“As we near the washing spot, in every direction immense hose, made of galvanized iron, and canvas tubes six feet round, coil in all directions over the ground like gigantic serpents, converging towards a gap, where they disappear.
“On reaching this gap, I look down into a basin or dry lake, three hundred feet below me. The hose hangs down this cliff of shingle, and following its course by a zigzag path, I reach a plateau of rock, from which the shingle has already been washed.
“A man stands at the end of each hose, that has for its head a brass nozzle. With the force of cannon-shot, water issues in a large jet from this tube, and propelled against the shingle, guided by the men, washes it away as easily as we could sweep a molehill from off the grass.
“The stream of water, bearing with it the materials washed from out the cliff, runs through wooden troughs called ‘flumes,’ floored with granite. These ‘flumes’ extend six miles. Men are stationed at regular distances to fork out the heavy stones.
“Throughout its entire length, transverse strips of wood dam back a tiny pond of mercury. These are called ruffles—gold-traps, in other words, that seize on the fine dust-gold distributed through the shingle. The flumes are cleaned about once a month, and the gold extracted from the mercury.
“I try with a powerful lens to detect gold amidst the material they are washing, but not a trace is discoverable, and yet it pays an immense profit to the gold-washers.”
There are two more modes of extracting water, which will be but cursorily mentioned.
The reader will remember that water finds its own level, and that the terrific power of hydraulic mining is owing to the fact that the water expends its force against the solid rock instead of ascending into the air.
It is now found that, even without artificial assistance, water has a habit of finding its own level, and that, if it be allowed its own course, it will contrive to find its way nearly to the highest point whence it derived its origin. On this principle are based the Artesian Wells, which, when they “strike water,” spurt it up in a torrent, as is the case with the now celebrated Norton Tubes, which are screwed down into the earth like hollow gimlets, and which always contrive to extract the water hidden beneath the surface of the earth.