Part 4 (1/2)
I did not see much of Iowa on this trip. Of all the country I saw from Indiana, through, or after I got through, there was none suited me like Central Illinois, and I have not changed my mind. There was government land in Illinois to enter at that time.
CHAPTER V
PROSPECTING FOR GOLD--SOME HARD EXPERIENCES
After we left uncle in the mining district called Fair Play, we crossed back over the McCosma River to Boland's Run and went over to Four Spring Valley and prospected for some time before we struck any gold that paid.
We finally struck a claim that paid six dollars a day to the hand, clear of water. We had to buy water from a dike that was dug around on the side of the mountain and which cost us four dollars a day. We worked on this claim about three weeks, when the dike broke between where we were at work and the head of the dike where the dam was made across the McCosma River to turn the water out into the dike. We could not work any more until the dike was mended.
My brother, Crawford Bailey and Wint Crumly went out prospecting. They went back across the McCosma River into Fair Play district, where we had parted with Uncle Joshua, a distance of fourteen miles. They struck a surface digging, and they wrote me and I went to them. We had to buy water at the same price, one dollar an inch, or four dollars a day. This claim was richer of gold. We made nine dollars a day to the hand, clear of water.
We finally heard that the dike was mended over at Four Springs Valley and I went over and sold our provisions and collected sixty dollars we had loaned to a miner by the name of Thomas Brison. We did not go back to Four Springs Valley to work any more, but remained on the claim at Fair Play, until in June, when the water gave out and we could not get water to wash any longer. We then concluded to go north on to the American, Uby and Feather rivers and prospect and see if we could strike claims where we could get water to wash with.
The American River was the next river after leaving the McCosma. When we came to the American River, up in the gold region, where we were crossing, the mountains were very steep and looked like they were straight up. We had to travel six miles to get from the bottom of the mountain to its top. But when we got to the American River district, every place we went, we found it claimed up and plenty of miners at work to do all the work there was to do. We could neither find claims to work for ourselves, nor could we hire out to work for any one else.
We left the American River and went over the mountains to the Uby River.
When we got on top of the mountains and started down toward Uby River, we had a hard time finding the path. There was so much gravel and rock and so little soil or dirt, it was almost impossible to see where footmen had made the path. Far toward the west end of the mountain, pack animals could get on top and then travel east ward from where we were crossing, but nothing except footmen and Indians could cross on the trail we were using.
Woodmen had packed their wagons and tools up this mountain somewhere to the westward, to the point where we were crossing, and had cut sawlogs and hauled or rolled them nearby. Then by rolling the logs three or four rods on sloping ground, they would fall straight down to the river bottom, a distance that took us fellows a half day to go up.
I was hunting for the trail which led down the mountain, when I came to the sloping ground where the woodmen had rolled these logs off. I walked carefully down this place, and when I looked down, I saw a yellow streak straight below me. It looked like I could step across it, but I knew it was a river. It made me dizzy to look over the precipice and I stepped backward a few paces and then turned to walk to the top of the mountain again. If I had slipped there, that would have been the last of me.
After hunting a good while, we found the trail and went down the mountain. The path was just wide enough for one to walk on. If a person had stepped off with one foot, the rest of his life's story would have certainly been very brief. When we got down to the river, that little yellow streak which I thought I could step across when looking down the mountain, we had to cross in a ferry boat, the Uby River being a quarter of a mile wide.
We went north and northeast until we reached Morisson's Diggings. The snow at this place was over thirty feet deep in the winter. They had to lay in provisions in the fall to last them all winter and until the snow melted off, and the mountain dried so the ground on the side of the mountains got solid enough so that the trail would not slip off from under the feet of the pack mules.
They built their houses out of round pine or fur logs, a foot and a half in diameter, and porches built by letting one log at the eaves of the house run out and logs a foot through, for posts set up under the ends of these logs. These porches were used to put wood under for winter use.
When the snow commenced falling, they would beat it back with their shovels and keep it beaten back until they could form an arch overhead, making a tunnel from one house to another, so they could visit each other during the winter.
It was the twentieth day of July when we got there and they were just getting started to wash gold. The gold was mixed with dirt and quartz rock. These rocks were round and smooth and about the size of a man's fist. When they were washed in the sluice boxes and thrown in piles, they looked as white as snow. I have often thought what a beautiful walk or drive they would make if we had them in Illinois.
We stopped at Morisson's Diggings two or three days. We found Uncle Isaac and his son, Jesse, at this place. We left there and went across another mountain to a place called Poker Flat, which was fourteen miles over the mountain. We heard there, that across on the other side of another mountain, on a stream called Nelson Creek, were new diggings.
Uncle Isaac and his son made us promise, that if we heard of new diggings being struck, to give them word. I went back the next day and told them and they returned with me over to Poker Flat, where brother Crawford and the four others were waiting for us.
We went over the mountain to Nelson Creek. An old Scotchman by the name of Wright, had struck a rich claim on the side of the creek on a little bottom. The gold here was coa.r.s.er than it was in the southern diggings.
The gold that Mr. Wright was getting, looked like small potatoes. Some were a little less and some a little over one ounce in weight. We prospected all around there, but could not strike any pay dirt. We concluded that if there was gold on this bottom, there must be gold in the creek. We put six men to dig a ditch to turn the creek out of the channel and then dam the creek and turn the water out, so we could get to the bottom of the creek.
Old Mr. Wright had packed a whip saw over to make lumber for sluice boxes. Uncle Isaac and I borrowed the saw and went to work and whipsawed lumber for sluice boxes. We cut down two trees, up as high as we could reach, then cut small trees for skids, laid one end of the skid on the side of the mountain and the other end of the skids on the stumps of the trees we cut off, then rolled the log up on these skids. Then with pick and shovel, a level place was dug underneath, the length of the sawlog, barked and lined it on two sides, then sawed to the lines. One stood on top of the log, the other under it, or in the pit, as it was called. The whipsaw is shaped like one of the common key saws, wide at one end and narrow at the other, only the whipsaw had handles on both ends. It took nice work to whipsaw lumber and keep it true to the line.
We got our lumber sawed, our sluice boxes made, our ditch dug, our creek damed and the creek turned out of the channel, prepared to work in the bed of the creek.
Late one evening, we just had time to roll over a large bolder and get a pan of sand and gravel, and pan it out. We dried the gold and weighed it and there was seventy-five dollars worth of gold in that one pan. We worked out this claim, but it proved to be a slate rock bed and was smooth and sleek, and the water washed all the gold away, only where a huge bolder was imbeded in the slate bed and the gold settled around the bolders. We did not get any more gold out of the rest of that claim, than I got in that one pan.
We left Uncle Isaac at this claim and followed down Nelson Creek. Our party was composed of Crawford Bailey, Winston Crumly, Jack Alberts, Guss Parberry, Bird Farris and myself. There was a nice path beat down on the side of the creek, but the mountains on both sides stood almost straight up. We went down the creek, fifteen or twenty miles, when we suddenly came to a waterfall where the water dropped straight down about forty or fifty rods. There was no way for us to get down. We then thought the people who made the path, had to climb the mountains. We looked up on our right hand and could see the dirt crumbling out from between the rocks. It was straight up. We saw there was no show to go up on that side. We looked up on our left and could not see any dirt or rock crumbling off this mountain.