perhaps where a rivulet flows down from the side hill, and a high bank of gravel has collected. Then they let their ponies feed upon the short grass, while they climb a little. way up the bank and dig a hole a few feet deep. You may see these "prospect holes" all over the mountains; for many times nothing has been found at the bottom of them to justify farther operations there; and a man who is unlucky enough to dig many of these fruitless pits gets the reputation of being a "gopher" and finds himself laughed at. Their prospect hole" dug down to where the gravel is firm, they scoop up a panful of dirt and carry it to the margin of the stream. Then having picked out the large pieces of stone, one of the prospectors takes the pan in both hands, dips a little water, and gently shaking the pan, allows the water to flow over the edge and run away, carrying with it the lightest portions of the soil. This is done repeatedly; but as less and less of the heaviest dirt is left behind, greater care must be used. It requires much dexterity and practice to keep the bottom of the pan always lower than the edge, and at the same time dip up and pour out the water without throwing away more earth than you wish to.

Careful management for eight or ten minutes, however, gets rid of everything except a spoonful of black sand, and among this if you have been successful, gleam yellow particles of gold which have settled at the bottom, and have been left behind in the incessant agitation and washing away of the earth, because they were heavier than anything else in the pan.

This operation is called "washing" or " panning out; but it is not quite done yet, for the "colors" or particles of gold, must be separated from the black grains, which are mainly of iron or lead. By passing a magnet back and forth through them these will be dragged out, sticking to it, after which the gold left behind is weighed and its value estimated.

If a prospector finds he can average three cents to every panful of dirt, he knows he can make money by the help

of machinery; but if he is to do his work wholly by hand he must collect at least ten cents from each pan, and in the early days this would have been thought very moderate pay.

After testing here and there, our prospectors decide upon the best part of the gravel bank (which they would call a "bar"), and take possession of a small tract, or "claim," the amount of which is regulated by law; which "claim" they mark by driving down stakes upon which

are written the names of the claimants and the boundaries pre-empted.

Our miners, let us suppose, prefer not to get their gold by the slow method of panning. They therefore procure some pieces of board and hammer together a "rocker," or "cradle." This machine takes its name from its resemblance to an old-fashioned baby-cradle. It is mounted upon two rockers, and its headboard is high enough to serve as a handle for moving it. Inside is arranged a series of three

or four sieves upon inclined supports, one above the other, the coarsest sieve being uppermost. There is no footboard, for in its place projects a long spout out of which the waste water runs, which is fitted with cleats or " riffles like those I shall explain farther on when I speak of the sluice. Into this cradle one man shovels the dirt and gravel, while his partner rocks it and pours in the water, which he dips out of the stream with a long-handled dipper. The big stones all shoot off from the surface of the cradle, but the dirt and small pebbles fall through upon the second sieve, through which, in turn, the finer half goes, and so on until the bottom and the spout catch the gold and retain it alone, while the water drifts the worthless stuff away.

The cradle is an old contrivance, and many forms of it are in use, some having only a single perforated partition to screen off the largest stones. It can be carried about wherever the miner finds it convenient to work, and it does not require a vast deal of water; lastly it calls for much less skill than most other methods of washing. Nevertheless the day of the cradle is nearly gone by, except where a single poor man goes off by himself to some retired spot and works not so much for wealth, as merely for the hope of getting a living. In its place the sluice-box has come to be the great instrument for gathering the gold out of a placer-bar.

In order to work a sluice to advantage there must be plenty of material to be handled and plenty of water. It is upon a sure supply of water that placer-mining depends, and it often happens that a bar that is worth very little might be worth a great deal, if only a stream could be turned through it. Sometimes the gravel are in the very bed of the creek, or on a level with it, and the poor stream, tortured out of its course, is sent into a dozen new channels, while the old beds are rocked through the creaking cradles, or go rattling down the stretching lengths of the hollow sluices. But, as a rule, it is necessary to bring the water in a ditch from some lofty point in the mountains