It had been some time since he had been as far as Chipp's Flat. There he
sought out the old cannon, long since dismounted, and sitting down upon
it he thought of the changes wrought in that neighborhood within his
recollection. In Civil War times, eighteen years before, miners of
Chipp's Flat and vicinity had enlisted in the Union Army. There had been
a full company of a hundred men, and the cannon had been a part of their
equipment. But the cannon had not left that California mountain-side;
and the soldiers themselves had got no further East than Arizona, for in
those days there was no transcontinental railroad. Now that there was
one, Chipp's Flat had no need of it. Save for two or three scattered
houses the mining town had disappeared. The mountain ridge had been
mined through from Minnesota, and now that the gold-bearing gravel had
been exhausted, Chipp's Flat, except in name, had gone out of existence.
The next thing of interest was the dirty blue water of Kanaka Creek, and
the clatter of the stamping mills on the other side of it; for Keeler
was not much used to quartz mining. The name "quartz mining" seemed
misleading, for the wash from the crushed rock was distinctly blue.
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