THE GOLD DIGGERS.

Western Star, 13 June 1933, Page 4

THE GOLD DIGGERS.

HOW THE METAL IS TAKrN FROM THE GROUND I have written before of tli« methods the prospeeto r use s in seeking lii s gold (states Boyd Cable, in the ‘Manchester Guardian.’). Now for the ways in which the gold is got out of the ground. All the wild excitement and rush to buy gold miuing shares in the recent “Kaffir boom” concerns only one forttn of gold-getting, and that the dullest most prosaic, and most mechanical of them all. Gold mining in big mines is n 0 more exciting for the miners than it is for men mining coal or salt.

But this rise in the price of gold has brought renewed activity to the “placer” miners and “diggers.” Their work is one: wild gamble with results that vary from nothing to a fortune, washed from th© soil by primitive hand labour or literally picked up in the shape of a huge nugget of pure gold. In the days of the Australian gold' rush one nugget was found only a few indies below the surface of the ground. It was brought to view by the rut of a cart track wearing down, to it It was 2,5200 zin weight) which at tlie present values of gold would be worth about £15.000. The methods of the gold rush times in Australia then and in California in the famous days of “the forty-niners,” or diggers of 1849. are being revived to-day, notably in Kenya and in British Columbia, where so many new claims were staked that the commissioner rent out of application forms and had to send in hurried! orders for thousands more.

When the prospector, searching through country where the nature of soil or nock gives indications of gold being hidden, discovers a- spot which yields him' good “specimens” or “pay dirt,” he promptly ‘stakes his claim’; by driving pegs in th©; four corners of a square of ground and registering his claim with the local commissioner. He may only stake a square of cerltain specified size, but he can (and usually does if others do not get ahead of him) stake out other squares bordering his. He can then register these in the name of friends, on relatives, wno must-, however, in most countries take up and work th© claim 1 within, a stipulated period.

WASHING THE GRAVEL. If a stream runs through or borders tlie claim the digger sets to work to wash out -the gold from the soil and gravel. He may use a “cradle” or “rocker,”’ or he may build a set of “sluice boxes,” The cradle is a box over one end of which is placed an iron plate freely perforated, and below this plate an “apuon” is set at an angle so as to shoot tlie mud ’ and water right to one end of the box. Across the bottom of tli© cradle box are nailed strips of metal or wood known as “rifles.” Gravel and mud are shovelled on to tlie perforated plate and buckets of water poured on to it, washing the smaller stuff down on to the apron, which shoots it to one end of the ciadle, where the first rifle bar is placed. The box is set on rockers exactly like a child’s and as the water is poured in the cradle is rooked steadily to and fro so that the water is swept from end to end and so- much of it spilled out at each tilt. The particles of gold, being the heaviest matter in the mud, sink to the bottojn and are caught and held by the rifle bars. The gravel caught on the

top plate is carefully looked over, and nuggets too large to lfas s through the perforations are easily and quickly picked o.ut A sluice box is worked on the same principle of rifle bar s catching the gold grains, which sink first of all the matter deposited. The sluio e may be of two or three troughs consisting merely of two sides and a bottom, and placed so that each trough is on. a slope and fits into the box below* it. As with the cradle, the grave] and mud are dumped in at the top end of the sluice, water i.s poured on, and as the muddied water runs down the slope the heavier gold grains and “dust” sink fo he caught in the rifles. So long as the tiniest traces of gold can be found in the end box and rifles other boxes are added on unti.l the sluice may extend fo r hundred of yards. WORKING OLD CLAIMS.

lii such lush times a.s those of the Australian and Californian, and Klondike diggings when a rich “placer - deposit might be yielding its lucky two on three diggers scores or hundreds of pounds’ worth of gold a day, there was less care to extract- the last and uttermost grains-, and a good deal of the metal was left iu dumps and tailings of earth from which the gold had been roughly washed. ’A hen the auriferous soil was some distance from a stream the work was much more toilsome, and was liable to be scamped Thi s was especially so because wages and the cost of food on the diggmg s werie usually at faburously high figures Often modern methods oi extracting the gold have won large quantities from abandoned fields, aad 1 have seen myself a little camp c f China men working over the wide acres of dusty plain of a long-since abandoned * gold diggings of the rush days and get- ' ting out enough to pay them good wages In one place the halfhUed holes and the enimblin «■ heaps of soil taken ou t t> f them were a mile or s 0 from water. The industrious Chinamen were using the old cradles and sluices with water carried t 0 them in kerosene tins dangling from the ends of a bamboo pole across the shoulders. Th e water was. tipped into the washing machines, and when it ran through and out from them collected in receptacles set to, catc.i it. and so was used over and .

over again

In the prehistoric section of the museum of Madrid you can see a smal circlet o r crown of pure beaten gold which was found with the other relic-; displayed by it of Stone Age weapons and implements and a scure of skeletons in n buried cave of the Spanish Sierras, It was evidently made before tlie melting or moulding of gold \vaknown, because it is a lump or nugget of river gold hammered laboriously n>to shape. And the earliest.' records o r gold-getting go hack nearly r>,ooo vears to the gold-washing depicted in ’ the monuments of the Fourth Dvnastv dated about 30,10 80. So that goldgetting probably one of the oldest-mdus'-n'os i n the world and the nn-tii-e blacks of Kenya and th e Gob) , Coast are carrying on to-day a labour' at which their forgotten forbears worked t 0 enrich the Oncer of Sheba and the temples of King Solomon.