260 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
cradle is cleaned up two or four times in a day. The clean- 
ing up is done by lifting the hopper, taking out the apron, 
scraping up all the dirt in the bottom of the cradle with an 
iron spoon, putting it into a pan and washing out the dirt, so 
that only the gold will be left. This last process is called 
panning out, and will be described in the next section. Most 
of the gold collects above the upper riffle-bar, including all the 
larger lumps. If the apron be of rough woollen cloth, some of 
the fine gold will be caught there. In diggings where the 
gold is very fine, the hopper is sometimes placed over the 
lower end of the cradle, and the apron is made twice as long, 
and with a lower inclination than in the more common form 
of the rocker. The water for the cradle should be supplied by 
a little ditch, with a reservoir at the head of the cradle, to 
contain five or six gallons. The dipper should be of tin, 
shaped like a basin, hold about a gallon when full, and have a 
handle an inch and a half in diameter, and eight inches long. 
The difference of height between the upper and lower ends of 
the cradle should not be more than two inches: a steeper in- 
clination will make the current running through it too strong, 
and the gold will be carried off; and, on the other hand, if 
the cradle be nearer a level it will be hard to rock, and the 
dirt in the bottom will pack more rapidly. The amount of dirt 
that can be washed in a day with a cradle, varies from one to 
three cubic yards. The dirt is usually shovelled into a pan or 
bucket, from which it is thrown into the hopper. The miners 
usually measure the amount of dirt washed by the number of 
“pans.” One man working alone with a cradle ought to 
wash from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty pans in a day, 
and two men will wash twice as much. A pan may contain 
one-third or one-half of a cubic foot. Two men can work more 
conveniently with the rocker than one. There is enough work 
to give constant employment to a cradler and ashoveller. The 
latter has a couple of buckets or pans, which he fills alter- 
nately, always keeping one full and near the cradler, so that 
without moving his feet he can pick it up and empty it into 
