HYDRAULIC METHOD OF MINING. 
265 
The drift is almost entirely composed of snow-white masses of quartz, in great round blocks 
from three to six feet in diameter, intermingled with smaller boulders of all sizes, and gravel 
and sand, all of the same material. A very considerable amount of peroxide of iron is mingled 
with the drift in some places, and imparts a light-red color to the mass. All these blocks of 
quartz are very much rounded and water-worn, and the whole deposit is rudely stratified in 
irregular beds of variable thickness. Inclined or diagonal stratification is very distinct in 
nearly all of the cuttings, and shows the action of varying currents at the time of the deposi¬ 
tion of the beds. It is probable, from the indications, that these currents were from the north 
and east. They must have been very strong and violent to transport such great boulders of 
quartz. 
The gold is coarse, and appears to be distributed throughout the mass of the drift from the 
surface to the bed-rock ; it is most abundant at the bottom, but the drift “ pays'’ throughout. 
The gold is not uniformly distributed, but the amount in the different claims is unequal. One 
of the claims yielded $48,000 in five months. This was worked by nine men night and day, 
at an expense of $13,000, leaving a clear profit of $35,000. The usual yield is from six to 
eight dollars a day (ten hours) to each man, but some claims pay from twenty to thirty. The 
heaviest lump of gold which has been taken out at the Bluffs weighed four pounds. 
PLACER MINING BY THE HYDRAULIC METHOD, MICHIGAN CITY. 
All this drift is washed by what is called the “hydraulic method,” an improvement in the 
art of placer mining and washing which originated among the miners of California, and which 
enables them to mine and wash nearly ten tons of earth where, under the old methods, they 
could scarcely wash one. 
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