2*72 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



dirt in the most favorable places. If there is any gold in a 

 district, he can scarcely fail to find specks of it by washing dirt 

 from the bed-rock in the ravines, and in bars. The existence 

 of gold in a district having been established, close observation 

 will suggest to the prospector where he may reasonably expect 

 to find the best diggings. It is usually found that placer-gold 

 is collected in those places where, if he had been familiar with 

 the ancient topography of the country, he should have had 

 reason to suppose that it would be. 



§ 203. Quartz Mining. — Quartz mining differs much from 

 placer mining. For the former, more capital, more experience, 

 more complicated machinery and richer material are required 

 than for the latter. The placer miner throws the dirt into the 

 water, which then does the work ; whereas the pulverizing of 

 rock is a nice operation, requiring constant attention. Quartz 

 requires a mill and water poAver ; placer dirt is washed in a 

 simple sluice. Dirt containing ten cents in the cubic yard may 

 pay the hydraulic miner, but the quartz miner must have a 

 hundred times as much in a cubic yard of vein-stone, or he 

 cannot work. The placer gold, when freed from the baser 

 material surrounding it, is much of it in coarse particles, v/hich 

 are easily caught by their specific gravity ; the quartz gold 

 must be reduced to a fine powder before it can be set free from 

 its gangue, and with the fineness of the particles increases 

 the difiiculty of catching them. 



Auriferous quartz lodes are often found by accident. Not 

 unfrequently it happens that a rich streak of pay-dirt in a placer 

 claim is followed up to the quartz vein from which it came. 

 While miners are out walking or hunting, they occasionally 

 will come upon lodes in which the gold is seen sparkling. 

 Some good leads have been found by men employed in making 

 roads and cutting ditches. The quartz might be covered with 

 soil, but the pick and shovel revealed its position and wealth. 

 In Tuolumne county in 1858, a hunter shot a grizzly bear on 

 the side of a steep caiion, and the animal tumbling down, was 

 caught by a projecting point of rock. The hunter followed 



