File:The Pacific tourist (1881) (14736702656).jpg

Identifier: pacifictourist1881will (find matches)
Title: The Pacific tourist
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Williams, Henry T Shearer, Frederick E
Subjects: Union Pacific Railroad Company Central Pacific Railroad Company Railroad travel Railroad travel Railroad travel
Publisher: New York : H.T. Williams
Contributing Library: San Francisco Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: San Francisco Public Library

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impossible to estimateexcept approximately, but 1,300 pounds to theinch is not too high. To provide the water re-quired where hydraulicking is done on a largescale, streams are brought long distances. The price for selling water is graduated bythe size of the opening through which it is de-livered, usually under six inches pressure. Prac-tically it is found that there is in California,more gold than water, for there are many placesrich in gold, which cannot be worked for lack ofwater. The season varies in length, according to thesituation and the rain-fall, but nowhere is it pos-sible to work the whole year, and probably on anaverage the active season does not exceed sevenor eight months. There is one feature connectedwith hydraulic mining which no one can contem-plate without regret. It leaves desolation be-hind it in the form of heaps of shapeless graveland boulders, which must lie for ages before blos-soming again with verdure. One of the difficult 236 TSE &£€IFIG W®Um§W.
Text Appearing After Image:
GIANTS GAP, AMERICAN RIVER CANON. DV THOMAS MORAS. 237 problems in hydraulicking is to find room for thedebris which the streams, used in washing downbanks of earth, are constantly carrying along withthem. The beds of streams have been filled upin some parts of the State so as to increasegreatly the exposure of the cultivated regions be-low the mining districts to inundation and ruin.Legislation has been sought by the farmers toprotect their interests, but the effort was opposedby the miners and a dead-lock followed. Themiuldiness which will strike the tourist asaffecting all the mountain streams on the westslope of the Sierra Nevadas, is the result of thismining. Once the Sacramento River, the Featherand the American Rivers were clear as crystal,but the hunt.for gold has made them like theMissouri River in high flood and even muddier,and they are not likely, while this generation andthe next are on the stage of life, to resume theirformer clearness and purity. Hold Hun,—204 miles f

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