The newcomers did not spend much time in establishing themselves comfortably or luxuriously.  They were altogether too eager to get at the actual digging.  There was an immense excitement of the gamble in it all.  A man might dig for days without adequate results and then of a sudden run into a rich pocket.  Or he might pan out an immense sum within the first ten minutes of striking his pick to earth.  No one could tell.  The fact that the average of all the days and all the men amounted to very little more than living wages was quite lost to sight.  At first the methods were very crude.  One man held a coarse screen of willow branches which he shook continuously above an ordinary cooking pot, while his partner slowly shovelled earth over this impromptu sieve.  When the pots were filled with siftings, they were carried to the river, where they were carefully submerged, and the contents were stirred about with sticks.  The light earth was thus flowed over the rims of the pots.  The residue was then dried, and the lighter sand was blown away.  The result was gold, though of course with a strong mixture of foreign substance.  The pan miners soon followed; and the cradle or rocker with its riffle-board was not long delayed.  The digging was free.  At first it was supposed that a new holding should not be started within fifteen feet of one already in operation.  Later, claims of a definite size were established.  A camp, however, made its own laws in regard to this and other matters.

Most of the would-be miners at first rather expected to find gold lying on the surface of the earth, and were very much disappointed to learn that they actually had to dig for it.  Moreover, digging in the boulders and gravel, under the terrific heat of the California sun in midsummer, was none too easy; and no matter how rich the diggings averaged—­short of an actual bonanza—­the miner was disappointed in his expectations.  One man is reported saying:  “They tell me I can easily make there eleven hundred dollars a day.  You know I am not easily moved by such reports.  I shall be satisfied if I make three hundred dollars per day.”  Travelers of the time comment on the contrast between the returning stream of discouraged and disgruntled men and the cheerfulness of the lot actually digging.  Nobody had any scientific system to go on.  Often a divining-rod was employed to determine where to dig.  Many stories were current of accidental finds; as when one man, tiring of waiting for his dog to get through digging out a ground squirrel, pulled the animal out by the tail, and with it a large nugget.  Another story is told of a sailor who asked some miners resting at noon where he could dig and as a joke was directed to a most improbable side hill.  He obeyed the advice, and uncovered a rich pocket.  With such things actually happening, naturally it followed that every report of a real or rumored strike set the miners crazy.  Even those who had good claims always suspected that they might do better elsewhere.  It is significant that the miners of that day, like hunters, always had the notion that they had come out to California just one trip too late for the best pickings.