My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 39 A Not Small Project

After breakfast, Peng Yuanchao assigned tasks to two Luoyue people and three Yuzhou people, sending them to chop firewood.

He then called Zhou Jingming and the others to go to the spruce forest high on the hillside, select a large spruce tree, cut it down, cut two straight pieces of wood three meters long, and rolled them down the hillside.

They set up a frame at the foot of the slope and used a chainsaw they had brought into the mountains to cut the boards by hand.

The spruce wood is thick enough that a single plank near the heartwood is over 50 centimeters long, which is sufficient to make the base of the trough. Two planks of the same length are nailed to the sides as ribs, and the trough is complete.

In other words, a chute only needs three planks.

After working for half a day, sawing some wooden strips and nailing together a raft, we made the two chutes we needed. We carried them to the riverbank, cut some more wooden poles, and then set up the chutes securely.

The reason for choosing to place it by the river is to make it easier to draw water and flush the mud and sand in the sluice.

However, this requires transporting the excavated gold-bearing mud and sand to the sluice gate in carts.

No matter what you do, there's never an easy job when it comes to gold panning.

Jin Wang probably had the easiest job.

After days of feeding, Jinwang has become very familiar with Zhou Jingming. He follows him wherever he goes, running around him, his tail curled up and held high. He is in much better spirits than when they first met.

It would often urinate on rocks, trees, and bushes around the island and dugouts to mark its territory.

This is the territory it has defined.

On the very day the sluice was being built, Zhou Jingming and his group saw two gold panning teams, one coming from the woods behind the dugout and the other from the riverbank on the opposite side, both heading upstream.

Both teams were quite ordinary; one had ten people, just like Zhou Jingming's team, while the other team was the smallest, with only five people.

When it heard the noise, Jinwang raised its head warily to look at the people. When they got closer, it started barking until they went away.

It has started guarding the house.

With the chute set up and plenty of time before evening, Zhou Jingming thought for a moment, then went to find a pickaxe and shovel, went to the riverbank at the foot of the slope, and chose a low spot to start digging.

Peng Yuanchao, Xu Youliang, and Sun Chenggui gathered around.

"What is this for?"

“I’d like to dig a well… I don’t want to drink muddy water every day. Even if the water level doesn’t rise, with so many people panning for gold, the river water won’t be clear. Digging a well with river sand filtering it will be better.”

This is a pastoral area, and the water in the river is really dirty. Drinking too much of it can easily cause echinococcosis, which would be a real problem. From now on, try to drink boiled water.

After thinking for a moment, Peng Yuanchao immediately called Xu Youliang and Sun Chenggui to fetch tools to help with the digging.

He must have also disliked the extremely unclean water in the river, which is why he was so enthusiastic.

It was located right by the river, and the excavation was carried out at a lower point near the foot of the slope on the small peninsula.

The five people took turns digging down about a meter when water started to seep out from the bottom of the pit.

Peng Yuanchao changed into waders, replacing Sun Chenggui who had gone in to dig earlier. He filled the well with water and mud, and dug down about a meter. Just before dark, he finally dug out the well and drove in some wooden stakes and added some stones to prevent the well wall from collapsing.

Looking at the gradually rising water level, I believe there will be a pool of clear water here by tomorrow morning.

The five men in charge of chopping firewood were also very efficient, carrying loads of firewood to the side of the dugout and piling them up high. It would be enough to keep the fire burning for a month or two.

The selected peninsula has gold deposits buried quite deep, about two meters deep, and it's not something you can simply dig out by lifting up the surface sand and gravel.

Placer gold originates from mines. When gold ore is exposed on the surface, it is weathered over a long period of time, causing rocks to break apart. The gold then separates from the vein and is carried downstream by mud and sand, naturally settling in the sand and gravel. It settles at the bottom of rivers or under the sand and gravel to form a gold-bearing layer.

The sediment settles down to the bottom of the riverbed, where there are no more gaps for further sedimentation. This sediment layer, also known as the riverbed floor, is the lowest point where the gold-bearing layer accumulates.

