Tuesday, the Captain and Number Four were employed by the second scientific miner in working his machine, for which they received the usual wages, eight dollars a day, and also acquired some knowledge of its operation. At the same time, as Tertium and I did not wish to be idle, and had not yet obtained a rocker, we set to work on the river bank with pans, modestly limiting our expectations to an ounce a piece.
Panning is to the beginner a very curious and mysterious operation. An old miner had initiated my brother in the process, and he now gave me the result of his experience. "You must do so, and so, and so," said he, suiting the action to the word. I accordingly did as I was told, shaking and whirling, and dipping with all my might, though with a strange mixture of faith and unbelief as to the result.
There was nothing in the appearance of the earth to distinguish it from what I had seen a thousand times at home. It was simply a mass of sand, and stones, and gravel, such as is often found on our sea-shores, and in the beds or along the banks of our more rapid rivers. Yet this was the earth I had come twenty thousand miles to seek, and in that earth, unnoticed among the baser substances, but worth more than all of them, there lurked, so I was told, and so I partly believed, divers grains of gold.
While I thus wondered, I had gradually thrown out the lighter sand and gravel, but a portion of black sand still remained; and now, as with gentle violence I sank the edge of the pan beneath the surface, the inrushing water brought to view a few brighter grains contrasted, and in appearance multiplied by this intimate mingling with their sooty brethren. Good! I said, there must be at least two dollars; but when the black sand was all floated out by the dipping process just mentioned, I found, to my great mortification, that there was not more than twenty-five cents.
That part of the bank which we had selected had already been once dug over, and most of its riches abstracted; but as the first miners had done their work in a careless and slovenly manner, contenting themselves, as I had thought to do, not indeed with the biggest lumps, but with the richest portions, they had left numerous little patches scattered among and under the rocks that afforded very good pickings to their successors. Our labour was not, however, in this instance very profitable; we made only three dollars, and were glad the next day to change our employment.
Number Four set out on an expedition of inquiry among the miners on the North Fork,—Tertium took his place at the Virginia rocker—and I was engaged to assist as a journeyman carpenter in putting up a small iron house belonging to a Mr. Mowbray, who had lately arrived in the diggings in such style as to produce an immense sensation.
He was a young man of good family and rather genteel figure—rich and well educated—understood thoroughly the art of spending money, but had probably never earned a dollar in his life. Tired at length of this barren inactivity, and seized with a dreamy ambition to do something in the world, he had pitched upon California as a suitable field for his first essay. His plan of operations was equally bold and ingenious; he determined to conquer nature, and transport the comforts of civilization into her rude and rugged fastnesses. He had no objection to the romance and excitement of a miner's life, but he would have none of its accompanying hardships.
Naturalists have described a species of spider that, in order to gratify its amphibious propensity, makes a diving bell of bubble, and dwells in this palace of light secure beneath the waters. So Mowbray plunging into an unaccustomed element, still carried about him his bubble of old associations. In spite of the seeming greatness of the change, his atmosphere was still the same; his nature had undergone no transformation, and he walked now over the hills of California as formerly along the pavements of Broadway. Others might sleep on the ground, and live on pork and flapjacks, but he would sleep softly and fare luxuriantly—they might toil for an ounce a day, he sought no lesser game than thousands.
And if the most lavish expenditure of money had been all that was wanting, his success would have been placed beyond all doubt. During the three months of preparation previous to his departure, he had forgotten nothing, however trifling, necessary to his undertaking.
You would have thought him a second Robinson Crusoe about to embark voluntarily for his desert island. First and foremost came a chest of tools, though I grievously fear that our dainty crusader could hardly have told a chisel from a handsaw. But then, fortunately, he had a scientific dictionary in two fat volumes, from which he could easily obtain the necessary information. Next there was a horse-power, a heavy mass of iron-wheels, so called, I suppose, because nobody but a horse could move it—india-rubber pontoons, looking marvellously like the skin of a huge black snake—a large tent of the same material to use in prospecting—together with a whole army of picks and shovels, to look at which you would suppose our hero had as many arms as Briareus.