Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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DRY WASHING IN THE DESERT. Gold Hunting After the Old Mexican Plan. The desert country of the south west is rich in legends of lucky strik es made by dry washers. And the dry washer is not a laundry utensil desizned for use where water is too scar-e to be used other than inter nally. it 'is the sole mechanical in vention with which the native Mexi can is credited, a means of taking pla cer gold from the sand in which wind supplies the place of water. Given a good head of water and the man with the hydraulic giant will wash a fortune for auriferous gravel that carries a few cents' worth of gold to the square yard. The fellow with the pan must find fifty cents worth or better in the same area to make wages but the dry washer re gards the ground as barren if he does not find a dollar's worth of the yellow metal on his riffles after screening the same amount of sand. There was old man Cushenberry, whose haunt was south of Casa'Doma, that curious volcanic plateau which is visible from a hundred miles around Yuma. He was in his chronic condi cion of hard luck when a shovelful of sand left the riffles of his primi tive dry washer clogged to overflow ing with dust and nuggets. In half an hour he had taken out $14,000 and in the next,six months he had spent every cent of it in an inef fectual effort to raise water from the Colorado for more extensive opera tions. He never found another pock et. Down around Yuma, when you talk of diy washing, they will also tell you of thO ditched hobo. A Southern Pa cific brakeman ejected him from a side door Pullman, and he sought the wa terfront, which was an institution then celebrated from the Dallas to the Yaqui country. "The Front," was a narrow strip of s4ore.just below the old govern ment'corral, where by ancient usage was established the commonwealth of the dead broke. Everything was own ed in common. They had a mayor and an unwritten code enforced by a Kangaroo court. In earlier days nn loss of caste attached to residence on "The Front,'' today's insolvent was frequently tomorrow's magnate. Gra dually however, the hobo element came to be predominant, and the city marshal abated the sanctuary as a numsance. But to return to the ditched hobo He toid the Fronters a hard luck story that would a. few years ago have insured aid, comfort and indolence. The taming of the Apache and the ex tension of the Santa Fe and ,the Southern Paeafic haid, however, iade them familiar with his kind, and his was very promptly disposed of. A grubstate was made up and he was adlvised to accompany a couple of merh who were just starting on a dry wash ing expedition up the river. That same day the outfit uncover ed a gold ledge that was shot and speckled with free gold and the hobo's share brought him $50,000. All hobo land preserves traditions of the lyr iod of plenty that followed. Inciden tally: not one of the trio that struck the lode was alive -a year later. But as to the dry washer and~ the man who operates it. The, tourist 'who crosses the sand and alkali wastes in a Pullman, br is whirled in an au tomobile to the bonanza to look at the good thing the superintendent: has framed up for him sees neither. The desert prospector is the broth er of silence, a silence so profound and pervasive that wvhen a vagrant wind raises a level jet of sand and moves it a yard or two the silken swish of its transit is audible for fur longs. 1 The scamper of the horned toad fills the void corridor of the ear, the fpotfall of the sad-eyed burro is per cussive.* Only at night, when the coyote lifts a lean muzzle .to the bland moon is the stillness shattered as infinite desolation fiads a voice. Another sound there is that speaks of man's presence. In the heart of the waste, miles from the railway and equally remote from wood and water, there may be heard a reeurrent pop ping that is not to be confounded with the parring rataplan of the stamp mill. It is like the pop-pop-popping of a gasolene launch, and the tenderfoot might fancy that the ship of the des ert had been brought up to date and equipped with those mysterious appli ances of which the motor enthusiast loves to discourse. Approach the sound and you will come upon a man and his machine--a sun browned and solitary man, the corners of his eyes wrinkled like an apple that has been frozen and thaw ed, by the instinctive contraction of the lids against the glare of refracted ravs. H-e is the last of the placer miners, Sthe survival of a type that levels hils and fills valleys by a magic that Wa,tlid dl.