CHAPTER XVII.
YIELD OF GOLD—ITS DURATION—MORMON GULCH—THE DISTRIBUTION OF GOLD—TUNNELLING—DAMMING RIVERS—HOLDEN’S GARDEN—ENERGY IN THE MINES—QUARTZ-MINES—QUARTZ MINING SUCCESSFUL—THE AUTHOR GETS OUT OF HIS DEPTH.
October, 1851.
The diggings in our immediate vicinity were not actively worked, as there was not sufficient water for the purpose; this, however, was shortly to be remedied, for companies composed of miners were at work in every direction, conducting water from the rivers to the dry diggings; and at this moment new plots of auriferous soil are daily being added to the area of “paying ground� in the mines by the artificial introduction of the water which nature has denied to them. Most of these companies have received handsome returns; the charge to each miner supplied with water being about two shillings a day.
This affords another instance of the successful employment of capital originally procured by gold digging; and if you wanted a few shares in one of these young companies, you could procure them without money, for by taking your coat off and helping to cut the ditch, you could in six months work yourself into a very respectable stockholder. I suppose each traveller who returns to his home from California, whether he is an Englishman or a Sandwich Islander, is questioned on all sides as to whether the “diggings� are nearly exhausted? This is easy to answer in the negative, but then follows a query far more difficult to reply to, viz., “when will they be?� Conjecture must necessarily have much weight in determining this problem, statistics of the past or present yield of the placers being almost valueless for that purpose. Yet this should be a question of very great financial importance, and not alone as regards the probable duration of the twelve million sterling now annually exported from California. For we must consider how far we are sustained by facts in presuming that the present yield of this country will be doubled, nay, quadrupled annually before the surface-soil is left again as once no doubt it was, valueless in gold. Of course, the gold mines must some day be exhausted; let us see then how far we are justified in supposing this day to be, comparatively speaking, distant, as regards California. I offer the following remarks with the avowal that they are of worth only as the crude opinions of one who has had nearly all that practically bears upon the subject brought before his notice, but as they will necessarily be dull and heavy as a blue book, I recommend the generality of those who have followed me thus far, to skip this chapter, which they probably will do with all the rest of the book.
For you, reader, who have sent to the circulating library for the “Newcomes,� and have had this book forwarded you as a “new work,� (the “Newcomes� being out,) can scarcely be expected to peruse in your present state of disgust, a chapter on gold mines: I therefore dedicate this “paper� to two individuals, one of whom shall be the gold mine victim before alluded to, as contemplating the two and twopence he received for his invested sovereign, and the other is that unknown man, who, in the ennui of a long sea voyage, shall peruse, mayhap, as I have done before to-day, the pages with which his trunk is lined.
Mormon Gulch was the name of a ravine that was about a hundred yards from my tent, it was reported to have been the wealthiest digging in the mines, and according to rumour, half an hour’s work with a clasp knife or tin spoon, had invariably enriched any of the fortunate Mormons who first discovered it in 1848. Since those days, however, the earth, or stones rather, for these preponderate, had been turned over again and again, each time yielding less, until the soil ceased to return sufficient remuneration to the only process of labour that could be at that time applied to it. But before now water has been conducted there, and by the more wholesale process of sluice-washing, the gulch claims are again up in the market.
By-and-by we shall hear of the sluice-washing companies having deserted the gulch, and perhaps for a short period the red stony gravel will lie idle; but soon steam-engines and some process of securing the gold by amalgamation with quicksilver, will brighten up old Mormon Gulch again, and there is no knowing how remote the day is, when its red banks shall for once and all, finally and for the twentieth time, be reported to have “given out.�
The history of Mormon Gulch, and the future I have sketched for it, is applicable to every ravine in the country, so far as this, that each auriferous flat or gulch will be subjected to certain processes, until at last the appliances of steam and science shall have robbed every square foot of earth of the treasure it contains.
Now, if all the gold territory of this country had been seized upon and worked at the time that Mormon Gulch was first discovered, we might form some estimate of the time when machinery should be brought to bear generally upon the placers; but as yet we cannot ascertain the amount of gold-bearing soil that exists; for not only are fresh diggings still brought to light, in the vicinity of the original discoveries, but we have ample proof that plenty lies beyond in the direction of the Sierra Nevada, which now, from the presence of hostile Indians, cannot be disturbed, and indeed, for the present, is not wanted.