272 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 washin g 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-power; 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, which 
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 difficulty 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 cafion, and the animal tumbling down, was 
caught by a projecting point of rock. The hunter followed 
