Mercury is an efficient magnet for gold. The early California miners
routinely lined their sluices with the silvery globules to amalgamate
the precious metal. Up to 10 percent of an estimated 65,000 tons of
mercury extracted from the Coast Range between 1850 and 1920 was lost to
streams in the Coast and Sierra mountains. Modern gold miners working
suction dredges still find pockets of the Argonauts' quicksilver lodged
deep in the "guts" of rivers.
http://www.calgoldrush.com/graphics/mercury.html
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