MINING. 301 



into hill, flat, bench, bar, river-bed, ancient river-bed, and 

 gulch mines. Hill diggings are those where the pay-dirt is in 

 or under a hill. Flat diggings are in a flat. Bench diggings 

 are in a " bench," or narrow table on the side of a hill above 

 a river. Benches of this kind are not uncommon in Califor- 

 nia, and they often indicate the place where the stream ran 

 in some very remote age. Bars are low collections of sand 

 and gravel at the side of a river, and above its surface at low 

 water. River-bed claims are those beneath the surface of the 

 river at low water, and access is obtained to them only by re- 

 moving the water from the beds by flumes or ditches. An- 

 cient river-bed claims are those in which the gold was de- 

 posited by streams, in places where no streams now exist. 

 Gulch claims are those in gullies which have no water save 

 during a small part of the year. A " claim " is the mining 

 land owned or held by one man or a company. 



The placer mines are again classified according to the in- 

 struments with which they are wrought. There are sluice 

 claims, hydraulic claims, tunnel claims, dry washing, dry dig- 

 ging, and knife claims. In 1849 and 1850, the main classifi- 

 cation of the placers was into wet diggings and dry diggings ; 

 the former meaning mines in the bars and beds of rivers, and 

 dry diggings were those in gullies and flats, where water could 

 be obtained only part of the year, or not at all. That classifi- 

 cation was made while nearly all the mining was done near 

 the surface, before the great deposits of pay dirt in the hills 

 had been discovered, and before ditches, sluices, and the hy- 

 draulic process had been introduced. The " dry diggings," 

 which for several years furnished nearly half of the gold 

 yield of the State, are now, with a few unimportant excep- 

 tions, exhausted, or left to the attention of the Chinamen. 



The purpose of all placer miners is not to catch all the gold 

 in the dirt which they wash, but to catch the greatest possible 

 quantity within a given time. It is not supposed that any 

 process used in gold mining catches all the metal. Part of it is 



