In this part of the country the pine-trees are of an immense size, and of every variety. The most graceful is what is called the “sugar pine.” It is perfectly straight and cylindrical, with a comparatively smooth bark, and, till about four-fifths of its height from the ground, without a branch or even a twig. The branches then spread straight out from the stem, drooping a good deal at the extremities from the weight of the immense cones which they bear. These are about a foot and a half long, and under each leaf is a seed the size of a cherrystone, and which has a taste even sweeter than that of a filbert. The Indians are very fond of them, and make the squaws gather them for winter food.

A peculiarity of the pine-trees in California is, that the bark, from within eight or ten feet of the ground up to where the branches commence, is completely riddled with holes, such as might be made with musket-balls. They are, however, the work of the woodpeckers, who, like the Indians, are largely interested in the acorn crop. They are constantly making these holes, in each of which they stow away an acorn, leaving it as tightly wedged in as though it were driven in with a sledge-hammer.

There were several quartz veins in the neighbourhood of Nevada, some of which were very rich, and yielded a large amount of gold; but, generally speaking, they were so unscientifically and unprofitably worked that they turned out complete failures.

Quartz mining is a scientific operation, of which many of those who undertook to work the veins had no knowledge whatever, nor had they sufficient capital to carry on such a business. The cost of erecting crushing-mills, and of getting the necessary iron castings from San Francisco, was very great. A vast deal of labour had to be gone through in opening the mine before any returns could be received; and, moreover, the method then adopted of crushing the quartz and extracting the gold was so defective that not more than one half of it was saved.

There is a variety of diggings here, but the richest are deep diggings in the hills above the town, and are worked by means of shafts, or coyote holes, as they are called. In order to reach the gold-bearing dirt, these shafts have to be sunk to the depth of nearly a hundred feet, which requires the labour of at least two men for a month or six weeks; and when they have got down to the bottom, perhaps they may find nothing to repay them for their perseverance.

The miners always calculate their own labour at five dollars a-day for every day they work, that being the usual wages for hired labour; and if a man, after working for a month in sinking a hole, finds no pay-dirt at the bottom of it, he sets himself down as a loser of a hundred and fifty dollars.

They make up heavy bills of losses against themselves in this way, but still there are plenty of men who prefer devoting themselves to this speculative style of digging, in hopes of eventually striking a rich lead, to working steadily at surface diggings, which would yield them, day by day, sure though moderate pay.

But mining of any description is more or less uncertain, and any man “hiring out,” as it is termed, steadily throughout the year, and pocketing his five dollars a-day, would find at the end of the year that he had done as well, perhaps, as the average of miners working on their own hook, who spend a considerable portion of their time in prospecting, and frequently, in order to work a claim which may afford them a month’s actual washing, have to spend as long a time in stripping off top-dirt, digging ditches, or performing other necessary labour to get their claim into working order; so that the daily amount of gold which a man may happen to be taking out, is not to be taken in itself as the measure of his prosperity. He may take a large sum out of a claim, but may also have spent as much upon it before he began to wash, and half the days of the year he may get no gold at all.

There were plenty of men who, after two years’ hard work, were not a bit better off than when they commenced, having lost in working one claim what they had made in another, and having frittered away their time in prospecting and wandering about the country from one place to another, always imagining that there were better diggings to be found than those they were in at the time.

Under any circumstances, when a man can make as much, or perhaps more, by working for himself, he has greater pleasure in doing so than in working for others; and among men engaged in such an exciting pursuit as gold-hunting, constantly stimulated by the success of some one of their neighbours, it was only natural that they should be loth to relinquish their chance of a prize in the lottery, by hiring themselves out for an amount of daily wages, which was no more than any one, if he worked steadily, could make for himself.

Those who did hire out were of two classes—cold-blooded philosophers, who calculated the chances, and stuck to their theory unmoved by the temptations around them; and men who had not sufficient inventive energy to direct their own labour and render it profitable.

The average amount of gold taken out daily at that time by men who really did work, was, I should think, not less than eight dollars; but the average daily yield of the mines to the actual population was probably not more than three or four dollars per head, owing to the great number of “loafers,” who did not work more than perhaps one day in the week, and spent the rest of their time in bar-rooms, playing cards and drinking whisky. They led a listless life of mild dissipation, for they never had money enough to get very drunk. They were always in debt for their board and their whisky at the boarding-house where they lived; and when hard pressed to pay up, they would hire out for a day or two to make enough for their immediate wants, and then return to loaf away their existence in a bar-room, as long as the boarding-house keeper thought it advisable to give them credit. I never, in any part of the mines, was in a store or boarding-house that was not haunted by some men of this sort.

