Comment: Please. A hardscabble job is not for me.

I did spend time prospecting in Nevada & California. Here is a sample of what I found: [Open snuff box]

Tuolumne, California: In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining which is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called "pocket-mining," and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little corner. The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as in ordinary placer-mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one you reap a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty pocket-miners in that entire little region. I think I know every one of them personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the hillsides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make a snuff-box - his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time - and then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of his shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night was gone. 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. http://nevada-outback-gems.com/Mark_Twain/Pocket_Mining.htm