The gold hunters

We continued working our claim at Middletown, having taken into partnership an old sea-captain whom we found there working alone. It paid us very well for about three weeks, when, from the continued dry weather, the water began to fail, and we were obliged to think of moving off to other diggings.

It was now time to commence preparatory operations before working the beds of the creeks and rivers, as their waters were falling rapidly; and as most of our party owned shares in claims on different rivers, we became dispersed. A young Englishman and myself alone remained, uncertain as yet where we should go.

We had gone into Hangtown one night for provisions, when we heard that a great strike had been made at a place called ’Coon Hollow, about a mile distant. One man was reported to have taken out that day about fifteen hundred dollars. Before daylight next morning we started over the hill, intending to stake off a claim on the same ground; but even by the time we got there, the whole hillside was already pegged off into claims of thirty feet square, on each of which men were commencing to sink shafts, while hundreds of others were prowling about, too late to get a claim which would be thought worth taking up.

Those who had claims, immediately surrounding that of the lucky man who had caused all the excitement by letting his good fortune be known, were very sanguine. Two Cornish miners had got what was supposed to be the most likely claim, and declared they would not take ten thousand dollars for it. Of course, no one thought of offering such a sum; but so great was the excitement that they might have got eight hundred or a thousand dollars for their claim before ever they put a pick in the ground. As it turned out, however, they spent a month in sinking a shaft about a hundred feet deep; and after drifting all round, they could not get a cent out of it, while many of the claims adjacent to theirs proved extremely rich.

Such diggings as these are called “coyote” diggings, receiving their name from an animal called the coyote, which abounds all over the plain lands of Mexico and California, and which lives in the cracks and crevices made in the plains by the extreme heat of summer. He is half dog, half fox, and, as an Irishman might say, half wolf also. They howl most dismally, just like a dog, on moonlight nights, and are seen in great numbers skulking about the plains.

Connected with them is a curious fact in natural history. They are intensely carnivorous—so are cannibals; but as cannibals object to the flavor of roasted sailor as being too salt, so coyotes turn up their noses at dead Mexicans as being too peppery. I have heard the fact mentioned over and over again, by Americans who had been in the Mexican war, that on going over the field after their battles, they found their own comrades with the flesh eaten off their bones by the coyotes, while never a Mexican corpse had been touched; and the only and most natural way to account for this phenomenon was in the fact that the Mexicans, by the constant and inordinate eating of the hot pepperpod, the Chili colorado, had so impregnated their system with pepper as to render their flesh too savory a morsel for the natural and unvitiated taste of the coyotes.

These coyote diggings require to be very rich to pay, from the great amount of labor necessary before any pay-dirt can be obtained. They are generally worked by only two men. A shaft is sunk, over which is rigged a rude windlass, tended by one man, who draws up the dirt in a large bucket while his partner is digging down below. When the bed rock is reached on which the rich dirt is found, excavations are made all round, leaving only the necessary supporting pillars of earth, which are also ultimately removed, and replaced by logs of wood. Accidents frequently occur from the “caving-in” of these diggings, the result generally of the carelessness of the men themselves.

The Cornish miners, of whom numbers had come to California from the mines of Mexico and South America, generally devoted themselves to these deep diggings, as did also the lead-miners from Wisconsin. Such men were quite at home a hundred feet or so under ground, picking through hard rock by candlelight; at the same time, gold mining in any way was to almost every one a new occupation, and men who had passed their lives hitherto above ground, took quite as naturally to this subterranean style of digging as to any other.

We felt no particular fancy for it, however, especially as we could not get a claim; and having heard favorable accounts of the diggings on Weaver Creek, we concluded to migrate to that place. It was about fifteen miles off; and having hired a mule and cart from a man in Hangtown to carry our long tom, hoses, picks, shovels, blankets, and pot and pans, we started early the next morning, and arrived at our destination about noon. We passed through some beautiful scenery on the way. The ground was not yet parched and scorched by the summer sun, but was still green, and on the hillsides were patches of wild-flowers growing so thick that they were quite soft and delightful to lie down upon. For some distance we followed a winding road between smooth rounded hills, thickly wooded with immense pines and cedars, gradually ascending till we came upon a comparatively level country, which had all the beauty of an English park. The ground was quite smooth, though gently undulating, and the rich verdure was diversified with numbers of white, yellow, and purple flowers. The oaks of various kinds, which were here the only tree, were of an immense size, but not so numerous as to confine the view; and the only underwood was the mansanita, a very beautiful and graceful shrub, generally growing in single plants to the height of six or eight feet. There was no appearance of ruggedness or disorder; we might have imagined ourselves in a well-kept domain; and the solitude, and the vast unemployed wealth of nature, alone reminded us that we were among the wild mountains of California.

After traveling some miles over this sort of country, we got among the pine trees once more, and very soon came to the brink of the high mountains overhanging Weaver Creek. The descent was so steep that we had the greatest difficulty in getting the cart down without a capsize, having to make short tacks down the face of the hill, and generally steering for a tree to bring up upon in case of accidents. At the point where we reached the Creek was a store, and scattered along the rocky banks of the Creek were a few miners’ tents and cabins. We had expected to have to camp out here, but seeing a small tent unoccupied near the store, we made inquiry of the storekeeper, and finding that it belonged to him, and that he had no objection to our using it, we took possession accordingly, and proceeded to light a fire and cook our dinner.

Not knowing how far we might be from a store, we had brought along with us a supply of flour, ham, beans, and tea, with which we were quite independent. After prospecting a little, we soon found a spot on the bank of the stream which we judged would yield us pretty fair pay for our labor. We had some difficulty at first in bringing water to the long tom, having to lead our hose a considerable distance up the stream to obtain sufficient elevation; but we soon got everything in working order, and pitched in. The gold which we found here was of the finest kind, and required great care in washing. It was in exceedingly small thin scales—so thin, that in washing out in a pan at the end of the day, a scale of gold would occasionally float for an instant on the surface of the water. This is the most valuable kind of gold dust, and is worth one or two dollars an ounce more than the coarse chunky dust.

It was a wild rocky place where we were now located. The steep mountains, rising abruptly all round us, so confined the view that we seemed to be shut out from the rest of the world. The nearest village or settlement was about ten miles distant; and all the miners on the Creek within four or five miles living in isolated cabins, tents, and brush-houses, or camping out on the rocks, resorted for provisions to the small store already mentioned, which was supplied with a general assortment of provisions and clothing.

