earth and shingle, I carried it to the pool, and placing it beneath the
surface of the water, I began to stir it with my hand, as I had
observed the other diggers do. Of course I was not very expert at
first, and I dare say I flung out a good deal of the valuable metal.
However, I soon perceived that the earth was crumbling away, and was
being carried by the agitation of the water into the pool, which
speedily became turbid, while the sandy sediment of which I had heard
remained at the bottom of the pail. Carefully draining the water away,
I deposited the sand in one of the small close-woven Indian baskets we
had brought with us, with the intention of drying it at the camp fire,
there not being sufficient time before nightfall to allow the moisture
gradually to absorb by the evaporation of the atmosphere.

After working for about half an hour, I retraced my steps with my
basket to the spot where we had tethered the horses, and found the
animals still standing there with their burdens on their backs. Mr.
Malcolm was already there; he had with him about an equal quantity of
the precious black sand; it remained, however, to be seen what
proportion of gold our heaps contained. In a short time Bradley and Don
Luis joined us, both of them in tip-top spirits. "I guess this is the
way we do the trick down in these clearings," said the former, shaking
a bag of golden sand. As for José, Don Luis's Indian servant, he was
devout in his expressions of thanksgiving to the Virgin Mary and the
Great Spirit, whom he would insist upon classifying together, in a most
remarkable and not quite orthodox manner.

We now set to work to get up our tent. Malcolm, in the meantime,
prepared coffee and very under-baked cakes, made of the flour we had
brought with us. His cooking operations were greatly impeded by our
eagerness to dry the sand we had scraped up--a feat in the achievement