Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California

by G. A. Henty

The change in the character of the scenery was sudden and surprising. Hitherto the country had been bare and treeless, but the great slopes of the Nevada mountains were covered from top to bottom with a luxuriant growth of timber. Nowhere in the world are finer views to be obtained than on the slopes of the Nevada Mountains. The slopes are extremely precipitous, and sometimes, standing on a crag, one can look down into a valley five or six thousand feet below, clothed from top to bottom with luxuriant foliage, while far away in front, at the mouth of the valley, can be seen the low, rich flats of California.

On the lower slopes of these mountains lay the gold deposits. These were found in great beds of gravel and clay, which in countless generations had become so hardened that they almost approached the state of conglomerate. The gold from these beds had been carried, either by streams which ran through them, or by the action of rain and time, into the ravines and valleys, where it was found by the early explorers. These great beds of gravel have been since worked by hydraulic machinery, water being brought by small canals, or flumes, many miles along the face of the hills, to reservoirs situated one or two hundred feet above the gravel to be operated upon.

From the reservoirs extremely strong iron pipes lead down to the gravel, and to the end of these pipes are fitted movable nozzles, like those of fire-engines, but far larger. The water pours out through these nozzles with tremendous force, breaking up the gravel, and washing it away down a long series of wooden troughs, in which the gold settles, and is caught by a variety of contrivances.

But in the early days of gold discovery the very existence of these beds of gravel was unknown, and gold was obtained only in the ravines and valleys by washing the soil in the bottom. It had already been discovered that the soil was richer the further the searchers went down, by far the greater finds being made when the diggers reached the solid rock at the bottom, in the irregularities of which, worn by water thousands of years before, large quantities of rough gold were often discovered.

There was no difficulty in following the track through the forest, and after two days' travelling the party arrived at the first mining village. They chose a piece of ground for their camp, fastened their horses to stumps, erected a tent of blankets, and placed in it the stores brought on their baggage-horses, which had remained untouched since they started. Then, leaving one of their number in charge, they started off to visit the diggings.

The whole of the bottom of the narrow valley was a scene of life and bustle. The existence of gold in the valley had been discovered but three weeks before, but a rush had taken place from other diggings. The ground had been allotted out, and a number of tents pitched, and rough huts erected. Men were working as if for bare life. The lots were small, and the ground was already perfectly honeycombed with holes. Generally the diggers worked in batches of four or five, each member of which took up a claim, so that the space for operations was enlarged.

Two men laboured with pick and shovel, and the baskets, as they were filled with earth and sand, were first screened in a sieve to remove the larger portion of stones and rock, and were then poured into what was known as a cradle, which was a long trough on rockers; one man brought water in buckets from the stream, and poured it into this, while another kept the cradle in constant motion. The mud and lighter portions of stone flowed away over the edge, or were swept off by the hand of the men employed in working it, the particles of gold sinking to the bottom of the machine, where they were found at the clean-up at the end of the day's work.

The new-comers looked on with great interest at the work, asking questions as to the luck which attended the operators. The majority gave but a poor account of their luck, the value of the finds at the end of the day being barely sufficient to pay the enormous rate charged for provisions, which had to be carried up from the coast some hundreds of miles away. The stores were brought in waggons as far as Sacramento, and from that town were carried to the diggings on the backs of mules and horses. Consequently it was impossible for a man to live on the poorest necessities of life for less than three or four dollars a day, and in the out-of-the-way valleys the cost was often considerably more.

Some of the diggers owned that they were doing well, but there was a general disinclination to state even the approximate amount of their daily winnings. The hunters found, however, that the general belief was that some of those who had claims in the centre of the valley, where of course the gold would settle the thickest, were making from ten to twenty ounces per day.

"That's something like!" Dick said. "Just fancy making from forty to eighty pounds per day. I vote we set to work at once. As well here as anywhere else."