There had still been occasional heavy rains, from which our tent was but poor protection, and we awoke sometimes in the morning, finding small pools of water in the folds of our blankets, and everything so soaking wet, inside the tent as well as outside, that it was hopeless to attempt to light a fire. On such occasions, raw ham, hard bread, and cold water was all the breakfast we could raise; eking it out however, with an extra pipe, and relieving our feelings by laying in fiercely with pick and shovel.

The weather very soon, however, became quite settled. The sky was always bright and cloudless; all verdure was fast disappearing from the hills, and they began to look brown and scorched. The heat in the mines during summer is greater than in most tropical countries. I have in some parts seen the thermometer as high as 120 degrees in the shade during the greater part of the day for three weeks at a time; but the climate is not by any means so relaxing and oppressive as in countries where, though the range of the thermometer is much lower, the damp suffocating atmosphere makes the heat more severely felt. In the hottest weather in California, it is always agreeably cool at night—sufficiently so to make a blanket acceptable, and to enable one to enjoy a sound sleep, in which one recovers from all the evil effects of the previous day’s baking; and even the extreme heat of the hottest hours of the day, though it crisps up one’s hair like that of a nigger, is still light and exhilarating, and by no means disinclines one for bodily exertion.

We continued to work the claim we had first taken for two or three weeks with very good success, when the diggings gave out—that is to say, they ceased to yield sufficiently to suit our ideas: so we took up another claim about a mile further up the creek; and as this was rather an inconvenient distance from our tent, we abandoned it, and took possession of a log cabin near our claim which some men had just vacated. It was a very badly built cabin perched on a rocky platform overhanging the rugged pathway which led along the banks of the creek.

A cabin with a good shingle-roof is generally the coolest kind of abode in summer; but ours was only roofed with cotton cloth, offering scarcely any resistance to the fierce rays of the sun, which rendered the cabin during the day so intolerably hot that we cooked and ate our dinner under the shade of a tree.

A whole bevy of Chinamen had recently made their appearance on the creek. Their camp, consisting of a dozen or so of small tents and brush houses, was near our cabin on the side of the hill—too near to be pleasant, for they kept up a continual chattering all night, which was rather tiresome till we got used to it.

They are an industrious set of people, no doubt, but are certainly not calculated for gold-digging. They do not work with the same force or vigor as American or European miners, but handle their tools like so many women, as if they were afraid of hurting themselves. The Americans called it “scratching,” which was a very expressive term for their style of digging. They did not venture to assert equal rights so far as to take up any claim which other miners would think it worth while to work; but in such places as yielded them a dollar or two a day they were allowed to scratch away unmolested. Had they happened to strike a rich lead, they would have been driven off their claim immediately. They were very averse to working in the water, and for four or five hours in the heat of the day they assembled under the shade of a tree, where they sat fanning themselves, drinking tea, and saying “too muchee hot.”

On the whole, they seemed a harmless, inoffensive people; but one day, as we were going to dinner, we heard an unusual hullaballoo going on where the Chinamen were at work; and on reaching the place we found the whole tribe of Celestials divided into two equal parties, drawn up against each other in battle array, brandishing picks and shovels, lifting stones as if to hurl them at their adversaries’ heads, and every man chattering and gesticulating in the most frantic manner. The miners collected on the ground to see the “muss,” and cheered the Chinamen on to more active hostilities. But after taunting and threatening each other in this way for about an hour, during which time, although the excitement seemed to be continually increasing, not a blow was struck nor a stone thrown, the two parties suddenly, and without any apparent cause, fraternized, and moved off together to their tents. What all the row was about, or why peace was so suddenly proclaimed, was of course a mystery to us outside barbarians; and the tame and unsatisfactory termination of such warlike demonstrations was a great disappointment, as we had been every moment expecting that the ball would open, and hoped to see a general engagement.

It reminded me of the way in which a couple of French Canadians have a set-to. Shaking their fists within an inch of each other’s faces, they call each other all the names imaginable, beginning with sacré cochon, and going through a long series of still less complimentary epithets, till finally sacré astrologe caps the climax. This is a regular smasher; it is supposed to be such a comprehensive term as to exhaust the whole vocabulary; both parties then give in for want of ammunition, and the fight is over. I presume it was by a similar process that the Chinamen arrived at a solution of their difficulty; at all events, discretion seemed to form a very large component part of Celestial valor.

CHAPTER VIII

MINERS’ LAW

The peculiarities of the Missourians are very strongly marked, and after being in the mines but a short time, one could distinguish a Missourian, or a “Pike,” or “Pike County,” as they are called, from the natives of any other western State. Their costume was always exceedingly old and greasy-looking; they had none of the occasional foppery of the miner, which shows itself in brilliant red shirts, boots with flaming red tops, fancy-colored hats, silver-handled bowie-knives, and rich silk sashes. It always seemed to me that a Missourian wore the same clothes in which he had crossed the plains, and that he was keeping them to wear on his journey home again. Their hats were felt, of a dirty-brown color, and the shape of a short extinguisher. Their shirts had perhaps, in days gone by, been red, but were now a sort of purple; their pantaloons were generally of a snuffy-brown color, and made of some woolly home-made fabric. Suspended at their back from a narrow strap buckled round the waist they carried a wooden-handled bowie-knife in an old leathern sheath, not stitched, but riveted with leaden nails; and over their shoulders they wore strips of cotton or cloth as suspenders—mechanical contrivances never thought of by any other men in the mines. As for their boots, there was no peculiarity about them, excepting that they were always old. Their coats, a garment not frequently seen in the mines for at least six months of the year, were very extraordinary things—exceedingly tight, short-waisted, long-skirted surtouts of homemade frieze of a greyish-blue color.

As for their persons, they were mostly long, gaunt, narrow-chested, round-shouldered men, with long, straight, light-colored, dried-up-looking hair, small thin sallow faces, with rather scanty beard and moustache, and small grey sunken eyes, which seemed to be keenly perceptive of everything around them. But in their movements the men were slow and awkward, and in the towns especially they betrayed a childish astonishment at the strange sights occasioned by the presence of the divers nations of the earth. The fact is, that till they came to California many of them had never in their lives before seen two houses together, and in any little village in the mines they witnessed more of the wonders of civilization than ever they had dreamed of.

In some respects, perhaps, the mines of California were as wild a place as any part of the Western States of America; but they were peopled by a community of men of all classes, and from different countries, who though living in a rough backwoods style, had nevertheless all the ideas and amenities of civilized life; while the Missourians, having come direct across the plains from their homes in the backwoods, had received no preparatory education to enable them to show off to advantage in such company.

