The wheat is shovelled into the pathway of the huge steam shovels, which draw it up to the ends of these spouts, where the buckets seize it, and carry it upwards into the elevator, and distribute it among the various bins according to grade.
They are crushed to egg-size in a rock-breaker, and pulverized to pass a 40-mesh sieve in a California stamp-mill, which treats in 24 hours about 3 tons per stamp. A 10-stamp mill is fed by one rock-breaker, and discharges the liquid pulp into 10-15 wooden settling tanks, 9 by 5 by 8 ft., the settled contents of which are shovelled out and charged into the pans.
Into the " rocker " and the " tom " the miner shovelled dirt, rocking it as he poured in water, catching the gold on riffles set across the bottom of his box; thus imitating in a wooden box the work of nature in the rivers.
Thus some 1700 tons of materials are charged daily into each of these furnaces without being shovelled at all, running by gravity from bin to bucket and from bucket to furnace, and being hoisted and charged into the furnace by a single engineer below, without any assistance or supervision at the furnacetop.