Other men, with more energy in their dissipation, and old sailors especially, would have periodical bursts, more intense but of shorter duration. After mining steadily for a month or two, and saving their money, they would set to work to get rid of it as fast as possible. An old sailor went about it most systematically. For the reason, as I supposed, that when going to have a “spree,” he imagined himself to have come ashore off a voyage, he generally commenced by going to a Jew’s slop-shop, where he rigged himself out in a new suit of clothes; he would then go the round of all the bar-rooms in the place, and insist on every one he found there drinking with him,

informing them at the same time (though it was quite unnecessary, for the fact was very evident) that he was “on the spree.” Of course, he soon made himself drunk, but before being very far gone he would lose the greater part of his money to the gamblers. Cursing his bad luck, he would then console himself with a rapid succession of “drinks,” pick a quarrel with some one who was not interfering with him, get a licking, and be ultimately rolled into a corner to enjoy the more passive phase of his debauch. On waking in the morning he would not give himself time to get sober, but would go at it again, and keep at it for a week—most affectionately and confidentially drunk in the forenoon, fighting drunk in the afternoon, and dead-drunk at night. The next week he would get gradually sober, and, recovering his senses, would return to his work without a cent in his pocket, but quite contented and happy, with his mind relieved at having had what he considered a good spree. Four or five hundred dollars was by no means an unusual sum for such a man to spend on an occasion of this sort, even without losing much at the gaming-table. The greater part of it went to the bar-keepers for “drinks,” for the height of his enjoyment was every few minutes to ask half-a-dozen men to drink with him.

The amount of money thus spent at the bars in the mines must have been enormous; the system of “drinks” was carried still further than in San Francisco; and there were numbers of men of this description who were fortunate in their diggings, and became possessed of an amount of gold of which they could not realise the value. They only knew the difference between having money and having none; a hundred dollars was to them as good as a thousand, and a thousand was in their ideas about the same as a hundred. It did not matter how much they had saved; when the time came for them to reward themselves with a spree after a month or so of hard work, they made a clean sweep of everything, and spent their last dollar as readily as the first.

I did not remain in Nevada, being anxious to get down to the Yuba before the rainy season should set in and put a stop to mining operations on the river.

Foster’s Bar, about thirty miles off, was the nearest point on the Yuba, and for this place I started. I was joined on leaving the town by a German, carrying his gun and powder-horn: he was a hunter by profession, as he informed me, having followed that business for more than a year, finding ready sale for his game in Nevada.

The principal kinds of game in the mountains are deer, quail, hares, rabbits, and squirrels. The quails, which are very abundant, are beautiful birds, about the size of a pigeon, with a top-knot on their head; they are always in coveys, and rise with a whirr like partridges.

My hunting companion was at present going after deer, and, intending to stop out till he killed one, he carried his blanket and a couple of days’ provisions.

I arrived about noon at a very pretty place called Hunt’s Ranch. It was a large log-house, with several well-cultivated fields around it, in which a number of men were at work. At dinner here there was the most extensive set-out of vegetables I ever saw in the country, consisting of green pease, French beans, cauliflower, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, and water-melons. It was a long time since I had seen such a display, and not knowing when I might have another opportunity, I pitched into them right and left.

I was lighting my pipe in the bar-room after dinner, when a man walked in whom I recognised at once as one of my fellow-passengers from New York to Chagres. I was very glad to see him, as he was one of the most favourable specimens of that crowd; and according to the custom of the country, we immediately ratified our renewed acquaintance in a brandy cocktail. He was returning to his diggings about ten miles off, and our roads being the same, we set out together.

He gave me an account of his doings since he had been in the mines, from which he did not seem to have had much luck on his side, for most of the money he had made he had lost in buying claims which turned out valueless. He had owned a share in a company which was working a claim on the Yuba, but had sold it for a mere trifle before it was ascertained whether the claim was rich or not, and it was now yielding 150 dollars a-day to the man.

We crossed the Middle Yuba, a small stream, at Emery’s Bridge, where my friend left me, and I went on alone, having six or seven miles to go to reach my resting-place for the night.

I was now in a region of country so mountainous as to be perfectly impassable for wheeled vehicles. All supplies were brought to the various trading posts from Marysville on trains of pack-mules.

