Just as at Kanieri, an entire hill has been sluiced away for gold, the necessary water having been brought to the spot in a manufactured race, from the hills many miles away, and at great cost, in order to get the power for the sluicing pipes. It is an extraordinary sight. The wooded valley that used to lie round the now non-existent hill was buried, wood and all, under the tailings, but a few stray trees taller than their fellows managed to hold their heads above their graves to remind the world of the beauty it had lost for a few grains of gold. And at the edge of the lost valley runs a river in a wide pebbly bed, a river fed by the glaciers in the snow-capped mountains, whose waters are of a beautiful celestial blue, clear as crystal, cold as ice.
The sole remaining sluicer was at work on the small remnant of hill still standing, and we made a painful pilgrimage among the pebbles both big and small to see how it was managed. The great iron hose is turned on to a given point in the hill-side, the water rushes out with tremendous force, tearing away the grass, washing out the sand and gravel, stones and clay that form it, and it all runs away in a muddy stream down a self-made channel into one prepared with a floor of planks a foot deep. These planks catch the gold, the lighter sand and gravel run away in the water, forming tailings, and the larger, rounder, smooth pebbles are left behind quite free of soil, to lie, in great heaps of large and small parti-coloured stones in place of the verdant hill-side. Only gold-dust and very tiny particles are found in this district, no nuggets, and of the dust there is very little left now.
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