And in this they labored under a great disadvantage, as compared with the lower classes of people of every country who came to San Francisco by way of Panama or Cape Horn. The men from the interior of the States learned something even on their journey to New York or New Orleans, having their eyes partially opened during the few days they spent in either of those cities en route; and on the passage to San Francisco they naturally received a certain degree of polish from being violently shaken up with a crowd of men of different habits and ideas from their own. They had to give way in many things to men whose motives of action were perhaps to them incomprehensible, while of course they gained a few new ideas from being brought into close contact with such sorts of men as they had hitherto only seen at a distance, or very likely had never heard of. A little experience of San Francisco did them no harm, and by the time they reached the mines they had become very superior men to the raw bumpkins they were before leaving their homes.

It may seem strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that the majority of men in whom such a change was most desirable became in California more humanized, and acquired a certain amount of urbanity; in fact, they came from civilized countries in the rough state, and in California got licked into shape, and polished.

I had subsequently, while residing on the Isthmus of Nicaragua, constant opportunities of witnessing the truth of this, in contrasting the outward-bound emigrants with the same class of men returning to the States after having received a California education. Every fortnight two crowds of passengers rushed across the Isthmus, one from New York, the other from San Francisco. The great majority in both cases were men of the lower ranks of life, and it is of course to them alone that my remarks apply. Those coming from New York—who were mostly Americans and Irish—seemed to think that each man could do just as he pleased, without regard to the comfort of his neighbors. They showed no accommodating spirit, but grumbled at everything, and were rude and surly in their manners; they were very raw and stupid, and had no genius for doing anything for themselves or each other to assist their progress, but perversely delighted in acting in opposition to the regulations and arrangements made for them by the Transit Company. The same men, however, on their return from California, were perfect gentlemen in comparison. They were orderly in their behavior; though rough, they were not rude, and showed great consideration for others, submitting cheerfully to any personal inconvenience necessary for the common good, and showing by their conduct that they had acquired some notion of their duties to balance the very enlarged idea of their rights which they had formerly entertained.

The Missourians, however, although they acquired no new accomplishments on their journey to California, lost none of those which they originally possessed. They could use an ax or a rifle with any man. Two of them would chop down a few trees and build a log cabin in a day and a half, and with their long five-foot-barrel rifle, which was their constant companion, they could “draw a bead” on a deer, a squirrel, or the white of an Indian’s eye, with equal coolness and certainty of killing.

Though large-framed men, they were not remarkable for physical strength, nor were they robust in constitution; in fact, they were the most sickly set of men in the mines, fever and ague and diarrhœa being their favorite complaints.

We had many pleasant neighbors, and among them were some very amusing characters. One man, who went by the name of the “Philosopher,” might possibly have earned a better right to the name, if he had had the resolution to abstain from whisky. He had been, I believe, a farmer in Kentucky, and was one of a class not uncommon in America, who, without much education, but with great ability and immense command of language, together with a very superficial knowledge of some science, hold forth on it most fluently, using such long words, and putting them so well together, that, were it not for the crooked ideas they enunciated, one might almost suppose they knew what they were talking about.

Phrenology was this man’s hobby, and he had all the phrenological phraseology at his finger-ends. His great delight was to paw a man’s head and to tell him his character. One Sunday morning he came into our cabin as he was going down to the store for provisions, and after a few minutes’ conversation, of course he introduced phrenology; and as I knew I should not get rid of him till I did so, I gave him my permission to feel my head. He fingered it all over, and gave me a very elaborate synopsis of my character, explaining most minutely the consequences of the combination of the different bumps, and telling me how I would act in a variety of supposed contingencies. Having satisfied himself as to my character, he went off, and I was in hopes I was done with him, but an hour or so after dark, he came rolling into the cabin just as I was going to turn in. He was as drunk as he well could be; his nose was swelled and bloody, his eyes were both well blackened, and altogether he was very unlike a learned professor of phrenology. He begged to be allowed to stay all night; and as he would most likely have broken his neck over the rocks if he had tried to reach his own home that night, I made him welcome, thinking that he would immediately fall asleep without troubling me further. But I was very much mistaken; he had no sooner lain down, than he began to harangue me as if I were a public meeting or a debating society, addressing me as “gentlemen,” and expatiating on a variety of topics, but chiefly on phrenology, the Democratic ticket, and the great mass of the people. He had a bottle of brandy with him, which I made him finish in hopes it might have the effect of silencing him; but there was unfortunately not enough of it for that—it only made him worse, for he left the debating society and got into a bar-room, where, when I went to sleep, he was playing “poker” with some imaginary individual whom he called Jim.

In the morning he made most ample apologies, and was very earnest in expressing his gratitude for my hospitality. I took the liberty of asking him what bumps he called those in the neighborhood of his eyes. “Well, sir,” he said, “you ask me a plain question, I’ll give you a plain answer. I got into a ‘muss’ down at the store last night, and was whipped; and I deserved it too.” As he was so penitent, I did not press him for further particulars; but I heard from another man the same day that when at the store he had taken the opportunity of an audience to lecture them on his favorite subject, and illustrated his theory by feeling several heads, and giving very full descriptions of the characters of the individuals. At last he got hold of a man who must have had something peculiar in the formation of his cranium, for he gave him a most dreadful character, calling him a liar, a cheat, and a thief, and winding up by saying that he was a man who would murder his father for five dollars.

The natural consequence was that the owner of this enviable character jumped up and pitched into the phrenologist, giving him the whipping which he had so candidly acknowledged, and would probably have murdered him without the consideration of the five dollars, if the bystanders had not interfered.

Very near where we were at work, a party of half-a-dozen men held a claim in the bed of the creek, and had as usual dug a race through which to turn the water, and so leave exposed the part they intended to work. This they were now anxious to do, as the creek had fallen sufficiently low to admit of it; but they were opposed by a number of miners whose claims lay so near the race that they would have been swamped had the water been turned into it.

They could not come to any settlement of the question among themselves; so, as was usual in such cases, they concluded to leave it to a jury of miners; and notice was accordingly sent to all the miners within two or three miles up and down the creek, requesting them to assemble on the claim in question the next afternoon. Although a miner calculates an hour lost as so much money out of his pocket, yet all were interested in supporting the laws of the diggings; and about a hundred men presented themselves at the appointed time. The two opposing parties then, having tossed up for the first pick, chose six jurymen each from the assembled crowd.

When the jury had squatted themselves all together in an exalted position on a heap of stones and dirt, one of the plaintiffs, as spokesman for his party, made a very pithy speech, calling several witnesses to prove his statements, and citing many of the laws of the diggings in support of his claims. The defendants followed in the same manner, making the most of their case; while the general public, sitting in groups on the different heaps of stones piled up between the holes with which the ground was honeycombed, smoked their pipes and watched the proceedings.