“Packing,” as it is called, is a large business. A packer has in his train from thirty to fifty mules, and four or five Mexicans to tend them—mule-driving, or “packing,” being one of the few occupations to which Mexicans devote themselves; and at this they certainly do excel. Though generally a lazy, indolent people, it is astonishing what activity and energy they display in an employment which suits their fancy. They drive the mules about twenty-five miles a-day; and in camping for the night, they have to select a place where there is water, and where there is also some sort of picking for the mules, which, in the dry season, when every blade of vegetation is burned up, is rather hard to find.

I came across a train of about forty mules, under charge of four or five Mexicans, just as they were about to unpack, and make their camp. The spot they chose was a little grassy hollow in the middle of the woods, near which flowed a small stream of beautifully clear water. It was evidently a favourite camping-ground, from the numbers of signs of old fires. The mules seemed to know it too, for they all stopped and commenced picking the grass. The Mexicans, who were riding tough little Californian horses, immediately dismounted and began to unpack, working with such vigour that one might have thought they were doing it for a wager.

Two men unpack a mule together. They first throw over his head a broad leathern belt, which hangs over his eyes to blind him and keep him quiet; then, one man standing on each side, they cast off the numerous hide ropes with which the cargo is secured; and when all is cast loose, each man removes his half of the cargo and places it on the ground. Another mule is then led up to the same spot, and unpacked in like manner; the cargo being all ranged along the ground in a row, and presenting a very miscellaneous assortment of sacks of flour, barrels of pork or brandy, bags of sugar, boxes of tobacco, and all sorts of groceries and other articles. When all the cargoes have been unpacked, they then take off the aparejos, or large Mexican pack-saddles, examining the back of each mule to see if it is galled. The pack-saddles are all set down in a row parallel with the cargo, the girth and saddle-cloth of each being neatly folded and laid on the top of it. The place where the mules have been unpacked, between the saddles and the cargo, is covered with quantities of raw-hide ropes and other lashings, which are all coiled up and stowed away in a heap by themselves.

Every mule, as his saddle is taken off, refreshes himself by rolling about in the dust; and when all are unsaddled, the bell-horse is led away to water. The mules all follow him, and are left to their own devices till morning.

The bell-horse of a train of mules is a very curious institution. He is generally an old white horse, with a small bell hung round his neck. He carries no cargo, but leads the van in tow of a Mexican. The mules will follow him through thick and thin, but without him they will not move a step.

In the morning the mules are hunted up and driven into camp, when they are tied together in a row behind their pack-saddles, and brought round one by one to be saddled and packed. To pack a mule well, considerable art is necessary. His load must be so divided that there is an equal weight on each side, else the mule works at great disadvantage. If his load is not nicely balanced and tightly secured, he cannot so well pick his way along the steep mountain trails, and, as not unfrequently happens, topples over and rolls down to some place from which no mule returns.

CHAPTER XII.

I arrived about dusk at a ranch called the “Grass Valley House,” situated in a forest of pines. It was a clapboard house, built round an old log-cabin which formed one corner of the building, and was now the private apartment of the landlord and his wife. I was here only six miles from Foster’s Bar, and set out for that place in the morning; but I made a mistake somewhere, and followed a wrong trail, which led me to a river, after walking six or seven miles without meeting any one of whom I could ascertain whether I was going right or not. The descent to the river was very steep, and as I went down I had misgivings that I was all wrong, and should have to come up again, but I expected at least to find some one there who could put me right. After scrambling down the best way I could, and reaching the river, I was disappointed to find nothing but the remains of an old tent; there was not even a sign of any work having been done there. The river flowed among huge masses of rock, from which the banks rose so steep and rugged, that to follow the course of the stream seemed out of the question. I thought, however, that I could distinguish marks here and there on the rocks, as if caused by travelling over them, and these I followed with considerable difficulty for about half a mile, when they stopped at a place where the blackened rocks, the remains of burned wood, and a lot of old sardine-boxes, showed that some one had been camped. Here I fancied I could make out a trail going straight up the face of the hill, on the same side of the river by which I had come down. It looked a hard road to travel, but I preferred trying it to retracing my steps, especially as I judged it would be a shorter way back to the house I had started from.

