putting it on a raw hide, he pulverizes all the lumps and picks out the
large stones. He then with a large flat basin throws the dirt up into
the air, catches it as it comes down, throws it up again, and repeats
this operation until nothing but the gold remains. Of course a pleasant
breeze, that will carry away the dust, is a great assistance to the
operation. Sometimes two men have a hide or a blanket, with which they
throw up the dirt. The process is very similar to the ancient method of
separating grain from chaff. The miner who devotes himself to dry
washing must be very particular to take only rich dirt, so he scrapes
the bed-rock carefully. He never digs very deep--not more than twenty
feet; and when he goes beyond seven or eight feet he "coyotes," or
burrows after the pay-dirt. He may coyote into the side of a hill, or
sink a shaft and coyote in all directions from it. This style of mining
is named from the resemblance of the holes to the burrows of the
coyote, or Californian wolf. Coyoting is not confined to the dry
washing, but is used also by miners washing with the pan and cradle.
One of the Congressmen elected some years ago to represent California
at Washington, was a miner at the time of his nomination, and was so
fond of coyoting, that he was generally known as "Coyote Joe."

_Dry Digging._--Dry digging is that mining where the miner, after using
the shovel to strip off the barren dirt, scrapes the pay-dirt over with
a knife, picking out the particles of gold as he comes to them, and
throwing away the earthy matter. This is a slow process, but in rich
placers may be profitable. The miner is, of course, particular to
examine all the crevices in the bed-rock; and if the material be slate,
he digs up part of it, to see whether the gold has not found its way
into cracks scarcely perceptible on the surface. "Dry digging," as a
mode of mining, must not be confounded with "dry diggings," a kind of
mining ground which has been described near the beginning of this
chapter.

Knife-mining differs a little from dry digging. In the latter, a shovel
is used to strip off the barren dirt; whereas the knife-mining is
practised in those places where the gold is deposited in crevices in
rocks along the banks of streams, without any covering of barren dirt,
so that the knife alone is used in scraping out the dirt; and afterward
the dirt, being placed in a pan, may be washed in water, which is never
used in dry digging.

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