ound a point of rough, jagged rocks,
and out to a very wide gravelly flat through which the river had made
itself a narrow channel. The flat swarmed with men, all of them busy,
and very silent.

Leading our pack-horses we approached the nearest pair of these men, and
stood watching them curiously. One held a coarse screen of willow which
he shook continuously above a common cooking-pot, while the other slowly
shovelled earth over this sieve. When the two pots, which with the
shovel seemed to be all the tools these men possessed, had been half
filled thus with the fine earth, the men carried them to the river. We
followed. The miners carefully submerged the pots, and commenced to stir
their contents with their doubled fists. The light earth muddied the
water, floated upward, and then flowed slowly over the rim of the pots
and down the current. After a few minutes of this, they lifted the pots
carefully, drained off the water, and started back.

"May we look?" ventured Johnny.

The taller man glanced at us, and our pack-horses, and nodded. This was
the first time he had troubled to take a good look at us. The bottom of
the pot was covered with fine black sand in which we caught the gleam
and sparkle of something yellow.

"Is that gold?" I asked, awed.

"That's gold," the man repeated, his rather saturnine features lighting
up with a grin. Then seeing our interest, he unbent a trifle. "We dry
the sand, and then blow it away," he explained; and strode back to where
his companion was impatiently waiting.

We stumbled on over the rocks and debris. There were probably something
near a hundred men at work in the gulch. We soon observed that the pot
method was considered a very crude and simple way of getting out the
gold. Most of the men carried iron pans full of the earth to the
waterside, where, after submerging until the lighter earth had floated
off, they slopped the remainder over the side with a peculiar twisting,
whirling motion, leaving at last only the black sand--and the gold!
These pan miners were in the great majority. But one group of four men
was doing business on a larger scale. They had constructed what looked
like a very shallow baby-cradle on rockers into which they poured their
earth and water. By rocking the cradle violently but steadily, they
spilled the mud over the sides. Cleats had been nailed in the bottom to
catch the black sand.

We wandered about here and there, looking with all our eyes. The