I got on very well for a short distance, but very soon lost all sign of a trail. I was determined, however, to make my way up, which I did by dint of catching hold of branches of trees and bushes; and on my hands I had to place my greatest dependence, for the loose soil was covered with large stones, which gave way under my feet, and which I could hear rolling down far below me. Sometimes I came to a bare face of rock, up which I had to work my passage by means of the crevices and projecting ledges. It was useless to consider whether more formidable obstacles were still before me; my only chance was to go ahead, for if I had attempted to go down again, I should have found the descent rather too easy, and probably have broken my neck. It was dreadfully hot, and I was carrying my blankets slung over my shoulder, which, catching on trees and rocks, impeded my progress considerably; and though I was in pretty good condition for this sort of work, I had several times to get astride of a tree and take a spell.

At last, after a great deal of scrambling and climbing, my shins barked, my clothes nearly torn off my back, and my eyes half scratched out by the bushes, completely blown, and suffocated with the heat, I arrived at a place where I considered that I had got over the worst of it, as the ascent seemed to become a little more practicable. I was dying of thirst, and would have given a very long price for a drink of water; but the nearest water I expected to find was at a spring about five miles off, which I had passed in the morning. I could not help thinking what a delightful thing a quart pot of Bass’s pale ale would be, with a lump of ice in it; then I thought I would prefer a sherry cobbler, but I could not drink that fast enough; and then it seemed that a quart pot of ale would not be enough, that I would like to drink it out of a bucket. I quaffed in imagination gigantic goblets, one after another, of all sorts of delicious fluids, but none of them did me any good; and so I concluded that I had better think of something else till I reached the spring.

The rest of the mountain was not very hard travelling, and when once on the top of the range, I struck off in a direction which I thought would hit my old trail. I very soon got on to it, and after half an hour’s walking, I found the spring, where, as the Missourians say, “you may just bet your life,” I did drink.

It was about three o’clock, and I thought my safest plan was to return to the house I had started from in the morning, about six miles off, where, on my arrival, I learned that I had been misled by an Indian trail, and had travelled far out of the right direction. It was too late to make a fresh start that day, so I was doomed to pass another night here, and in the evening amused myself by sketching a train of pack-mules which had camped near the house.

I was just setting off in the morning, when two or three men, who had seen me sketching the evening before, came and asked me to take their likenesses for them. As they were very anxious about it, I made them sit down, and very soon polished them all off, improving so much on their personal appearance, that they evidently had no idea before that they were such good-looking fellows, and expressed themselves highly satisfied. As I was finishing the last one, an old fellow came in, who, seeing what was up, was seized with a violent desire to have his sweet countenance “pictur’d off” likewise, to send to his wife. It struck me that his wife must be a woman of singular taste if she ever wished to see his face again. He was just about the ugliest man I ever saw in my life. He wanted to comb his hair, poor fellow, and make himself look as presentable as possible; but I had no mercy on him, and, making him sit down as he was, I did my best to represent him about fifty per cent uglier than he really was. He was in great distress that he had not better clothes on for the occasion; so, to make up for caricaturing his features, I improved his costume, and gave him a very spicy black coat, black satin waistcoat, and very stiff stand-up collars. The fidelity of the likeness he never doubted, being so lost in admiration of his dress, that he seemed to think the face a matter of minor importance altogether.

I did not take many portraits in the mines; but, from what little experience I had, I invariably found that men of a lower class wanted to be shown in the ordinary costume of the nineteenth century—that is to say, in a coat, waistcoat, white shirt and neckcloth; while gentlemen miners were anxious to appear in character, in the most ragged style of California dress.

I went to Foster’s Bar after dinner with a man who was on his way there from Downieville, a town about thirty miles up the river. He told me that he and his partner had gone there a few months before, and had worked together for some time, when they separated, his partner joining a company which had averaged a hundred dollars a-day to each man ever since, while my friend had bought a share in another company, and, after working hard for six weeks, had not, as he expressed it, made enough to pay for his grub. Such is mining.

Foster’s Bar is a place about half a mile long, with the appearance of having slipped down off the face of the mountains, and thus formed a flat along the side of the river. The village or camp consisted of a few huts and cabins; and all around on the rocks, wherever it suited their convenience, were parties of miners camping out.

I could only see one place which purported to be a hotel, and to it I went. It was a large canvass-house, the front part of which was the bar-room, and behind it the dining-room. Alongside of the former an addition had been made as a sleeping-apartment, and here, when I felt inclined to turn in about ten o’clock, I was accommodated with a cot.