After the plaintiff and defendant had said all they had to say about it, the jury examined the state of the ground in dispute; they then called some more witnesses to give further information, and having laid their shaggy heads together for a few minutes, they pronounced their decision; which was, that the men working on the race should be allowed six days to work out their claims before the water should be turned in upon them.

Neither party was particularly well pleased with the verdict—a pretty good sign that it was an impartial one; but they had to abide by it, for had there been any resistance on either side, the rest of the miners would have enforced the decision of this august tribunal. From it there was no appeal; a jury of miners was the highest court known, and I must say I never saw a court of justice with so little humbug about it.

The laws of the creek, as was the case in all the various diggings in the mines, were made at meetings of miners held for the purpose. They were generally very few and simple. They defined how many feet of ground one man was entitled to hold in a ravine—how much in the bank, and in the bed of the creek; how many such claims he could hold at a time; and how long he could absent himself from his claim without forfeiting it. They declared what was necessary to be done in taking up and securing a claim which, for want of water, or from any other cause, could not be worked at the time; and they also provided for various contingencies incidental to the peculiar nature of the diggings.

Of course, like other laws they required constant revision and amendment, to suit the progress of the times; and a few weeks after this trial, a meeting was held one Sunday afternoon for legislative purposes. The miners met in front of the store to the number of about two hundred; a very respectable-looking old chap was called to the chair; but for want of that article of furniture he mounted an empty pork-barrel, which gave him a commanding position; another man was appointed secretary, who placed his writing materials on some empty boxes piled up alongside of the chair. The chairman then, addressing the crowd, told them the object for which the meeting had been called, and said he would be happy to hear any gentleman who had any remarks to offer; whereupon some one proposed an amendment of the law relating to a certain description of claim, arguing the point in a very neat speech. He was duly seconded, and there was some slight opposition and discussion; but when the chairman declared it carried by the ayes, no one called for a division, so the secretary wrote it all down, and it became law.

Two or three other acts were passed, and when the business was concluded, a vote of thanks to the chairman was passed for his able conduct on the top of the pork-barrel. The meeting was then declared to be dissolved, and accordingly dribbled into the store, where the legislators, in small detachments, pledged each other in cocktails as fast as the storekeeper could mix them. While the legislature was in session, however, everything was conducted with the utmost formality, for Americans of all classes are particularly au fait at the ordinary routine of public meetings.

After working our claim for a few weeks, my partner left me to go to another part of the mines, and I joined two Americans in buying a claim five or six miles up the creek. It was supposed to be very rich, and we had to pay a long price for it accordingly, although the men who had taken it up, and from whom we bought it, had not yet even prospected the ground. But the adjoining claims were being worked, and yielding largely, and from the position of ours, it was looked on as an equally good one.

There was a great deal to be done, before it could be worked, in the way of removing rocks and turning the water; and as three of us were not sufficient to work the place properly, we hired four men to assist us, at the usual wages of five dollars a-day. It took about a fortnight to get the claim into order before we could begin washing, but we then found that our labor had not been expended in vain, for it paid uncommonly well.

When I bought this claim, I had to give up my cabin, as the distance was so great, and I now camped with my partners close to our claim, where we had erected a brush house. This is a very comfortable kind of abode in summer, and does not cost an hour’s labor to erect. Four uprights are stuck in the ground, and connected with cross pieces, on which are laid heaps of leafy brushwood, making a roof completely impervious to the rays of the sun. Sometimes three sides are filled in with a basketwork of brush, which gives the edifice a more compact and comfortable appearance. Very frequently a brush shed of this sort was erected over a tent, for the thin material of which tents were usually made offered but poor shelter from the burning sun.

When I left my cabin, I handed it over to a young man who had arrived very lately in the country, and had just come up to the mines. On meeting him a few days afterwards, and asking him how he liked his new abode, he told me that the first night of his occupation he had not slept a wink, and had kept candles burning till daylight, being afraid to go to sleep on account of the rats.

Rats, indeed! poor fellow! I should think there were a few rats, but the cabin was not worse in that respect than any other in the mines. The rats were most active colonizers. Hardly was a cabin built in the most out-of-the-way part of the mountains, before a large family of rats made themselves at home in it, imparting a humanized and inhabited air to the place. They are not supposed to be indigenous to the country. They are a large black species, which I believe those who are learned in rats call the Hamburg breed. Occasionally a pure white one is seen, but more frequently in the cities than in the mines; they are probably the hoary old patriarchs, and not a distinct species.[2]

They are very destructive, and are such notorious thieves, carrying off letters, newspapers, handkerchiefs, and things of that sort, with which to make their nests, that I soon acquired a habit, which is common enough in the mines, of always ramming my stockings tightly into the toes of my boots, putting my neckerchief into my pocket, and otherwise securing all such matters before turning in at night. One took these precautions just as naturally, and as much as a matter of course, as when at sea one fixes things in such manner that they shall not fetch way with the motion of the ship. As in civilized life a man winds up his watch and puts it under his pillow before going to bed; so in the mines, when turning in, one just as instinctively sets to work to circumvent the rats in the manner described, and, taking off his revolver, lays it under his pillow, or at least under the coat or boots, or whatever he rests his head on.

I believe there are individuals who faint or go into hysterics if a cat happens to be in the same room with them. Any one having a like antipathy to rats had better keep as far away from California as possible, especially from the mines. The inhabitants generally, however, have no such prejudices; it is a free country—as free to rats as to Chinamen; they increase and multiply and settle on the land very much as they please, eating up your flour, and running over you when you are asleep, without ceremony.

No one thinks it worth while to kill individual rats—the abstract fact of their existence remains the same; you might as well wage war upon mosquitoes. I often shot rats, but it was for the sport, not for the mere object of killing them. Rat-shooting is capital sport, and is carried on in this wise: The most favorable place for it is a log cabin in which the chinks have not been filled up, so that there is a space of two or three inches between the logs; and the season is a moonlight night. Then when you lie down for the night (it would be absurd to call it “going to bed” in the mines), you have your revolver charged, and plenty of ammunition at hand. The lights are of course put out, and the cabin is in darkness; but the rats have a fashion of running along the tops of the logs, and occasionally standing still, showing clearly against the moonlight outside; then is your time to draw a bead upon them and knock them over—if you can. But it takes a good shot to do much at this sort of work, and a man who kills two or three brace before going to sleep has had a very splendid night’s shooting.

CHAPTER IX

GOLD IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

My new pursuit had the additional attraction of affording me an opportunity of gratifying the desire which I had long felt of wandering over the mines, and seeing all the various kinds of diggings, and the strange specimens of human nature to be found in them.

