"More dirt, more dirt," cries the feeder, and the next moment two slender figures are seen rounding the corner of the hole, and tottering, staggering, half running, half walking under their awkward burden. Their poor legs, fit only for counter-jumping, seem fairly to bend and buckle like a whalebone, as they slip and stumble over the uneven path, and their faces, like our own, shrivel under the fire that streams from the burning sun above, and burning stones below.
We rested three hours at noon, and finished our day's work of ten hours about seven. And now for the gold!—a hundred hods of earth had passed through the machine, and out of that quantity it should have digested at least a hundred dollars. We should not wonder if there were two hundred, but should feel satisfied, as it was the first day, with only one. We gathered round, we three, and put our heads together over the trough, now drawn part way out of its place, while our hired men peeped respectfully over our shoulders.
Tipping the rocker first to one side, and then gently reversing the position, the pure liquid quicksilver ran rapidly across the bottom, while the amalgam lingered behind. Number Four scraped it up with his fingers, and having squeezed and moulded it in his hand, disclosed to our view a lump about as big as a bullet, and worth three or four dollars.
On further examination we found that several pounds of quicksilver had escaped from the rocker; and as this was worth quite as much as the gold we had obtained, our first day's labour left us just one ounce in debt. None but an Irishman could get rich in this way, so we betook ourselves at once for consolation to the second scientific miner, who somewhat reassured us by saying that it was no more than was to be expected; that it required thirty or forty dollars to saturate the quicksilver, which it seemed would do nothing until it had gorged itself to repletion, and that the next day we should do better. He also sent one of his company, a young gentleman who, either because he had very long legs, or a good deal of whisker, and that sort of nobility, was called Count Eggenheim, to discover the secret of our losing so much quicksilver. The Count directed us to set the rocker steeper, and rock more rapidly, seventy beats to a minute: and these various alterations effected such an improvement that we made the next day twenty dollars. But I will not weary the reader with a more continued detail; at the end of five days, after paying for our hole and hired labour, we had left just fifty cents apiece; and though Capt. Bill still retained something of his early predilection for our patent bee-hive, the rest of the party were so opposed to giving it any further trial, that the whole scheme was then and there abandoned.
Subsequent observation convinced us that we were right in our decision, and that the Virginia rocker, so far from being what it had been represented, was in no respect superior to the common cradle, while its great size and weight were very serious objections. With the cradle the miner was perfectly independent—he moved from one spot to another at pleasure, and washed only the richer portions. The Virginia rocker, on the other hand, was comparatively a fixture, and to move it even a short distance so arduous an operation that it was avoided as long as possible.
It will be recollected that the first scientific miner, among other arguments in favour of this machine, had stated that the hemispherical cakes which he exhibited had been obtained from earth that had already been through the common cradle. We now learned in what sense these words were to be understood; a miner who had been at work on the island all the time the company had their machine in operation, assured us that several small rockers were in use at the same time, and that their contents had been twice a day passed through the Virginia rocker for the purpose of separating the black sand and gold by amalgamation. So in the famous partnership between the dwarf and the giant, the giant carried off all the glory from his humble companion—so in a nest, the big glutton starves his weaker brethren, and so always the rich absorbs the profit for which the poor man sweats.
But it was a comfort to know that, after all, the scientific miner had told nothing but the truth, though his distance from the scene of operations and his scientific method of viewing matters had kept him in ignorance of some important particulars. The company of which he was chief proved their own faith in the machines by subsequently setting up ten of them on the island in a single body; water was brought on in a flood by means of a trough several hundred feet long, and a waterwheel erected at an expense of three or four thousand dollars, to rock the machines, though the same labour could have been performed far better and cheaper by hand. Their whole object seemed to be to wash as much earth as possible, or rather to force it through the rocker. They worked in this distracted manner only a short time when the rainy season set in, their waterwheel was washed away—the company was dispersed, their state and magnificence forgotten, and all their thousand machines might have been bought for a song.
Mowbray had watched the progress of their experiment with intense solicitude, either because he was a silent partner in the concern, or because he intended, if they were successful, to make his fortune in the same way.
About this time he bought a pair of mules and a large wagon, and filling it with stores set out on a prospecting expedition through the northern mines, accompanied by his trusty body-servant Friday. It was usual in the mines, when one went a prospecting, for him to sling his blanket on his back, and, with his pick in one hand and his shovel in the other, creep slowly up and down the rivers, sleeping at night on a rock, and solacing his labour with a slice of salt pork and a bit of biscuit. If his journey were long, and he were able to afford the expense, he would sometimes aspire to the dignity of a mule to transport his tools and provisions, and perhaps himself; but it was reserved for Mowbray to introduce so magnificent an innovation. He returned in a few weeks with an account of a rich bar he had visited on the Yuba, where claims had been offered him at a price so monstrous that they must needs be of extraordinary value. Nothing, however, could be done till spring, and in the meantime he thought he should find the south of California or the Sandwich Islands a much more agreeable residence than the mines. He accordingly sold his house, his mules, his provisions, and everything else for which he could find a purchaser, and turned his back on the mines, I believe for ever. Overwhelming as was the contrast between the beginning and the end of his adventures, he would yet have been, if he had succeeded, even more remarkable, and almost the only one of his class. The respectable Busby's sarcastic depreciation of educated men found but too many striking instances in California. Of all with whom I became acquainted, I remember only one or two who were finally successful in mining; they either never made anything, or were sure to throw it away on some monstrous project that would never have occurred to any one else.
To return from this digression, which has led us several weeks in advance of our story. Our party was not the only one that had stumbled over the Virginia rocker. It had found its way into all parts of the mines; Capt. Fayreweather, at Coloma, though already provided with the most ingenious invention of his wary Nantucketer, had wasted time and money on this more pretentious novelty; and in our own neighbourhood several parties had discarded it, as we had done, after a longer or shorter trial.