In exploring a new country not previously prospected, the all important question to be determined first is: Where to Prospect? Is the object you are seeking in the region you are in? The first route of exploration, and often the main line of travel, is along the river; either on the water or along the bank. If game is your object, look for tracks at the places of easiest access. If you are seeking gold, the easiest place to find the trace is among the boulders at the water's edge at low water, and at the head of the rapids. Find a place on the low bars, where the current is strong enough to carry away all the lightest gravel when the water is up, but not strong enough to tear out the boulders as large as your head. If you find a few points of rough bedrock sticking up, it is the best in sight. Now, with a pick or bar, turn out a few boulders and take the sand and fine gravel from among them and pan it carefully. If you get a large handful of black sand, and not a color of gold, try two more such bars, and if they yield the same, go down the stream, for there is but a very slim chance of any valuable paystreaks on any branch above.
If you get some gold, but not rich to satisfy you, then hunt for some place where you can dig to bedrock, and find a layer of coarse gravel on what is or has been at some time the head of a rapid. Dig there and test the gravel, and also clean out the crevices in the bedrock and wash the dirt. If the pay dirt is not there it is probably up the stream; perhaps up some creek or gulch, each of which you should try as you pass. When you 'have found a creek that prospects better, or yields coarser gold than the river does above the mouth of it, follow it up. Take notice as to what kind of rock the gravel is made up of, and the nature of the bedrock (see chapter on formation), and when you pass a rapid or find the channel widening out, so as to form a bar on either side of the stream, try for bedrock, the same as on a river, at both ends of the bar, and don't forget the small gulches.
The best claims on a river or large creek are most likely to be where the channel is of moderate width, and the bedrock is a natural grade of seven to eighteen inches to the rod. Deep holes in a channel very rarely pay for cleaning out, theorists and professors to the contrary notwithstanding. The best claims on a small gulch are at, and just below, the ledges and veins that furnished the gold, due allowance being made for water. Diggings are often found on the sides and tops of hills, and if water can be obtained for working, they sometimes pay wonderfully. They are of two sorts. That is, old channels and vein out crops. The old channels are where streams have run in an earlier age of the earth, and while usually following the same general course as the streams of the present age, they often cross nearly at right angles, and in rare cases even run the other way.
They may be good, poor or indifferent, but usually have the advantage over the modem channels of leaving plenty of dump space. Their most common form, which is that of high bars, located near present streams, ore often the best paying mines in their district. In some parts of the world they are covered with lava or other volcanic flow, in such a way as to puzzle the oddest inhabitant; and it takes a fine flow of speech indeed to describe them so that sensible people will think the speaker understands them. Vein outcrops are usually richer and more profitable than the veins that they lead up to, but not always. Very much depends upon the character of the rock, and the gold is often hard to save, being in all shapes and sizes, and often coated with other mineral, or enclosed in rock, which makes crushing necessary.
Continue on to:
Placer Prospecting: Part I
Placer Prospecting: Part II
Placer Prospecting: Part III
Placer Prospecting: Part IV
Placer Prospecting: Part V
Placer Prospecting: Part VI
Return To:
All About Placer Gold
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