A first prospecting shaft need not usually be more than 5 ft. by 3 ft. or even 5 ft. by 2 ft. 6 in., particularly in dry country.  One may often see in hard country stupid fellows wasting time, labour, and explosives in sinking huge excavations as much as 10 ft. by 8 ft. in solid rock, sometimes following down 6 inches of quartz.

When your shaft is sunk a few feet, you should begin to log up the top for at least 3 ft. or 4 ft., so as to get a tip for your “mullock” and lode stuff.  This is done by getting a number of logs, say 6 inches diameter, lay one 7 ft. log on each side of your shaft, cut two notches in it 6 ft. apart opposite the ends of the shaft, lay across it a 5 ft. log similarly notched, so making a frame like a large Oxford picture frame.  Continue this by piling one set above another till the desired height is attained, and on the top construct a rough platform and erect your windlass.  If you have an iron handle and axle I need not tell you how to set up a windlass, but where timber is scarce you may put together the winding appliance described in the chapter headed “Rules of Thumb.”

If you have “struck it rich” you will have the pleasure of seeing your primitive windlass grow to a “whip,” a “whim,” and eventually to a big powerful engine, with its huge drum and Eiffel tower-like “poppet heads,” or “derrick,” with their great spindle pulley wheels revolving at dizzy speed high in air.

“How shall I know if I have payable gold so as to save time and trouble in sinking?” says the novice.  Truly it is a most important part of the prospector’s art, whether he be searching for alluvial or reef gold, stream or lode tin, copper, or other valuable metal.

I presume you know gold when you see it?

If you don’t, and the doubtful particle is coarse enough, take a needle and stick the point into the questionable specimen.  If gold the steel point will readily prick it; if pyrites or yellow mica the point will glance off or only scratch it.

The great importance of the first prospect from the reef is well shown by the breathless intensity with which the two bearded, bronzed pioneer prospectors in some trackless Australian wild bend over the pan in which the senior “mate” is slowly reducing the sample of powdered lode stuff.  How eagerly they examine the last pinch of “black sand” in the corner of the dish.  Prosperity and easy times, or poverty and more “hard graft” shall shortly be revealed in the last dexterous turn of the pan.  Let us hope it is a “pay prospect.”

The learner, if he be far afield and without appliances of any kind, can only guess his prospect.  An old prospector will judge from six ounces of stuff within a few pennyweights what will be the yield of a ton.  I have seen many a good prospect broken with the head of a pick and panned in a shovel, but for reef prospecting you should have a pestle and mortar.  The handiest for travelling is a mortar made from a mercury bottle cut in half, and a not too heavy wrought iron pestle with a hardened face.  To be particular you require a fine screen in order to get your stuff to regulated fineness.  The best for the prospector, who is often on the move, is made from a piece of cheesecloth stretched over a small hoop.