Digger (mining)

“ Dry Digging.—Dry digging is that mining where the miner, after using the shovel to strip off the barren dirt, scrapes the pay-dirt over with a knife, picking out the particles of gold as he comes to them, and throwing away the earthy matter. ”

“ The diggings are placers in the bars and banks of the Klamath River and its tributaries, the Trinity and Salmon Rivers, and many small creeks. The principal mining places are Orleans Bar, Gullion's Bar, Negro Flat, Cecilville, Weitspeck and Red Cap. The whole county is very rugged and mountainous, and much of it is covered with heavy timber. The diggings are so difficult of access, and are so protected by mountains against ditches, that they will last for many years. There is probably no part of the state where the single miner, without capital, has a better chance to dig gold with a profit. ”

“ It must be more fascinating to hold a pan in your own hands and pick out little grains of gold or perhaps even a big piece of it with your own fingers, but if the gravel is good the dredge makes more money.
In Alaska the great difficulty in mining is that, [Pg 43] except at the surface, the ground is frozen all the year round. At first, the miners used to thaw the place where they wished to dig by building wood fires; but this was a slow method, and now the thawing is done by steam. They carry the steam in a pipe to the place where the digging is to be done, and send it through a hose. ”

“ In hydraulic claims, all the dirt is washed; in all other kinds of claims, such dirt as contains no gold is thrown to one side, or "stripped off." "Hydraulic mining" is the highest branch of placer mining; it washes more dirt, and requires more water, and a larger sluice, than any other kind of mining. The number of men employed in a hydraulic claim, however, is usually small, from three to six, the water doing nearly all the work. In some claims a man is constantly employed with a heavy sledge-hammer in breaking up large stones, so that the pieces may be sent down the sluice. ”

“ At this depth a common windlass and bucket are placed over the centre of the pit, and the digging continued by drawing up the earth, spar, and ores, if any are found, in the manner pursued in sinking a well. During his progress, the miner is notified of his approach to a body of ore, by small detached lumps occasionally found imbedded in the soil, within a few feet of the surface. Sometimes lumps on the top of the ground determine on the place for digging. The spar is also a sign by which he judges, as there is seldom a body of spar found without lead-ore. ”

“ We are hoping for better success in the river diggings when the water is low. At present there is very little being accomplished. Laborers may be hired at $2 50 and $3 a day.
May 15th. During the three days immediately following my last date, I made, while working by myself, $17. Was invited to join a few miners working near me, who intend to organize a company for the purpose of mining at Hart’s Bar—a place two miles below Jacksonville—when the river shall be low enough to be worked. All of these are Southern gentlemen. ”

“ One hundred thousand people might disperse themselves in the Yukon gold-bearing grounds and hardly know of the presence of neighbors. There may be other diggings over this vast area quite as good as the Klondyke diggings. As in all the gold mining regions, diggings everywhere vary considerably in value. It is not improbable even that the late comers will take up the abandoned washings of the earlier men and do well with them. ”

“ These cases of sickness very much hastened the breaking up of our mining operations for the season. Many of the company left for the mountains, to be ready for the winter diggings.
Nov. 9th. This is my last day at the mines. We removed our cradles this morning to the portion of the channel from which we had taken out the largest amount of gold, hoping that we might find the vein again. ”

“ Mine à La Motte has also proved an extensive deposit, and is still unexhausted. New Diggings, Shibboleth, and Richwoods, are among the discoveries of later date, which have yielded very large quantities of ore. But the mode of mining in the diluvial soil must exhaust it of its mineral contents, and direct miners, in after years, to the true position of the ore, in the calcareous rock. So long as the search continues in the soil, the business will partake of the uncertainty which now attends it, and which renders it rather an object of temporary enterprise, than a fixed employment. ”

“ Whether there is any geological rule to be guided by has yet to be proved, at present no old digger will ever sink below the mica soil, or leave his hole until he arrives at it, even if he sinks to forty feet. So, therefore, it may be taken as a general rule, wherever the diggings may be, either in Victoria, New South Wales, or South Australia, that gold in "working" quantities lies only where there is found quartz or mica. ”

“ Diehl, who represents the London and Hamburg Gold Recovery Company in connection with the Brown Hill Mine, has lately made a most interesting discovery re the treatment of sulphide ore, likely to be of much value in the mining world. From this place I went to the Crœsus, thence to Block 45, another mine that has given big results. Of course there are many mines that have not proved as rich as those mentioned. Mining seems to be like fishing: there may be any number of fine fish, but it does not fall to the luck of all anglers to catch them. ”

“ Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of digging it. ”

“ Living near by the diggings was a sort of doctor, who used to speculate, in various ways, in the business of gold-mining. To this individual the Tasmanian diggers betook themselves; and told him, that they had received private intelligence, from the new rush; and that they must start for it immediately, or lose the chance of making their fortunes. For that reason, they wished to sell their “wash dirt,” which they knew to be worth at least two ounces to the “load;” ”

“ He hastened immediately to Melbourne, and for a whole week had sought his family in vain. At length, on the preceding evening, he found them only in time to witness the last moments of his wife.
Sad as this history may appear, it is not so sad as many, many others; for often, instead of returning with gold, the digger is never heard of more.
In England many imagine that the principal labour at the diggings consists in stooping to pick up the lumps of gold which lie upon the ground at their feet, only waiting for some one to take possession of them. ”