I sent to Sacramento for a fresh supply of drawing-paper, for which I had only to pay the moderate sum of two dollars and a half (ten shillings sterling) a sheet; and finding my old brother-miners very liberal patrons of the fine arts, I remained some time in the neighborhood actively engaged with my pencil.

I then had occasion to return to Hangtown. On my arrival there, I went as usual to the cabin of my friend the doctor, which I found in a pretty mess. The ground on which some of the houses were built had turned out exceedingly rich; and thinking that he might be as lucky as his neighbors, the doctor had got a party of six miners to work the inside of his cabin on half shares. He was to have half the gold taken out, as the rights of property in any sort of house or habitation in the mines extend to the mineral wealth below it. In his cabin were two large holes, six feet square and about seven deep; in each of these were three miners, picking and shoveling, or washing the dirt in rockers with the water pumped out of the holes. When one place had been worked out, the dirt was all shoveled back into the hole, and another one commenced alongside of it. They took about a fortnight in this way to work all the floor of the cabin, and found it very rich.

There was a young Southerner in Hangtown at this time, who had brought one of his slaves with him to California. They worked and lived together, master and man sharing equally the labors and hardships of the mines.

One night the slave dreamed that they had been working the inside of a certain cabin in the street, and had taken out a great pile of gold. He told his master in the morning, but neither of them thought much of it, as such golden dreams are by no means uncommon among the miners. A few nights afterwards, however, he had precisely the same dream, and was so convinced that their fortune lay waiting for them under this particular cabin, that he succeeded at last in persuading his master to believe it also. The master said nothing to any one about the dream, but made some pretext for wishing to become the owner of the cabin, and finally succeeded in buying it. He and his slave immediately moved in, and set to work digging up the earthen floor, and the dream proved to be so far true that before they had worked all the ground they had taken out twenty thousand dollars.

There were many slaves in various parts of the mines working with their masters, and I knew frequent instances of their receiving their freedom. Some slaves I have also seen left in the mines by their masters, working faithfully to make money enough wherewith to buy themselves. Of course, as California is a free State, a slave, when once taken there by his master, became free by law; but no man would bring a slave to the country unless one on whose fidelity he could depend.

Niggers, in some parts of the mines, were pretty numerous, though by no means forming so large a proportion of the population as in the Atlantic States. As miners they were proverbially lucky, but they were also inveterate gamblers, and did not long remain burdened with their unwonted riches.

In the mines the Americans seemed to exhibit more tolerance of negro blood than is usual in the States—not that negroes were allowed to sit at table with white men, or considered to be at all on an equality, but, owing partly to the exigencies of the unsettled state of society, and partly, no doubt, to the important fact that a nigger’s dollars were as good as any others, the Americans overcame their prejudices so far that negroes were permitted to lose their money in the gambling rooms; and in the less frequented drinking-shops they might be seen receiving drink at the hands of white bar-keepers. In a town or camp of any size there was always a “nigger boarding-house,” kept, of course, by a darky, for the special accommodation of colored people; but in places where there was no such institution, or at wayside houses, when a negro wanted accommodation, he waited till the company had finished their meal and left the table before he ventured to sit down. I have often, on such occasions, seen the white waiter, or the landlord, when he filled that office himself, serving a nigger with what he wanted without apparently doing any violence to his feelings.

A very striking proof was seen, in this matter of waiting, of the revolution which California life caused in the feelings and occupations of the inhabitants. The Americans have an intense feeling of repugnance to any kind of menial service, and consider waiting at table as quite degrading to a free and enlightened citizen. In the United States there is hardly such a thing to be found as a native-born American waiting at table. Such service is always performed by negroes, Irishmen, or Germans; but in California, in the mines at least, it was very different. The almighty dollar exerted a still more powerful influence than in the old States, for it overcame all pre-existing false notions of dignity. The principle was universally admitted, and acted on, that no honest occupation was derogatory, and no questions of dignity interfered to prevent a man from employing himself in any way by which it suited his convenience to make his money. It was nothing uncommon to see men of refinement and education keeping restaurants or roadside houses, and waiting on any ragamuffin who chose to patronize them, with as much empressement as an English waiter who expects his customary coppers. But as no one considered himself demeaned by his occupation, neither was there any assumption of a superiority which was not allowed to exist; and whatever were their relative positions, men treated each other with an equal amount of deference.

After being detained a few days in Hangtown waiting for letters from San Francisco, I set out for Nevada City, about seventy miles north, intending from there to travel up the Yuba River, and see what was to be seen in that part of the mines.

My way lay through Middletown, the scene of my former mining exploits, and from that through a small village, called Cold Springs, to Caloma, the place where gold was first discovered. It lies at the base of high mountains, on the south fork of the American River. There were a few very neat well-painted houses in the village; but as the diggings in the neighborhood were not particularly good, there was little life or animation about the place; in fact, it was the dullest mining town in the whole country.

The first discovery of gold was accidentally made at this spot by some workmen in the employment of Colonel Sutter, while digging a race to convey water to a saw-mill. Colonel Sutter, a Swiss by birth, had, some years before, penetrated to California, and there established himself. The fort which he built for protection against the Indians, and in which he resided, is situated a few miles from where Sacramento City now stands.

I dined at Caloma, and proceeded on my way, having a stiff hill to climb to gain the high land lying between me and the middle fork of the American River. Crossing the rivers is the most laborious part of California traveling; they flow so far below the average level of the country, which, though exceedingly rough and hilly, is comparatively easy to travel; but on coming to the brink of this high land, and looking down upon the river thousands of feet below one, the summit of the opposite side appears almost nearer than the river itself, and one longs for the loan of a pair of wings for a few moments to save the toil of descending so far, and having again to climb an equal height to gain such an apparently short distance.

Some miles from Caloma is a very pretty place called Greenwood Valley—a long, narrow, winding valley, with innumerable ravines running into it from the low hills on each side. For several miles I traveled down this valley: the bed of the creek which flowed through it, and all the ravines, had been dug up, and numbers of cabins stood on the hillsides; but at this season the creek was completely dry, and consequently no mining operations could be carried on. The cabins were all tenantless, and the place looked more desolate than if its solitude had never been disturbed by man.

