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47 It was now growing dark so I had to leave farther observation for tomorrow and go back to camp, our camp was on the banks of the Tarryall river the waters of which was very yellow caused by the miners washing their dirt in the stream about two miles above. This night pafsed away pleasantly like the one before it not cold in the least, in the morning I took an early start up Tarryall Gulch to see the mining operations we pafsed through the town climbed some very rugged hills and then found ourselves at the mines the first time any of our party had ever seen gold washed. The procefs is very simple all that is necefsary is to turn the bed of the river which is done by making a tail ditch and running the water in a new channel then you remove the boulder stones from the bed of the stream sometimes a work of great labor some of them being so large that you must break them with a sledge hammer and remove them in pieces after getting them clean you then have to strip the earth off down to the bed rock sometimes it is only two feet and sometimes it may be twelve or fourteen . The dirt laying close to the rock is what is called the pay dirt you will have to shovel that into your sluice a long box about from fifty to five hundred feet long with a small stream of water running through it and riffles placed near the end charged with quicksilver to catch the gold. The earth is shoveled in from the gulch runs down the whole lenght of the sluice carried along by the force of the water when it gets to the rifles the lighter particles will roll over the riffles but the gold being the heaviest will drop down and amalgamate with the quicksilver which is placed at the bottom of the riffles to receive it. You may keep shoveling all day then you take out your riffles squezze your quicksilver in a rag and the gold will seperate from it you then take your quicksilver and put it into a bottle it only loses twenty per cent by using what remains then is gold having only a small alloy of black sand.