Panning is to the beginner a very curious and mysterious operation. An old miner had initiated my brother in the process, and he now gave me the result of his experience. "You must do so, and so, and so," said he, suiting the action to the word. I accordingly did as I was told, shaking and whirling, and dipping with all my might, though with a strange mixture of faith and unbelief as to the result.
There was nothing in the appearance of the earth to distinguish it from what I had seen a thousand times at home. It was simply a mass of sand, and stones, and gravel, such as is often found on our sea-shores, and in the beds or along the banks of our more rapid rivers. Yet this was the earth I had come twenty thousand miles to seek, and in that earth, unnoticed among the baser substances, but worth more than all of them, there lurked, so I was told, and so I partly believed, divers grains of gold.
While I thus wondered, I had gradually thrown out the lighter sand and gravel, but a portion of black sand still remained; and now, as with gentle violence I sank the edge of the pan beneath the surface, the inrushing water brought to view a few brighter grains contrasted, and in appearance multiplied by this intimate mingling with their sooty brethren. Good! I said, there must be at least two dollars; but when the black sand was all floated out by the dipping process just mentioned, I found, to my great mortification, that there was not more than twenty-five cents.
That part of the bank which we had selected had already been once dug over, and most of its riches abstracted; but as the first miners had done their work in a careless and slovenly manner, contenting themselves, as I had thought to do, not indeed with the biggest lumps, but with the richest portions, they had left numerous little patches scattered among and under the rocks that afforded very good pickings to their successors. Our labour was not, however, in this instance very profitable; we made only three dollars, and were glad the next day to change our employment.
Number Four set out on an expedition of inquiry among the miners on the North Fork,--Tertium took his place at the Virginia rocker--and I was engaged to assist as a journeyman carpenter in putting up a small iron house belonging to a Mr. Mowbray, who had lately arrived in the diggings in such style as to produce an immense sensation.