At the lower end of Greenwood Valley was a small village of the same name, consisting of half-a-dozen cabins, two or three stores, and a hotel. While stopping here for the night, I enjoyed a great treat in the perusal of a number of late newspapers—among others the Illustrated News, containing accounts of the Great Exhibition. In the mines one was apt to get sadly behind in modern history. The express men in the towns made a business of selling editions of the leading papers of the United States, containing the news of the fortnight, and expressly got up for circulation in California. Of these the most popular with northern men was the New York Herald, and with the southerners the New Orleans Delta. The Illustrated News was also a great favorite, being usually sold at a dollar, while other papers only fetched half that price. But unless one happened to be in some town or village when the mail from the States arrived, there was little chance of ever seeing a paper, as they were all bought up immediately.

I struck the middle fork of the American River at a place called Spanish Bar. The scenery was very grand. Looking down on the river from the summit of the range, it seemed a mere thread winding along the deep chasm formed by the mountains, which were so steep that the pine trees clinging to their sides looked as though they would slip down into the river. The face of the mountain by which I descended was covered with a perfect trellis-work of zigzag trails, so that I could work my way down by long or short tacks as I felt inclined. On the mountain on the opposite side I could see the faint line of the trail which I had to follow; it did not look by any means inviting; and I was thankful that, for the present at any rate, I was going downhill. Walking down a long hill, however, so steep that one dare not run, though not quite such hard work at the time as climbing up, is equally fatiguing in its results, as it shakes one’s knees all to pieces.

I reached the river at last, and crossing over in a canoe, landed on the “Bar.”

What they call a Bar in California is the flat which is usually found on the convex side of a bend in a river. Such places have nearly always proved very rich, that being the side on which any deposit carried down by the river will naturally lodge, while the opposite bank is generally steep and precipitous, and contains little or no gold. Indeed, there are not many exceptions to the rule that, in a spot where one bank of a river affords good diggings, the other side is not worth working.

The largest camps or villages on the rivers are on the bars, and take their name from them.

The nomenclature of the mines is not very choice or elegant. The rivers all retain the names given to them by the Spaniards, but every little creek, flat, and ravine, besides of course the towns and villages which have been called into existence, have received their names at the hands of the first one or two miners who have happened to strike the diggings. The individual pioneer has seldom shown much invention or originality in his choice of a name; in most cases he has either immortalized his own by tacking “ville” or “town” to the end of it, or has more modestly chosen the name of some place in his native State; but a vast number of places have been absurdly named from some trifling incident connected with their first settlement; such as Shirt Tail Cañon, Whisky Gulch, Port Wine Diggins, Humbug Flat, Murderer’s Bar, Flapjack Cañon, Yankee Jim’s, Jackass Gulch, and hundreds of others with equally ridiculous names.

Spanish Bar was about half a mile in length, and three or four hundred yards wide. The whole place was honeycombed with the holes in which the miners were at work; all the trees had been cut down, and there was nothing but the red shirts of the miners to relieve the dazzling whiteness of the heaps of stones and gravel which reflected the fierce rays of the sun and made the extreme heat doubly severe.

At the foot of the mountain, as if they had been pushed back as far as possible off the diggings, stood a row of booths and tents, most of them of a very ragged and worn-out appearance. I made for the one which looked most imposing—a canvas edifice, which, from the huge sign all along the front, assumed to be the “United States” Hotel. It was not far from twelve o’clock, the universal dinner-hour in the mines; so I lighted my pipe, and lay down in the shade to compose myself for the great event.

The American system of using hotels as regular boarding-houses prevails also in California. The hotels in the mines are really boarding-houses, for it is on the number of their boarders they depend. The transient custom of travelers is merely incidental. The average rate of board per week at these institutions was twelve or fifteen dollars, and the charge for a single meal was a dollar, or a dollar and a half.

The “United States” seemed to have a pretty good run of business. As the hour of noon (feeding time) approached, the miners began to congregate in the bar-room; many of them took advantage of the few minutes before dinner to play cards, while the rest looked on, or took gin cocktails to whet their appetites. At last there could not have been less than sixty or seventy miners assembled in the bar-room, which was a small canvas enclosure about twenty feet square. On one side was a rough wooden door communicating with the salle à manger; to get as near to this as possible was the great object, and there was a press against it like that at the pit door of a theatre on a benefit night.

As twelve o’clock struck the door was drawn aside, displaying the banqueting hall, an apartment somewhat larger than the bar-room, and containing two long tables well supplied with fresh beef, potatoes, beans, pickles, and salt pork. As soon as the door was opened there was a shout, a rush, a scramble, and a loud clatter of knives and forks, and in the course of a very few minutes fifty or sixty men had finished their dinner. Of course many more rushed into the dining-room than could find seats, and the disappointed ones came out again looking rather foolish, but they “guessed there would be plenty to eat at the second table.”

Having had some experience of such places, I had intended being one of the second detachment myself, and so I guessed likewise that there would be plenty to eat at the second table, and “cal’lated” also that I would have more time to eat it in than at the first.

We were not kept long waiting. In an incredibly short space of time the company began to return to the bar-room, some still masticating a mouthful of food, others picking their teeth with their fingers, or with sharp-pointed bowie-knives, and the rest, with a most provokingly complacent expression about their eyes, making horrible motions with their jaws, as if they were wiping out their mouths with their tongues, determined to enjoy the last lingering after-taste of the good things they had been eating—rather a disgusting process to a spectator at any time, but particularly aggravating to hungry men waiting for their dinner.

When they had all left the dining-room, the door was again closed while the table was being relaid. In the meantime there had been constant fresh arrivals, and there were now almost as many waiting for the second table as there had been for the first. A crowd very quickly began to collect round the door, and I saw that to dine at number two, as I had intended, I must enter into the spirit of the thing; so I elbowed my way into the crowd, and secured a pretty good position behind a tall Kentuckian, who I knew would clear the way before me. Very soon the door was opened, when in we rushed pell-mell. I labored under the disadvantage of not knowing the diggings; being a stranger, I did not know the lay of the tables, or whereabouts the joints were placed; but immediately on entering I caught sight of a good-looking roast of beef at the far end of one of the tables, at which I made a desperate charge. I was not so green as to lose time in trying to get my legs over the bench and sit down, and in so doing perhaps be crowded out altogether; but I seized a knife and fork, with which I took firm hold of my prize, and occupying as much space as possible with my elbows, I gradually insinuated myself into my seat. Without letting go the beef, I then took a look round, and had the gratification of seeing about a dozen men leaving the room, with a most ludicrous expression of disappointment and hope long deferred. I have no doubt that when they got into the bar-room they guessed there would be lots to eat at table number three; I hope there was. I know there was plenty at number two; but it was a “grab game”—every man for himself. If I had depended on the waiter getting me a slice of roast beef, I should have had the hungry number threes down upon me before I had commenced my dinner.

