Jacqueline.. MOTHER LODE…The Story of California’s Gold Rush by Louis J. Stellman written 1934. Colonel William McClure "Some dispute exists as to where and how the hydraulic principle was first employed. Bancroft, a careful historian, gives the credit to "Frenchy" Chabot of Buckeye Hill, Nevada County, California. Bancroft states that there was a similiar experiment at Yankee Jim's. Both are dated in the spring of 1852. Stewart is convinced from his researches that Colonel William McClure built the first hydraulic rig at Yankee Jim's. It was an uncovered flume mounted on a trestle set on a steep grade. The water rushing down this flume was directed against the bank which McClure was mining for gold. It was at first a stationary apparatus. Later McClure equipped the end section with hinges. This made it possible to shift the stream. Chabot had a rig like McClure's, says Stewart, except that the flume was covered and fastened down with iron clamps. But, instead of discharging its waters directly from the sluicebox, the apparatus terminated in a section of hose which not only concentrated the pressure but gave wide flexibility to the stream direction. Whether Chabot saw McClure's rig before making his own, history does not record." J.M. Moss In regard to the Arroyo Seco Grant..."some of the settlers paid the sums demanded, but most of them did not. Both they and Pico had spent large sums in litigation, and the latter, impoverished and discouraged, unloaded the whole Arroyo Seco problem on a group of land manipulators : J.M. Moss, H.W. Carpenter, E.F. Beals, and Herman Wohler". Jackie in California kimmee@volcano.net