nd with a jerk
throws all the stones out. The water and the rocking are both
necessary. Without the water, the dirt could not be washed; and without
the rocking, the dirt would dissolve very slowly, and the gold would
most of it be lost. The rocking keeps the dirt in the bottom of the
cradle more or less loose, so that the particles of gold can sink down
in it, whereas if the cradle stood still, the sand there would almost
immediately pack down into a hard floor, over which the gold would run
almost as readily as over a board. The whole business of washing with a
cradle, is a repetition of the process already described--some dirt,
about one-third or one-fourth of what the hopper would hold, if full,
is put into the hopper, and while the cradle is rocked with one hand,
the other pours in the water. The cradle is cleaned up two or four
times in a day. The cleaning up is done by lifting the hopper, taking
out the apron, scraping up all the dirt in the bottom of the cradle
with an iron spoon, putting it into a pan and washing out the dirt, so
that only the gold will be left. This last process is called panning
out, and will be described in the next section. Most of the gold
collects above the upper riffle-bar, including all the larger lumps. If
the apron be of rough woollen cloth, some of the fine gold will be
caught there. In diggings where the gold is very fine, the hopper is
sometimes placed over the lower end of the cradle, and the apron is
made twice as long, and with a lower inclination than in the more
common form of the rocker. The water for the cradle should be supplied
by a little ditch, with a reservoir at the head of the cradle, to
contain five or six gallons. The dipper should be of tin, shaped like a
basin, hold about a gallon when full, and have a handle an inch and a
half in diameter, and eight inches long. The difference of height
between the upper and lower ends of the cradle should not be more than
two inches: a steeper inclination will make the current running through
it too strong, and the gold will be carried off; and, on the other
hand, if the cradle be nearer a level it will be hard to rock, and the
dirt in the bottom will pack more rapidly. The amount of dirt that can
be washed in a day with a cradle, varies from one to three cubic yards.
The dirt is usually shovelled into a pan or bucket, from which it is
thrown into the hopper. The miners usually measure the amount of dirt
washed by the number of "