Good-humor, however, was the order of the day; conversation, of course, was out of the question; but if you asked a man to pass you a dish, he did do so with pleasure, devoting one hand to your service, while with his knife or fork, as it might be, in the other, he continued to convey the contents of his plate to their ultimate destination. I must say that a knife was a favorite weapon with my convives, and in wielding it they displayed considerable dexterity, using it to feed themselves with such things as most people would eat with a spoon, if eating for a wager, or with a fork if only eating for ordinary purposes.

After dinner a smart-looking young gentleman opened a monte bank in the bar-room, laying out five or six hundred dollars on the table as his bank. For half an hour or so he did a good business, when the miners began to drop off to resume their work.

CHAPTER X

URSUS HORRIBILIS

As I approached, I found it was the Grizzly-Bear House. There could be no mistake about it, for a strip of canvas, on which “The Grizzly-Bear House” was painted in letters a foot and a half high, was stretched along the front of the cabin over the door; and that there might be no doubt as to the meaning of this announcement, the idea was further impressed upon one by the skin of an enormous grizzly bear, which, spread out upon the wall, seemed to be taking the whole house into its embrace.

I found half-a-dozen men standing before the door, amusing themselves by shooting at a mark with their rifles. The distance was only about a hundred yards, but even at that distance, when it comes to hitting a card nailed to a pine-tree nine times out of ten, it is pretty good shooting.

Before dark, four or five other travelers arrived, and about a dozen of us sat down to supper together. The house was nothing more than a large log cabin. At one end was the bar, a narrow board three feet long, behind which were two or three decanters and some kegs of liquor, a few cigars in tumblers, some odd bottles of champagne, and a box of tobacco.

A couple of benches and a table occupied the center of the house, and sacks of flour and other provisions stood in the corners. Out in the forest, behind the cabin, was a cooking-stove, with a sort of awning over it. This was the kitchen; and certainly the cook could not complain of want of room; but, judging from our supper, he was not called upon to go through any very difficult maneuvers in the practice of his art. He knocked off his rifle practice about half an hour before supper to go and light the kitchen fire, and the fruits of his subsequent labors appeared in a large potful of tea and a lot of beefsteaks. The bread was uncommonly stale, from which I presumed that, when he did bake, he baked enough to last for about a week.

After supper, every man lighted his pipe, and though all were sufficiently talkative, the attention of the whole party became very soon monopolized by two individuals, who were decidedly the lions of the evening. One of them was a man from Illinois, who had been in the Mexican war, and who no doubt thought he might have been a General Scott, if he had only had the opportunity of distinguishing himself. He commented on the tactics of the generals as if he knew more of warfare than any of them; and the awful yarns he told of how he and the American army had whipped the Mexicans, and given them “particular hell,” as he called it, was enough to make a civilian’s hair stand on end. Some of his hearers swallowed every word he said, without even making a wry face at it; but as he tried to make out that all the victories were gained by the Illinois regiment, in which he served as full private, two or three of the party, who knew something of the history of the war, and came from other States of the Union, had no idea of letting Illinois have all the glory of the achievements, and disputed the correctness of his statements. Illinois, however, was too many for them; he was not to be stumped in that way; he had a stock of authentic facts on hand for any emergency, with which he corroborated all his previous assertions. The resistance he met with only stimulated him to greater efforts, and the more one of his facts was doubted, the more incredible was the next; till at last he detailed his confidential conversations with General Taylor, and made himself out to be a sort of a fellow who swept Mexicans off the face of the earth as a common man would kill mosquitoes.

He did not have all the talking to himself, however. One of the men who kept the house was a bear-hunter by profession, and he had not hunted grizzlies for nothing. He had tales to tell of desperate encounters and hairbreadth escapes, to which the adventures of Baron Munchausen were not a circumstance. He was a dry stringy-looking man, with light hair and keen gray eyes. His features were rather handsome, and he had a pleasing expression; but he was so dried up and tanned by exposure and the hard life he led, that his face conveyed no idea of flesh. One would rather have expected, on cutting into him, to find that he was composed of gutta-percha, or something of that sort, and only colored on the outside. He and Illinois listened to each other’s stories with silent contempt; in fact, they pretended not to listen at all, but at the same time each watched intently for the slightest halt in the other’s narrative; and while the Illinois man was only taking breath during some desperate struggle with the Mexicans, the hunter in a moment plunged right into the middle of a bear-story, and was half eaten up by a grizzly before we knew what he was talking about; and as soon as ever that bear was disposed of, Illinois immediately went on with his story as if he had never been interrupted.

The hunter had rather the best of it; his yarns were uncommonly tough and hard of digestion, but there were no historical facts on record to bring against him. He had it all his own way, for the only witnesses of his exploits were the grizzlies, and he always managed to dispose of them very effectually by finishing their career along with his story. He showed several scars on different parts of his gutta-percha person which he received from the paws of the grizzlies, and he was not the sort of customer whose veracity one would care to question, especially as implicit faith so much increased one’s interest in his adventures. One man nearly got into a scrape by laughing at the most thrilling part of one of his best stories. After firing twice at a bear without effect, the bear, infuriated by the balls planted in his carcass, was rushing upon him. He took to flight, and, loading as he ran, he turned and put a ball into the bear’s left eye. The bear winked a good deal, but did not seem to mind it much—he only increased his pace; so the hunter, loading again, turned round and put a ball into his right eye; whereupon the bear, now winking considerably with both eyes, put his nose to the ground, and began to run him down by scent. At this critical moment, a great stupid-looking lout, who had been sitting all night with his eyes and mouth wide open, sucking in and swallowing everything that was said, had the temerity to laugh incredulously. The hunter flared up in a moment. “What are you a-laafin’ at?” he said. “D’ye mean to say I lie?”

“Oh,” said the other, “if you say it was so, I suppose it’s all right; you ought to know best. But I warn’t laafin’ at you; I was laafin’ at the bar.”

“What do you know about bars?” said the hunter, “Did you ever kill a bar?”

The poor fellow had never killed a “bar,” so the hunter snuffed him out with a look of utter contempt and pity, and went on triumphantly with his story, which ended in his getting up a tree, where he sat and peppered the bear as it went smelling round the stump, till it at last fell mortally wounded, with I don’t know how many balls in its body.

The grizzlies are the commonest kind of bear found in California, and are very large animals, weighing sometimes sixteen or eighteen hundred pounds.[3]

Hunting them is rather dangerous sport, as they are extremely tenacious of life, and when wounded invariably show fight. But unless molested they do not often attack a man; in fact, they are hardly ever seen on the trails during the day. At night, however, they prowl about, and carry off whatever comes in their way. They had walked off with a young calf from this ranch the night before, and the hunter was going out the next day to wreak his vengeance upon them. A grizzly is well worth killing, as he fetches a hundred dollars or more, according to his weight. The meat is excellent, but it needs to be well spiced, for in process of cooking it becomes saturated with bear’s grease. In the mines, however, pomatum is an article unknown, and so no unpleasantly greasy ideas occur to one while dining off a good piece of grizzly bear.

