Flume at the Melones Mine.
To carry 600 miner's inches of water from the Stanislaus River to the 120-stamp mill.
"Always supposing that there was some gold there to start with," put in Owens. "How many times have you panned, Jim, without finding any color?"
"Millions, I reckon! I panned every day an' all day, once, for two years, without gettin' enough gold dust to fill a pipe-bowl, an' then I got a double-handful in half a day. In general, you're doin' all right if you can get out of each pan enough dust to cover a finger-nail. So now you know what pannin' is, Clem."
"It's not such a cinch, at that!" the young fellow commented.
"But you may strike it rich any day, any hour, any minute!" Jim exclaimed, the fever of search in his eyes. "When Humphrey got up to Sutter's Mill, the first man to know anything about gold-washin' that got there, he was takin' out a thousand dollars a day, easy, for a month or more. The placers were rich."
"A 'placer,' Clem," Owens interrupted to explain, "is a deposit where there is gold mixed with sand, or gravel or mud. It is always a deposit which has been washed down by water, either a river which is actually running, or which is found in a dry bed where a river used to run. Mining people call it an 'alluvial or flood deposit.' Most of the gold-strikes have been found in this way. Go ahead, Jim."
"Right about the time that Humphrey was prospectin' an' doin' handsomely, an Indian, who had worked on placers in Lower California, told another o' the mill-hands how to get hold o' the dust. Besides that, a Kentuckian, who'd been spyin' on Marshall an' Sutter, had noticed that they'd found gold not only in the tail-race, but up the creeks. Both of 'em went down to 'Frisco.
"It was interestin', but nobody got excited. Gold strikes weren't known yet. There'd only been two gold rushes in the United States afore, neither of 'em big ones.