r. It
was mixed with water, and ran away as thin red mud, the gold
being caught by quicksilver. The openings of the shafts and
tunnels were in or near the mills, and there were the smallest
cars and locomotives which we had ever seen going about
everywhere on narrow tracks, carrying the ore. Ollie walked up to
one of the locomotives and looked down at it, and said:

"Why, it seems just like a Shetland-pony colt. I believe I
could almost lift it."

The engineer sat on a little seat on the back end, and seemed
bigger than his engine. As we looked at them we constantly
expected to see them tip up in front from the weight of the
engineer. There was also a larger railroad, though still a narrow
gauge, winding away for twenty miles along the tops of the hills,
which was used principally for bringing wood for the engines and
timbers for propping up the mines.

[Illustration: Flying Cord-Wood]

We were walking along a connecting shed, and happened to look
out a window, when we saw a four-foot stick of cord-wood shoot up
fifty feet from some place behind us, and after sailing over a
wide curve, like a "fly-ball," alight on a great pile of similar
sticks on the lower ground, which was much higher than an
ordinary house, and must have contained thousands of cords.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Jack. "Wish I could throw a stick
of wood like that fellow."

Another and another shot after the first one in quick
succession. Sometimes there were two almost together, and we
noticed the bigger and heavier the stick the higher and farther
it was shot. We saw some almost a foot in diameter soaring like
straws before the wind.

"What a baseball pitcher that man would make!" went on Jack,
enthusiastically. "Think of his arm! Look at that big one go--it
must weigh two hundred pounds!"

"Let's get out of this shed and investigate the mystery," I
said.

Outside it was all clear. The narrow-gauge wood railroad
ended on the edge of the steep hill overlooking the mills. Down
this was a long wooden chute, or flume, like a big trough, which
for the last thirty or forty feet at its lower end curved upward.
Men were unloading wood from a train at the upper end. Each stick
shot down the flume like lightning, up the short incline at the
end, and soared away like a bird to the pile beyond and below the
shed. A little stream of water trickled constantly down the chute
to keep the friction of the logs from setting it on fire.