“ When, by experiment, it is found to yield gold, the cradle is placed by the river side, and the dirt is washed through it, while the gold settles at the bottom of the machine. At the close of the work, this is washed down in pans, and then is dried in the sun or by the fire, and is still farther cleaned by blowing, by the magnet, or by quicksilver. The river diggings found in the channels require much more labor in the preparation, and must be worked by companies, sometimes of one hundred persons. A canal and dam must be made, to turn the water from the channel of the river. ”

“ The present mode of promiscuous digging on the surface would then be abandoned, and people made to see and to realize the advantages of the only system of mining which can be permanently, uniformly, and successfully pursued, viz., by penetrating into the bowels of the earth. ”

“ Weaver’s Creek, Aug. 21st. Our mining company has been to-day increased, two others having joined us, making our number five. One of these has been engaged in walling in a spring where we obtain our drinking-water—another is making a cradle. The others have been employed in removing the stones and top soil, and carrying the auriferous dirt on hand-barrows, made of hides, down to the edge of the water, ready to be washed. From every indication, we have “struck a rich lead.” We find much gold on the rocks: on one I counted twenty-five scales. ”

“ Twenty yards from this was a cone of black earth twice the height of a man. This was their pile of pay dirt. For five days now, they had been working on the second 35 mine of the seven. The pay dirt they had struck was not as rich as they hoped to find, but it would repay the labor of sluicing. It was growing richer each hour. They hoped in time to uncover the mother-lode. This would pay for panning and yield a rich reward.
It was placer mining. Beside the mine entrance stood a steam thawer, a coal-heated boiler such as is used for driving a sawmill or grist-mill engine. ”

“ The artificial ditch supplies the want. The ditches are made by large companies, which sell the water by the "inch." An inch of water is as much as will run out of an orifice an inch square, with the water standing six or seven inches deep in the flume over the orifice. The depth of water over the orifice is called the "head." The orifice is usually two inches high, and as long as necessary to give the amount of water desired. Nobody wants less than ten or twelve inches for mining: a "sluice-head" is about eighteen inches; a "hydraulic-head" is from forty to two hundred inches. ”

“ 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 ”

“ On the price of carriage up, depended of course the price of provisions at the diggings.
The weight of one of these "swags" is far from light; the provender for the road is itself by no means trifling, though that of course diminishes by the way, and lightens the load a little. Still there are the blankets, fire-arms, drinking and eating apparatus, clothing, chamois-leather for the gold that has yet to be dug, and numberless other cumbersome articles necessary for the digger. In every belt was stuck either a large knife or a tomahawk ”

“ Harry Hardy, McKnight, Peterson, and Doon were sinking to cut the dyke discovered by the Mount of Gold Quartz-mining Company. The mine had been christened the Native Youth; Dick, as the holder of a third interest, felt himself to be a person of some consequence about the claim, and discussed its prospects with the elder miners like a person of vast experience and considerable expert knowledge, using technical phrases liberally, and not forgetting to drop a word of advice here and there. ”

“ In some of the claims the pay-dirt lies within two feet of the surface; in others it lies much deeper, but all the superincumbent matter is swept away.
Water is the great agent of the placer miner; it is the element of his power; its amount is the measure of his work, and its cost is the measure of his profit. With an abundance of water he can wash every thing; without water he can do little or nothing. Placer mining is almost entirely mechanical, and of such a kind that no accuracy of workmanship or scientific or literary education is necessary to mastery in it. ”

“ The process of mining coal is a combination of boring and digging. Shafts are sunk, levels are driven, and drains are carried off, by the help of picks or pickaxes, wedges and hammers, the rocks being also sometimes loosened by blasting with gunpowder. In searching for coal, a shaft is sunk through the uppermost soft stratum, and the rock is then bored, by striking it continually with an iron borer terminating in an edge of steel, which is in the mean time turned partly round; and, at proper intervals, a scoop is let down to draw up the loose fragments. ”

“ Meantime many miners had left the country, and others were thinking of following them to Africa and America, while many of the more expensive mines to work had been closed down. The origin of tin mining in Cornwall was of remote antiquity, and the earliest method of raising the metal was that practiced in the time of Diodorus by streaming—a method more like modern gold-digging, since the ore in the bed of the streams, having been already washed there for centuries, was much purer than that found in the lodes. ”

“ It is of the dry diggings that the future student of the Diamond Fields of South Africa will have to take chief account. The river diggings were only the prospecting work which led up to the real mining operations,—as the washing{169} of the gullies in Australia led to the crushing of quartz and to the sinking of deep mines in search of alluvial gold. Of these dry diggings there are now four, Du Toit’s Pan, Bultfontein, Old De Beers,—and Colesberg Kopje or the great Kimberley mine, which though last in the Field has thrown all the other diamond mines of the world into the shade. ”

“ The limitation must not be neglected, but the exploitation of the diggings is another affair. The ground is exceptionally rich in gold, and it offers every facility for extracting the metal. But the climate of the lowlands presents difficulties. In so large an area of broken ground, however, there are eminences that command a prospect of the sea and which are within the influence of the sea-breeze. The conditions will, doubtless, improve when the adjacent mining-grounds, Inyoko and Izrah, shall have been opened and the country cleared and ventilated. ”