-tilh thle re.t I tile mighty wizalc, .11"ClLeal Scott. The water ways, from the frozen tundra of the north to ciene-a, of the souith, have long Since giveu up their store of yellow metal. The pan, the longtom and the flume exploited them, after which the hydraulic recovered fortunes from tailings or from gravel too poor to work by the more expe-i sive method. But the desert is rich in auriferous gavel. There are thousands of square miles in the Mojave and the Colorado that yield placer gold in such quantities that, given water, the output of Cripple Creek and Tonopah would be made -to look like a grub stake proposition. Water is not, but there is wind. The dry washer is merely a rude bel lows of the familiar blacksmith pat tern. It forces a current of air through a sheet of muslin set on an inclined plane and crossed at right angles by sticks of woods called riffles. The gravel is made to run down this muslii incline, while the bellows lifts it over the, riffles. The gold being heavy is eaught and held under the cross pieces; pebbles and sand are ejected at the bottom. Various forms of the dry washer have been patented, but the simplest type remains the best; an old soap box, a few yards of tarpaulin, half a yard of fine muslin and a little bal ing wire are all the material required for its construction. The whole ap paratus need not weigh over twenty pounds and the prospector can pack it from place to place on his back. Down in southwestern Arizona the Mexican is credited with the inven tion of the dry washer and nothing else. It is the last resource of the prospector who cannot get a grub stake. - For miles around Yuma on either side of the Colorado, one may cunt on taking out an average of a dollar a-day with this crude appliance and as $5 will grub stake a man for a month there is little excuse for being flat broke. For twenty miles north of the con fluence of the Gila and the Colorado the barren gulches are honeycombed with the work of the dry washer. The work of the white man is easily dis tinguishable from that of the chula. In places the bedrock has been ex posed for hundreds of feet along the, bottonm of the shalloy gulch, the ce-. ment strata swept clean with a whist broom, since pay dirt is found most y at the bottom. This is the work of the American. The Mexican seldom ays bare more than a square yard ad from that, so the envious Gringo asserts, he gets what he is after. A still more simple a:nd -primitive ethod of dry 'washing is indicated y innumerable basin-like depressions along the sides of these gulches. From each has been taken about a bucket ful of sand which is placed, a handful t a time, in an ordinary gold pan, a ussia iron basin a little larger than he-ordinary tin wash basin. This, by a dexterous tin of the wrist, the Mexican throws into the air, at the same time blowing through it. As it falls he tilts the pan, al lowing it to run in a thin st.ream ov'er the idge. His bead-like eye is eaught nd sent back to the foxtail of black sand and concentrates on the opposite edge of the pan. In half an hour he is solvent, and the placer ground will know him no more until a run of hard ick at cockfighting or monte sends him back to the band nature has pro dded for him. It is confidently asserted through out the southwest that the Mexican~ possesses a sixth sense which enables him to loeate infallibly tlle pockets iih white men either miss altogeth er or only stumnble upon by accident Men have carefully studied the natural features of these spots, but are unable to discover the indications which j--int them out to the native. t is mnaddening to work ten days un der a blazing sun for a few dollars' worth of dust nid nuggets, and then o,osee a lazy Mexican walk directly to a spot a few rods away, pan a >ucketful of dirt and slouch off after baif an hour's work with $50 worth of the yrellow metal knotted up in his gaudy handkerChief. But if the Meixican possesses this sense, he is cal eful r;ot to abuse it. , takes only enorgh f<,r his immedi ate necesities, and has a lofty coni tempt f'r the A.2-a-anl's amnbit.)! to ap.!re riches. No- will he locate a quartz vein if he bappens t.. vad ov~r urne. By an unwritten law these dry lacers abov'e Yuma are free to all. No o;'e stakes a claim other than home I ;ea+ed by dredging compamies wbo after years of disaster have not yet giaen over the a.sempt to eat away Ihe bank;s ff ti.e Colora3o un til they have opened a passage in to the desert. Man' fe*c: discoveri..s 'of quartz m,es h:aye been made by ecy washers d cn. have been v rked by the same primA n'e method Now and then a rich stringer, a enan inch or two wide is found,. WI i .ell I I 1o f u illiclil! \'1\Uhli11e t0 pay for the erection L L u arrastra, which is a crude quartz vrisher oper ated by mule power, or even by hand. rhe arrastra, by the way, is precise ,y the sort of mill to which the Phil istines harnessed Samson, according