A gambling-room in San Francisco is a tolerably quiet place, where little else is heard but good music or the chinking of dollars, and where, if it were necessary, one could sleep comfortably enough. But a gambling-room in a small camp in the mines is a very different affair. There not so much ceremony is observed, and the company are rather more apt to devote themselves to the social enjoyment of drinking, quarrelling, and kicking up a row generally. In this instance the uproar beat all my previous experience, and sleeping was out of the question. The bar-room, I found, was also the gambling-room of the diggings. Four or five monte tables were in full blast, and the room was crowded with all the rowdies of the place. As the night wore on and the brandy began to tell, they seemed to be having a general fight, and I half expected to see some of them pitched through the canvass into the sleeping apartment; or perhaps pistols might be used, in which case I should have had as good a chance of being shot as any one else.

I managed to drop off asleep during a lull in the storm; but when I awoke at daylight, it was only then finally subsiding. I found that some man had broken a monte bank, and, on the strength of his good fortune, had been treating the company to an unlimited supply of brandy all night, which fully accounted for the row; but I did not fancy such sleeping-quarters, and made up my mind to camp out while I remained in those diggings.

I selected a very pretty spot at the foot of a ravine, in which was a stream of water; and, buying a tin coffee-pot and some tea and sugar, I was completely set up. There was a baker and butcher in the camp, so I had very little trouble in my cooking arrangements, having merely to boil my pot, and then raking down the fire with my foot, lay a steak on the embers.

The weather was very hot and dry; but it was getting late in the season, and I generally awoke in the morning like the flowers the Irishman sings about to Molly Bawn, “with their rosy faces wet with dew.” At least as far as the dew is concerned—for a rosy face is a thing not seen in the mines, the usual colour of men’s faces being a good standard leathery hue, a very little lighter than that of a penny-piece—all rosiness of cheek, where it ever existed, is driven out by the hot sun and dry atmosphere.

I found camping out a very pleasant way of living. With my blankets I made a first-rate awning during the day; and if I could not boast of a bed of roses, I at least had one of dahlias, for numbers of large flowers of that species grew in great profusion all round my camp, and these I was so luxurious as to pluck and strew thickly on the spot where I intended to sleep.

I remained here for about three weeks; and for two or three mornings before I left, I woke finding my blankets quite white with frost. On such occasions I was more active than usual in lighting my fire and getting my coffee-pot under a full head of steam; but as soon as ever the sun was up, the frost was immediately dispelled, and half an hour after sunrise one was glad to get into the shade.

On leaving Foster’s Bar, I went to a place a few miles up the river, where some miners were at work, who had asked me to visit their camp. The river here flowed through a narrow rocky gorge (a sort of place which, in California, is called by its Spanish name a “cañon”), and was flumed for a distance of nearly half a mile; that is to say, it was carried past in an aqueduct supported on uprights, being raised from its natural bed, which was thus laid bare and rendered capable of being worked. It was late when I arrived, and the party of miners had just stopped work for the day. Some were taking off their wet boots, and washing their faces in the river; others were lighting their pipes or cutting up tobacco; and the rest were collected round the fire, making bets as to the quantity of gold which was being dried in an old frying-pan. This was the result of their day’s work, and weighed four or five pounds. The banks of the river were so rough and precipitous that, for want of any level space on which to camp, they had been obliged to raise a platform of stone and gravel. On this stood a tent about twenty feet long, which was strewed inside with blankets, boots, hats, old newspapers, and such articles. In front of the tent was a long rough table, on each side of which a young pine-tree, with two or three legs stuck into it here and there, did duty as a bench, some of the bark having been chipped off the top side, by way of making it an easy seat. At the foot of the rocks, close to the table, an immense fire was blazing, presided over by a darky, who was busy preparing supper; for where so many men messed together, it was economy to have a professional cook, though his wages were frequently higher than those paid to a miner. A quarter of beef hung from the limb of a tree; and stowed away, in beautiful confusion, among the nooks and crannies of the rocks, were sacks, casks, and boxes containing various articles of provisions.

Within a few feet of us, and above the level of the camp, the river rushed past in its wooden bed, spinning round, as it went, a large water-wheel, by means of which a constant stream of water was pumped up from the diggings and carried off in the flume. The company consisted of eight members. They were all New Yorkers, and had been brought up to professional and mercantile pursuits. The rest of the party were their hired men, who, however, were upon a perfect social equality with their employers.

When it was time to turn in, I was shown a space on the gravelly floor of the tent, about six feet by one and a half, where I might stretch out and dream that I dwelt in marble halls. About a dozen men slept in the tent, the others lying outside on the rocks.

My intention was from this camp to go on to Downieville, about forty miles up the river; but I had first to return to Foster’s Bar for some drawing-paper which I had ordered from Sacramento.

