the bowlders, and, later, the
unproductive material from that which contained the precious metal.
The smaller, gold-bearing part was washed into the stamp-mills, which
worked incessantly, and which reduced pebbles and grit and sand and
gold to a pasty slime. This, in turn, was led to cyanide tanks. Thus
every particle of the gold was extracted.

Hydraulicking was not altogether new to Jim. He had seen it done on a
giant scale, as in California during the seventies, when huge
reservoirs and mile-long canals were built at a cost of many millions.
Vast works these, belonging to a short and strange era of mining,
immense constructions, now lying ruined and abandoned in the deserts
of their own making.

That was before the farmers and fruit-growers of California had
succeeded, in 1884, in securing the passage of a law to prevent
"slicking," as hydraulicking was termed. It was time! Vast stretches
of territory were being reduced to chaos by the appalling havoc which
follows hydraulic operations on a large scale.

Many rivers were entirely choked by debris from the crumbled mountains
and spread their waters in destructive floods. On one small stream
alone, the Lower Yuba, over 16,000 acres of high-grade farm lands were
reduced to a condition which an official investigator for the state
declared "could not have been surpassed by tornado, flood, earthquake,
and volcano combined."

[Illustration: HYDRAULICKING IN COLORADO.

The "Snowstorm Placer," a typical modern pay-gravel plant.

_From "The Business of Mining," by A. J. Hoskins. J. B. Lippincott &
Co._]

[Illustration: AMERICA'S "GOLD-SHIP" AT WORK.

Dredge operating in Yuba Consolidated Gold Fields, California.

_From "The Business of Mining," by A. J. Hoskins. J. B. Lippincott &
Co._]

Before the farmers had succeeded in stopping the hydraulic miners, a
stretch of land, larger than all the territory devastated by the World
War, was rendered a hideous desolation forever incapable of
settlement. Ten years of hydraulicking had brought more than
$150,000,000 in gold dust to the mining interests, but had caused a
perpetual damage that ten times that sum could not repay.

In every civilized country, to-day, hydraulicking is forbidden, except
on a small scale. It is only permitted in such cases and under such
conditions that the mining company can dispose of the tailings without
injury to property holders further down the stream.

The "gold ship" has taken th