to the familiar picture by Dore. The discoverer then rigs a spring pestle with which he pulverizes the rotten quartz-running the powder through the dry.washer. Early in the 90's two young fel lows found such a stringer near the deserted camp of Ehrenburg. With pestle and dry washer they managed to get out several thousand dollars' worth of dust, but a good deal of the rock was too refractory to be worked in that way, and this was sacked in the form of specimens and concen trates. the whole amounting to over -$10,000. They came down the river in a boat, which was tipped over in three feet of water within a few miles of Yuma by a big dog that accompanied the party, and tried to climb aboard after being pitched out for a swim. Not a cent's worth of the cargo Was saved. The bottom of the Colorado is a vast deposit of silt and quicksand. Dred gers have sunk seventy fee+ in it above Laguna without touching bed rock. The plarer miners say the gold of the desert which the dry washer re covers in such minute quantities was' deposited by the river, the bed of which is liable to/change materially in a few weeks. In the mile deep canyon that is one of the world's won ders, a ditch from five to fifteen miles wide and hundreds of miles long, cut through a highly mineralized region. there must have been many rich lodes, richer perhaps than any of which the world holds record. These, the ation of the water through countless ages, has disintegrated and carried .far down toward the delta of the great river in the form of dust and nuggets. The Colorado is a natual flume. Its bottom, deep under the silt where rifts and ridges of bedrock form milewide riffles, is a treasure nouse whose riches no man may estimate. But even the opaque water is said a carry an average of twenty-five cents' worth of gold to the ton, held in solu tion or floiting on the surface. Every miner knows that gold will float, the flour gold whose particles are so minute that only the avid grip of quicksilver may clutch and hold it. Perhaps some day some Jernigan will make good and wrest it from the broad and shallow Colorado a treas ure that will complicate anew the re lation of the preecious metals. Meanwhile the chief source of pi-o ductioni, so far, as these placer de posits are concerned, will continue to be that legacy of the Aztecs, the dry washer. Barbecue. I will furnish a first class barbee at Jno. P. Wicker's August 22, to be prepared by J. A. Graham and E. M. Wicker. -Everybody come and enjoy a good dinner. W. L Graham. 'Notice. An extra meeting of the County Farmers' -Union is hereby called for Saturda~y August 17, on important bu.siness. All lo,cal anions widl see thait delegates are chosen. J. B. O'Neall HQlloway, 'Secretary County Union. W. C. Brown, P'resident. Broaddus and Ruffs 5e tablets have better and more paper in them than can be bought elsewhere. Buy one and see for yourself. Barbecue at Sligh 's. Mr. Jno. C. Xills will furnish a barbecue at Sligh's on August 17, the occasion being the meeting of the farmers' union. P-omninent speakers will be present and will deliver ad dresses. The price of dinner will be 35 cents and 40. cents. Eiverybody. is invited and a good dinner is guaran- I teed. Call on Broaddus and Ruff for Col gate 's Palm soap. Best 5c. .soap sold. NOTICE.r THE BEE HIVE will move Sept. 1st into C the store room now ( used by Shelley & Sum mer,. formerly occu- ~ pied by Kibler-Dennis Furniture Co., oppo site Daniel & William son's Jewelry Store. I E. L BALES 00, 1' THE GLOBE, IS IT? We announce the formal Fall and Winter Opening of our Merchant Tailoring Depart ment which will be in charge of a Special Representative of *THE LIBE TAILORTNG COmpAkNY, Makers of the best there is in Tailoring CINCINNATI, OHIO August 15, 16 and 17 Over 500 Suitings, Trouserings and Overcoatings will be displayed for your inspection. Smith & Wearn Newberry, S. C. Orders taken for immediate or fufure dellvery. Measures taken Scientifically. WAGONS, WAGONS. 1 *Just received, car load of Fish Bros, high grade S1-2 and 2 3-4 Wagons. For the next 30 days ye will sell these Wagons regaPdless of profi$s. Ls the strongest, best made and 'easiest running agon on the market. Buggies! Bu ges We.carry but one line of Buggies in stock;'man factured by The Summers Buggy Co, of~ Barns ille, Ga.m, These Buggies are considered by all to )e the best and neatest job ever offered on this. narket. Our prices and Terms are reasonable. uy a Summers Buggy Company's Buggy, manu. actured at Barnsville, Ga., and you have the best. 4o more broken wheels, split -bodies, cracked hafts, broken springs or bent tops. We are the nly parties handling these Buggies in this county. .ome and see our stock of Wagons and Buggies nd you will buy from P. M. EVANS ,& CO.