On my way I passed a most romantic little bridge, formed by two pine trees, which had been felled so as to span a deep and thickly wooded ravine. I sat down among the bushes a short distance off the trail, and was making a sketch of the place, when presently a man came along riding on a mule. I was quite aware that I should have a very suspicious appearance to a passer-by, and I was in hopes he might not observe me. I had no object in speaking to him, especially as, had I hailed him from my ambuscade, he might have been apt to reply with his revolver.

Just as he was passing, however, and when all I could see of him was his head and shoulders, his eyes wandered over the bank at the side of the trail, and

he caught sight of my head looking down on him over the tops of the bushes. He gave a start, as I expected he would, and addressed me with “Good morning, Colonel.” My promotion to the rank of colonel I most probably owed to the fact that he thought it advisable, under the circumstances, to be as conciliatory as possible until he knew my intentions. I saw a good deal of the same man afterwards, but he never again raised me above the rank of captain. I replied to his salutation, and he then asked the very natural question, “What are ye a-doin of over there?” I gave an account of myself, which he did not seem to think altogether satisfactory, but, after making some remark on the weather, he passed on.

About an hour later, when I arrived at Foster’s Bar, I found him sitting in a store with some half-dozen miners, to whom he had been recounting how he had seen a man concealed in the bushes off the trail. He expressed himself as having been “awful skeered,” and said that he had his pistol out, and was thinking of shooting all the time he was speaking to me. I told him I had mine lying by my side, and would have returned the compliment, when, by way of showing me what sort of a chance I should have stood, he stuck up a card on a tree at about twenty paces, and put six balls into it one after another out of his heavy navy revolver. I confessed I could not beat such shooting as that, and was very well pleased that he had not taken it into his head to make a target of me.

It seemed that he was an express carrier, and as his partner had been robbed but a few days before, very near the place of our meeting, his suspicions of me were not at all unreasonable.

I was very desirous of seeing a friend of mine who was mining at a place about twenty miles off, so, having hired a mule for the journey, I set off early next morning, intending to return the same night. My way was through a part of the country very little travelled, and the trails were consequently very indistinct, but I got full directions how to find my way, where to leave the main trail, which side to take at a place where the trail forked, where I should cross another, and so on; also where I should pass an old cabin, a forked pine-tree, and other objects, by which I might know that I was on the right road.

The man who gave me my directions said he hardly expected that I would be able to keep the right trail. I had some doubts about it myself, but I was determined to try at all events, and for seven or eight miles I got along very well, knowing I was right by the landmarks which I had passed.

The numbers of Indian trails, however, branching off to right and left were very confusing, being not a bit less indistinct than the trail I was endeavouring to follow. At last I felt certain that I had gone wrong, but as I fancied I was not going far out of the right direction, I kept on, and shortly afterwards came upon a small camp called Toole’s Diggings. I was told here that I had only come five miles out of my way; and after dining and getting some fresh directions, I set out again. Having ridden for nearly an hour, I came to an Indian camp, situated by the side of a small stream in a very dense part of the forest. At first I could see no one but some children amusing themselves with a swing hung from a branch of an oak tree, but as I was going past, a number of Indians came running out from their brush huts. They were friendly Indians, and had picked up a few words of English from loafing about the camps of the miners. The usual style of salutation to them is, “How d’ye do?” to which they reply in the same words; but if you repeat the question, as if you really wanted to know the state of their health, they invariably answer “fuss-rate.” Accordingly, having ascertained that they were all “fuss-rate,” I mixed up a little broken English, some mongrel Spanish, and a word or two of Indian, and made inquiries as to my way. In much the same sort of language they directed me how to go; and though they seemed disposed to prolong the conversation, I very quickly bade them adieu and moved on, not being at all partial to such company.

I followed the dim trail up hill and down dale for several hours without seeing a human being, and I felt quite satisfied that I was again off my road, but I pushed on in hopes of reaching some sort of habitation before dark. At last, in travelling up the side of a small creek, just as the sun was taking leave of us, I caught sight of a log-cabin among the pine-trees. It seemed to have been quite recently built, so I was pretty sure it was inhabited, and on riding up I found two men in it, from whom I learned that I was still five miles from my destination. They recommended me to stop the night with them, as it was nearly dark, and the trail was hard enough to find by daylight.

I saw no help for it; so, after staking out the mule where he could pick some green stuff, I joined my hosts, who were just sitting down to supper. It was not a very elaborate affair—nothing but tea and ham. They apologised for the meagreness of the turn-out, and especially for the want of bread, saying that they had been away for a couple of days, and on their return found that the Indians had taken the opportunity to steal all their flour.

