion of a woman. He shuffles the cake about in the pan till it is loosened, then deftly tosses it into the air, catching it, batter side down, as it descends. This way of turning slapjacks is a trick, however, that some men find it impossible to learn. I once had a partner whose one dream of life it was to be able to turn a slapjack in this way. If he could but flip a slapjack[slapjack] into the air and catch it all right, he thought he would be perfectly happy, whether the diggings paid or not. One day, while in the cabin cooking slapjacks, he announced that he would turn one in the air or die. He was a man who weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds and had somehow got it into his head that in order to successfully perform the feat a great outlay of strength was required.

Taking hold of the handle of the frying-pan with both hands and getting out into the middle of the floor, where he could have plenty of room, he hustled the cake about in the pan until he found it was loose on all sides. He then squatted nearly to the floor, and, giving a mighty heave, sent the pancake flying upward. This done, he stood, frying-pan in hand, waiting for the cake to come down, in order that he might catch it. But that pancake never came down, it struck batter side against the ceiling, and there it stuck as fast as the wafer on a love-letter.

I have heard of men who were able to throw a slapjack[slapjack] up through the chimney, then run outside of the house and catch it before it struck the ground, but I have never had the good fortune to see the feat performed.