I went one day to see them, and they took a pan of
dirt from behind a big rock and washed it out, getting as much as two
teacupfuls of nuggets, worth perhaps a thousand dollars. When they went
away they said they would go to Germany to see their poor relatives and
friends, and one of them really went home, but the other two had spent
all their money before they were ready to leave San Francisco. These men
were, without doubt, the inventors of the canvas flume which was
afterward used so successfully in various places.
While I was still here the now famous Downieville Butte quartz mine was
discovered, but there was no way then of working quartz successfully,
and just at that time very little was done with it, but afterward, when
it was learned how to work it, and the proper machinery introduced, it
yielded large sums of bullion.
The miners had a queer way of calling every man by some nickname or
other instead of his true name, and no one seemed offended at it, but
answered to his new name as readily as to any.
It was nearly fall when we found we had worked our claims out, and there
were no new ones we could locate here, so we concluded to go prospecting
for a new locality. I bought a donkey in town of a Mr. Hawley, a
merchant, for which I paid sixty dollars, and gave the little fellow his
old master's name. We now had two animals, and we packed on them our
worldly goods, and started south up the mountain trail by way of the
city of six, where some half dozen men had located claims, but the
ground was dry and deep, so we went on.
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