At seventeen feet they struck a thin streak of gravel, and in it coarse gold, testpans running as high as six and eight dollars.

Unfortunately, this streak of gravel was not more than an inch thick.

Beneath it was more muck, tangled with the trunks of ancient trees and containing fossil bones of forgotten monsters.

But gold they had found--coarse gold; and what more likely than that the big deposit would be found on bed-rock?
Down to bed-rock they would go, if it were forty feet away.

They divided into two shifts, working day and night, on two shafts, and the smoke of their burning rose continually.
It was at this time that they ran short of beans and that Elijah was despatched to the main camp to bring up more grub.