Generally speaking, the closer you are to the bottom, the more gold you find, and once you reach the bottom, the mine is considered depleted.

In other words, when testing the sand, if you dig down two meters on a small peninsula and find gold veins, that is only the surface of the gold-bearing layer. There are often two or three meters or even deeper below.

The bottom of the sand pit used for testing sand was already wet. If we dug any deeper, the pit would inevitably become very deep, even deeper than a person. We had to find a way to drain the water out of the pit.

Based on the characteristic of placer gold moving with water ripples, Zhou Jingming judged that placer gold would be more concentrated on the highest bulge of the small peninsula facing upstream, which is the location of the sand pits excavated during sand testing.

After explaining to Peng Yuanchao, he carefully looked around the small peninsula and decided to dig a relatively deep ditch at the lowest point downstream of the peninsula, and then excavate towards the location of the sand pit to drain water by utilizing the terrain difference.

When the time comes, because of the depth of the mine, it will be necessary to build a frame in the middle of the excavated pit and use a pole and a windlass to transport the mud and sand from the bottom of the pit. This will be much less strenuous than using manpower to lift and deliver the mud and sand or using ropes to carry it out. We can do this after we have reached the deepest point.

This is no small project.

The next day, despite the light rain, the ten men hurried to dig a ditch at the lowest point downstream of the island, towards the convex side of the peninsula.

Most of the time, Zhou Jingming would take the gold bucket and send the dredged mud and sand to the river to wash it to see if there was any gold. If there was, he could then dredge sand from the trenches toward the sand pit.

They dug drainage ditches while dredging, killing two birds with one stone.

Like digging the foundation for a house, it took four whole days to dig only about twelve or thirteen meters.

The initial section excavated less mud and sand, and the progress was relatively fast. As we went deeper upstream, the trench became more and more deep. When it reached seven or eight meters, it was more than three meters deep. Although it was only wide enough for one person to enter, the amount of sand and gravel that was lifted out was not small.

Because the small peninsula was formed by siltation, the sides of the drainage ditch were destined to be unstable, so wooden stakes had to be driven in, and tree branches had to be placed between the stakes and the silt walls to prevent them from sliding down.

There are too many things to do, so the progress is naturally slow.

Fortunately, on the fifth day, around noon, Zhou Jingming used a gold bucket to wash the sand he had collected in the river and finally found gold.

The weather had been gloomy and cold for a long time. After struggling in the icy mud pit, the group was exhausted and chilled to the bone. But when they saw the two tiny pieces of gold, their spirits were lifted again.

Because this means that, starting tomorrow, we can officially begin gold panning.

"Brother Peng, we're starting gold panning tomorrow, shouldn't we treat everyone to a good meal?"

Zhou Jingming looked at Peng Yuanchao with a smile: "According to the rules of gold panning, we should offer sacrifices to the mountain god and have a celebratory feast."

This is an old-fashioned approach. Nowadays, few people care about these formalities. He said this just to have a good meal and boost everyone's morale.

Peng Yuanchao grinned: "Alright, this afternoon, let's have a good meal and drinks, and tomorrow, we'll officially start panning for gold..."

He turned his head and shouted, "Xu Youliang, Xu Youliang, you son of a bitch, where the hell have you been?"

Hearing the shouts, Xu Youliang ran out of the woods on the hillside, pulling up his pants: "Brother Peng, what's wrong?"

Peng Yuanchao instructed, "We'll rest this afternoon. Go and cook the smoked mutton we brought from the mountains. Cook a lot, so everyone can have a good meal today."

The smoked mutton brought into the mountains is made by slaughtering the sheep, removing the internal organs, burning off the hair on the skin, chopping the skin and meat together into pieces, sprinkling some salt, placing them on a wooden frame, covering them with earthen walls or other things, and smoking them with the smoke from burning pine branches.

This stuff can be stored for a long time; it won't spoil until June or July of the following year.

It was one of the few pieces of meat that Peng Yuanchao brought into the mountains, and he had been reluctant to eat it.

I finally got it out today.

The mere mention of meat was enough to make some people drool.

(End of this chapter)