We made the most of what we had, however, and putting a huge log on the fire, we lighted our pipes, and my entertainers, producing two violins, favoured me with a selection of Nigger melodies.

They had been mining lately at the place which I had been trying to reach all day, and in the course of conversation I found that I had had all my trouble for nothing, as the man whom I was in search of had a few days before left the diggings for San Francisco.

The next morning I returned to Foster’s Bar, my friends putting me on a much shorter trail than the roundabout road I had travelled the day before.

CHAPTER XIII.

The scenery was very beautiful. The pine-trees were not too numerous to interrupt the view, and the ridge was occasionally so narrow that, on either hand, looking over the tops of the trees down below, there was a vast panorama of pine-clad mountains, on one side gradually diminishing, till, at a distance of forty or fifty miles, they merged imperceptibly into the plains, which, with the hazy heated atmosphere upon them, looked like a calm ocean; while, on the other side, one mountain-ridge appeared above another, more barren as they became more lofty, till at last they faded away into a few hardly discernible snowy peaks. It was a pleasing change when sometimes a break occurred in the ridge, and the trail dipped into a dark shady hollow, and, winding its way through the dense mass of underwood, crossed a little stream of water, and, leading up the opposite bank, gained once more the open ground on the summit. I travelled about fifteen miles without meeting any one, and arrived at Slate Range House, a solitary cabin, so called from being situated at the spot where one begins to descend to Slate Range, a place where the banks of the river are composed of huge masses of slate. I dined here, and shortly afterwards overtook a little Englishman, whose English accent sounded very refreshing. He had been in the country since before the existence of gold was discovered; but from his own account he did not seem to have profited much in his gold-hunting exploits from having had such a good start.

I stopped all night at Oak Valley, a small camp, consisting of three cabins and a hotel, and in the morning I resumed my journey in company with two miners, who had a pack-horse loaded with their mining-tools, their pots and pans, their blankets, and all the rest of it. The horse, however, did not seem to approve of the arrangement, for, after having gone about a couple of miles, he wheeled round, and set off back again through the woods as hard as he could split, the pots and pans banging against his ribs, and making a fearful clatter. My companions started in chase of their goods and chattels; but thinking the pair of them quite a match for the old horse, and not caring how the race turned out, I left them to settle it among themselves, and went on my way.

I met several trains of pack-mules, the jingling of the bell on the bell-horse, and the shouts of the Mexican muleteers, generally announcing their approach before they come in sight. They were returning to Marysville; and as they have no cargo to bring down from the mines, the mules were jogging along very cheerily: when loaded, they relieve their feelings by grunting and groaning at every step.

The next place I came to was a ranch called the “Nigger Tent.” It was originally a small tent, kept by an enterprising Nigger for the accommodation of travellers; but as his fortunes prospered, he had built a very comfortable cabin, which, however, retained the name of the old establishment.

In the afternoon I arrived at the place where the trail leaves the summit of the range, and commences to wind down the steep face of the mountain to Downieville. There was a ranch and a spring of deliciously cold water, which was very acceptable, as the last ten miles of my journey had been up hill nearly all the way, and the heat was intense, but not a drop of water was to be found on the road.

I overtook two or three miners on their way to Downieville, and went on in company with them. As we descended, we got an occasional view between the pine-trees of the little town far down below us, so completely surrounded by mountains that it seemed to be at the bottom of an immense hole in the ground.

I had heard so much of Downieville, that on reaching the foot of the mountain I was rather disappointed at first to find it apparently so small a place, but I very soon discovered that there was a great deal compressed into a small compass. There was only one street in the town, which was three or four hundred yards long; indeed, the mountain at whose base it stood was so steep that there was not room for more than one street between it and the river.

This was the depot, however, for the supplies of a very large mining population. All the miners within eight or ten miles depended on Downieville for their provisions, and the street was consequently always a scene of bustle and activity, being crowded with trains of pack-mules and their Mexican drivers.

The houses were nearly all of wood, many of them well-finished two-storey houses, with columns and verandahs in front. The most prominent places in the town were of course the gambling saloons, fitted up in the usual style of showy extravagance, with the exception of the mirrors; for as everything had to be brought seventy or eighty miles over the mountains on the backs of mules, very large mirrors were a luxury hardly attainable; an extra number of smaller ones, however, made up for the deficiency. There were several very good hotels, and two or three French restaurants; the other houses in the town were nearly all stores, the mining population living in tents and cabins, all up and down the river.