About ten o’clock, at the conclusion of a bear story, there was a general move towards one corner of the cabin where there were a lot of rifles, and where every man had thrown his roll of blankets. The floor was swept, and each one, choosing his own location, spread his blankets and lay down. Some slept in their boots, while others took them off, to put under their heads by way of pillows. I was one of the latter number, being rather partial to pillows; and selecting a spot for my head, where it would be as far from other heads as possible, I lay down, and stretching out my feet promiscuously, I was very soon in the land of dreams, where I went through the whole Mexican campaign, and killed more “bars” than ever the hunter had seen in his life.

People do not lie abed in the morning in California; perhaps they would not anywhere, if they had no better beds than we had; so before daylight there was a general resurrection, and a very general ablution was performed in a tin basin which stood on a keg outside the cabin, alongside of which was a barrel of water. Over the basin hung a very small looking-glass, in which one could see one eye at a time; and attached to it by a long string was a comb for the use of those gentlemen who did not travel with their dressing-cases.

Some of the party, the warrior among the number, commenced the day by taking a gin cocktail, the hunter acting as bar-keeper, while his partner the cook, who had been up an hour before any of us, chopping wood and lighting a fire, was laying the table for breakfast.

Breakfast was an affair of but very few moments, and as soon as it was over, I set out in company with three or four of the party, who were going the same way.

We crossed the north fork of the American River at Kelly’s Bar, a very rocky little place, covered with a number of dilapidated tents. We had the usual mountains to descend and ascend in crossing the river, but on gaining the summit we found ourselves again in a beautiful rolling country. Not far from the river was a very romantic little place called Illinoistown, consisting of three shanties and a saw-mill. The pine trees in the neighborhood were of an enormous size, and were being fast converted into lumber, which was in great demand for various mining operations, and sold at 120 dollars per thousand feet. We fared sumptuously on stewed squirrels at a solitary shanty in the forest a few miles farther on.

These little wayside inns, or “ranches,” as they are usually called in the mines, are generally situated in a spot which offers some capabilities of cultivation, and where water, the great desideratum in the mountains, is to be had all the year. The owners employ themselves in fencing-in and clearing the land, and by degrees give the place an appearance of comfort and civilization. One finds such places in all the different stages of improvement, from a small tent or log cabin, with the wild forest around it as yet undisturbed, to good frame houses with two or three rooms, a boarded floor, and windows, and surrounded by several acres of cleared land under cultivation.

Oats and barley are the principal crops raised in the mountains. In some of the little valleys a species of wild oats, which makes excellent hay, grows very luxuriantly. In passing through one such place, where the grasshoppers were in clouds, we found a number of Indian squaws catching them with small nets attached to a short stick, in the style of an angler’s landing-net. I believe they bruise them and knead them into a paste, somewhat of the consistency of potted shrimps; it may be as palatable also, but I cannot speak from experience on that point. My companions, as we traveled on, branched off one by one to their respective destinations, and I was again alone when I got to the ranch where I intended to pass the night. It was somewhat the same style of thing as the Grizzly-Bear House, but the house was larger, and the accommodation more luxurious, inasmuch as we had canvas bunks or shelves to sleep upon.

I went on next day along with a young miner from Georgia, who was also bound for Nevada. We dined at a place where we crossed Bear River; and a villainous bad dinner it was—nothing but bad salt pork, bad pickled onions, and bad bread.

On resuming our journey, we were joined by a man who said he always liked to have company on that road. Several robberies and murders had been committed on it of late, and he very kindly pointed out to us, as we passed it, the exact spot where, a few days before, one man had been shot through the head, and another through the hat. One was robbed of seventy-five cents, the other of eight hundred dollars.

It was a very romantic place, and well calculated for the operations of the gentlemen of the road, being a little hollow darkened by the spreading branches of a grove of oak trees; the underwood was thick and very high, and as the trail twisted round trees and bushes, a traveler could not see more than a few feet before or behind him. We had our revolvers in readiness; but I was not very apprehensive, as three men, all showing pistols in their belts, are rather more than those ruffians generally care to tackle.

We arrived at Nevada City between five and six o’clock, when I took a look round to find the most likely place for a good supper, being particularly ravenous after the long walk and the salt-pork dinner. I found a house bearing the sign of “Hotel de Paris,” and my choice was made at once. As I had half an hour to wait for supper, I strolled about the town to see what sort of a place it was. It is beautifully situated on the hills bordering a small creek, and had once been surrounded by a forest of magnificent pine trees, which, however, had been made to become useful instead of ornamental, and nothing now remained to show that they had existed but the numbers of stumps all over the hillsides. The bed of the creek, which had once flowed past the town, was now choked up with heaps of “tailings”—the washed dirt from which the gold has been extracted—the white color of the dirt rendering it still more unsightly. All the water of the creek was distributed among a number of small troughs, carried along the steep banks on either side at different elevations, for the purpose of supplying various quartz-mills and long toms.

The town itself—or, I should say, the “City,” for from the moment of its birth it has been called Nevada City—is, like all mining towns, a mixture of staring white frame houses, dingy old canvas booths, and log cabins.

The only peculiarity about the miners was the white mud with which they were bespattered, especially those working in underground diggings, who were easily distinguished by the quantity of dry white mud on the tops of their hats.

The supper at the Hotel de Paris was the best-got-up thing of the kind I had sat down to for some months. We began with soup—rather flimsy stuff, but pretty good—then bouilli, followed by filet-de-bœuf, with cabbage, carrots, turnips, and onions; after that came what the landlord called a “god-dam rosbif,” with green peas, and the whole wound up with a salad of raw cabbage, a cup of good coffee, and cognac. I did impartial justice to every department, and rose from the table powerfully refreshed.

The company were nearly all French miners, among whom was a young Frenchman whom I had known in San Francisco, and whom I hardly recognized in his miner’s costume.

We passed the evening together in some of the gambling-rooms, where we heard pretty good music; and as there were no sleeping quarters to be had at the house where I dined, I went to an American hotel close to it. It was in the usual style of a boarding-house in the mines, but it was a three-decker. All round the large sleeping apartment were three tiers of canvas shelves, partitioned into spaces six feet long, on one of which I laid myself out, choosing the top tier in case of accidents.