The gold-seeker's manual / By David T. Ansted.

  • David T. Ansted
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The gold-seeker's manual / By David T. Ansted. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    coarser, and even less adapted to the exigences of the case. An account of a few simple contrivances that would be found useful, and may be easily obtained, or conveyed by emigrants, will form an appropriate conclusion to the present chapter. The iron-bar, the pick and the shovel*, are all the tools that can well be needed to raise the alluvial soil that seems to be so amply supplied with the precious metal. The chief operation requiring mechanical ingenuity is therefore the washing, or removing the useless soil, and this may be done either before or after the reduction of the whole mass to powder. No doubt, where the gold is in tolerably large lumps, the former is the more productive, because less time is wasted; but nearer the mouths of the streams, and in that material which has already been coarsely sifted, there will remain a large quantity of very rich produce, that can only be obtained by pounding as well as washing. The following method is adopted in Chili to reduce auriferous detritus to a fit state for wash- ijig;—A streamlet of water conveyed to the hut of the gold-washer is received upon a large, rude stone, whose flat surface has been hollowed out into a shallow basin, and in the same manner into * The miner’s form of the shovel is the best, consisting of a simple pan of a conical form.
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