I put up at a French house, which was kept in very good style by a pretty little Frenchwoman, and had quite the air of being a civilised place. I was accommodated with half of a bedroom, in which there was hardly room to turn round between the two beds; but I was so accustomed to rolling myself in my blankets and sleeping on the ground, or on the rocks, or at best being stowed away on a shelf with twenty or thirty other men in a large room, that it seemed to me most luxurious quarters. The salle à manger was underneath me, and as the floor was very thin, I had the full benefit of all the conversation of those who indulged in late suppers, whilst next door was a ten-pin alley, in which they were banging away at the pins all night long; but such trifles did not much disturb my slumbers.

There was no lack of public amusements in the town. The same company which I had heard in Nevada were performing in a very comfortable little theatre—not a very highly decorated house, but laid out in the orthodox fashion, with boxes, pit, and gallery—and a company of American glee-singers, who had been concertising with great success in the various mining towns, were giving concerts in a large room devoted to such purposes. Their selection of songs was of a decidedly national character, and a lady, one of their party, had won the hearts of all the miners by singing very sweetly a number of old familiar ballads, which touched the feelings of the expatriated gold-hunters.

I was present at their concert one night, when, at the close of the performance, a rough old miner stood up on his seat in the middle of the room, and after a few preliminary coughs, delivered himself of a very elaborate speech, in which, on behalf of the miners of Downieville, he begged to express to the lady their great admiration of her vocal talents, and in token thereof begged her acceptance of a purse containing 500 dollars’ worth of gold specimens. Compliments of this sort, which the Scotch would call “wiselike,” and which the fair cantatrice no doubt valued as highly as showers of the most exquisite bouquets, had been paid to her in most of the towns she had visited in the mines. Some enthusiastic miners had even thrown specimens to her on the stage.

Downieville is situated at what is called the Forks of the Yuba River, and the town itself was frequently spoken of as “The Forks” in that part of the country. It may be necessary to explain that, in talking of the forks of a river in California, one is always supposed to be going up the river; the forks are its tributaries. The main rivers received their names, which they still retain, from the Spaniards and Indians; and the first gold-hunting pioneers, in exploring a river, when they came to a tributary, called one branch the north, and the other the south fork. When one of these again received a tributary, it either continued to be the north or south fork, or became the middle fork, as the case might be.

If a river was never to have more than two tributaries, this would do very well, but the river above Downieville kept on forking about every half-a-mile, and the branches were all named on the same principle, so that there were half-a-dozen north, middle, and south forks.

The diggings at Downieville were very extensive; for many miles above it on each fork there were numbers of miners working in the bed and the banks of the river. The mountains are very precipitous, and the only communication was by a narrow trail which had been trodden into the hillside, and crossed from one side of the river to the other, as either happened to be more practicable; sometimes following the rocky bed of the river itself, and occasionally rising over high steep bluffs, where it required a steady head and a sure foot to get along in safety.

One spot in particular was enough to try the nerve of any one but a chamois-hunter. It was a high bluff, almost perpendicular, round which the river made a sweep, and the only possible way of passing it was by a trail about eighty feet above the river. The trail hardly deserved the name—it was merely a succession of footsteps, sometimes a few inches of a projecting rock, or a root. Two men could pass each other with difficulty, and only at certain places, by holding on to each other; and from the trail to the river all was clear and smooth, not a tree or a bush to save one if he happened to miss his footing. At one spot there was an indentation in the precipice, where the rock was quite perpendicular: to get over this difficulty, a young pine-tree was laid across by way of a bridge; it was only four or five inches in diameter, and lay nearly a couple of feet outside of the rock. In passing, one only rested one foot on the tree, and with the other took advantage of the inequalities in the face of the rock; while looking down to see where to put one’s feet, one saw far below, between his outstretched legs, the most uninviting jagged rocks, strongly suggestive of sudden death.

The miners had given this place the name of Cape Horn. Those who were camped on the river above it, were so used to it that they passed along with a hop, step, and a jump, though carrying a week’s provisions on their backs, but a great many men had fallen over, and been instantly killed on the rocks below.

The last victim, at the time I was there, was a Frenchman, who very foolishly set out to return to his camp from Downieville after dark, having to pass this place on the way. He had taken the precaution to provide himself with a candle and some matches to light him round the Cape, but he was found dead on the rocks the next morning.

CHAPTER XIV.