[7] See the author's "The Boy with the U. S. Mail."
"Things were happenin' out 'Frisco way. Geo. Bennett, who'd been workin' at the mill, left there about the middle o' February, takin' some flakes o' gold with him. When he got to 'Frisco, he met Isaac Humphrey, who'd worked on the Dahlonega strike, in Georgia, in 1830. Humphrey took jest one look at the stuff, an' said right away that it was gold.
"Bennett an' Humphrey hot-footed it back to the mill. They found it workin' jest as usual. Some o' the men had picked up more gold, but casual-like, after workin' hours. Marshall hadn't done any more prospectin'. Sutter was waitin' to hear from Mason.
"Humphrey, bein' a gold miner, panned up an' down the river, an' found plenty o' color. He got quite excited an' declared it was richer'n the Dahlonega field, which had been pretty good, though the surface diggin's had petered out fast."
"What do you mean by 'he panned up and down the river and found color?'" queried Clem.
Jim gave a short laugh of surprise.
"That's right," he said, "you don't know nothin' about prospectin', do you? I'll tell you. Pannin' is how a prospector gets gold. It sounds easy, but there's a trick to it, jest the same.
"A prospector's pan is just like an ordinary tin wash-pan, wi' slopin' sides, only it's smaller; about a foot across at the bottom, an' made of iron, not tin. Many a hundred men have got to be millionaires with nothin' but a pick, a shovel, an' a pan.
"Supposing now, you're at the gold diggin's. You fill your pan, near full, with sand or with gravel or earth, or whatever stuff you think may have a little gold mixed up with it—"
"Can't you see the gold, then?" queried Clem.