Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

184 HISTORY OF THE BANKonly bricks were shipped. About the same time, too, thebank succeeded, with the cordial support of its competitor,in abolishing the use of gold dust as currency, and thereafterit was bought subject to assay only. The use of gold dustas a kind of currency, or "trade dust," as it was called, hadbeen gradually decreasing for some time. At first both banksdealt in it,buying or selling as occasion offered, and acceptingdeposits payable in gold dust as well as in ordinary money.The inconvenient practice followed by the bank at first ofkeeping each customer's sacks of trade dust separate had earlybeen abandoned, as no dust of the better grade was ever lodgedas trade dust, and thereafter all trade dust was kept in a commonstock. Another change which effected a great saving oftime was the use of decimal weights, instead of Troy weights,for weighing gold. After these changes were made, one manwith an understudy was able to handle all the bank's gold dust.A careful record arranged chronologically was kept of all thenumerous assays of the dust from all the claims on each creekabove and below "discovery" claim. 1The "gold clerk," andothers of the staff in a lesser degree, soon became surprisinglyexpert at telling on sight the claim from which any gold dustoffered had come, and when small casual lots were offered thegold clerk would scrutinize the dust carefully, clean it well inhis blower, and if the seller desired cash immediately, wouldat once. When thefix the price and complete the purchaseuse of trade dust came to be abolished, a substantial amount(running into five figures) had to be written off the books of thebank to bring the dust then on hand down to the figure itwould net at the Coast assay offices. In addition to anadjustment of the arbitrary price at which it had been current,ranging from $17 down to $16, and then towards the end of1898 down to $15, and finally to $14.50 an ounce, provision^'Discovery" claim was the first claim staked out on a creek, or in any otherlocality where gold was found. The claims up stream were designated as being"above discovery" and those down stream as "below discovery," and both werenumbered consecutively from discovery claim. A discovery claim was usually twicethe size of an ordinary claim.