HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 71 



some quite soft and friable, yielding readily to the 

 pickaxe or the crowbar ; and, in other places, so hard 

 as to resist the utmost strength of the miners. Several 

 of the diggers were perseveringly exploring the locali- 

 ties where the rotten sorts of slate were found in the 

 largest quantities, and I saw them pick out a good 

 deal of gold with their jack-knives. Their principal 

 aim was to discover what they termed 'a pocket,' 

 which is nothing more than a crevice between the 

 blocks of slate, into which a deposit of gold has been 

 washed by the heavy rains from the higher districts, 

 and which, soon accumulating, swell into rapid tor- 

 rents, which rush down these ravines with extraor- 

 dinary swiftness and force, sweeping every thing 

 before them. 



" There did not appear to be many mining parties 

 at the Stanislaus at this particular period, for the 

 encampments were generally from two to five miles 

 apart, the space between them increasing the higher 

 you advanced towards the mountains, to the foot of 

 which the ravine extended — altogether, a distance of 

 many miles. The lower part of the mine, I concluded 

 from this fact, to be by far the richer, simply from 

 the circumstance I have mentioned ; richer, compara- 

 tively, because here the deposits of gold are more 

 easily found and extracted ; not richer, in reality, as 

 the metal must exist in immense quantities in the 

 upper regions, from which it is washed down by the 

 rains and floods into the lower districts. The virgin 

 deposit would, doubtless, be difficult to come at ; but, 

 if sought after at all, that it is to be sought in the 

 mountains and high lands, I feel persuaded. 



" I turned back, after prosecuting my excursion 

 until the ravine became almost too rocky to allow me 



. 



