And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual, and shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to the hills hunting pockets again happy and content.

This is the most fascinating of all the different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of victims to the lunatic asylum.
Pocket hunting is an ingenious process.

You take a spadeful of earth from the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment.
Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the heaviest, it has sought the bottom.

Among the sediment you will find half a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads.

You are delighted.