supply from the stream, you puddle away. Be not afraid of too much working, remembering that good puddling makes easy and profitable cradling. When this is done, you fill the hopper of your cradle with the stuff, keep on pouring water with the dipper, and rock carefully and evenly, using with the right hand a short stick to break any clods that may be in your hopper, but which your tub ought not to have sent there. The tubs being emptied, one of the party can be filling and preparing another, while you take out the residuum at the bottom of your cradle. The gold ought to rest on the wooden shelf under the hopper, but much will run down with the sand into one of the compartments at the bottom. But this has to be washed by the hand in the tin dishes. Now this process I cannot describe. It is one of the deepest mysteries of the gentle craft of gold digging. The uninitiated cannot possibly divine how the dish washer is able to separate the soil from the precious treasure. This art requires a watchful eye and skilful hand. Many men from careless washing lose much gold. Two men were in a great hurry to get through their heap, a party afterwards went over the washed material and extracted ten pounds weight of metal. The day’s work over, you put your gold into the digger’s treasure chamber,—a matchbox; and you retire to your home to get dry clothes and your supper. But the gold has to be dried. A spade is put on the fire, the contents of the box poured on it, and the moisture soon disappears. The dust is then carefully blown away, the magnet is passed over to take up the iron particles, the little gathering is weighed and the result is known. Some interesting guesses are made as to the value of your heap. If thirty buckets made a load, if six buckets fill a tub, and if ten tubs shall have produced you that day eight ounces of gold, you can form a tolerable idea as to the value of your heap. But you know that while one part may bring but an ounce a load, there will be some rich tubs when that locality is reached, where the currant pudding lumps were deposited.