Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1894 — Mexican Methods. [ARTICLE]

Mexican Methods.

New York Sun. “Riding near the little placer mining settlement Dolores, in New Mexico,” said a returned tourist/“I saw two Mexicans dry-washing for gold, and their proceeding struck me as novel and interesting. They were at work in a dry gulch, without a sign of water in sight, and had brought the auriferous sand in baskets to the mouth of the ravine, whore the win d bl e w strongly down the valley. Their washing apparatus consisted of a heavy army blanket, in the center of which they placed about a peck of the sand; Ahen, each Mexican taking hold of the blanket by the corners, they tossed the sand high aloft again and again. The wind blew away the fine sand, while the heavier particles with the gold fell straight back into the blanket. When at last they paused, there remained in the blanket a double handful of gravel and heavy sand in which glittered a few yellow specks of gold. As we rode-on my Mexican driver told me that the two men were probably making $3 or $4 a day during the time they worked, but that as soon as they had made their ‘clean-up’ they would go into Santa Fe or Cerrillos, sell their gold squander the last nickel they had in whisky and monte before they would go back to the gulch to work.”