isolated camp that big lump diggings had been found to the northeast on Scott River, and the Texans were on the wing. My partner took the big lump fever and went along. I associated myself with three others, entire strangers, and we took possession of Texas Bar, threw a slight breakwater of clay along the river's edge to stop the water from spreading over the bar, and then cutting a drain to the bed-rock from the lower end, we had comparatively dry ground and went to washing. We worked early and late, sometimes not ceasing till starlight, for all our provisions except flour were exhausted, and our only reliance was on the Indians, who supplied us with salmon in exchange for trinkets. This kind of living could not last, and we strained every nerve to get as much gold from the claim as possible. The average spoil of a day was rather more than a hundred dollars to the man. About the middle of September a conference of the few miners left on the river was held at the Forks, and as the diggings were too good to abandon it was agreed to despatch six men and twenty mules to Trinidad on the coast for supplies to last the winter. The train was made up and took the trail at once. Haste was necessary, as even flour, the last link to civilization, was nearly gone.

Meanwhile the mining went on. Few in numbers, and without provisions, our position could easily become critical. Our relief party came back suddenly; it could not go through. The Indians on the Klamath were hostile. Oregon men had shot some Indian dogs down the river, and the young bucks had retaliated by killing a horse. Thus began the so-called Klamath war, that cost the State, and ultimately the nation, a large sum of money. The miners were without delay in council. My party of four had scant rations for four days. At four o'clock we abandoned claims, picks, and shovels and commenced a forced march for the Trinity. I shall not detail the experiences of that hurried tramp on foot over the roughest of mountains. It is enough to say that one day four of us subsisted on a ground squirrel and a woodpecker, and the last day on copious draughts of water when fortunate enough to find it. And when at last we struck the Trinity it was only to be disappointed. The river was deserted; the miners had gone to winter quarters in the "dry diggings" at Weaverville. Wet, weary, and disgusted, with a dreary prospect for supper, we crawled up the bank and dropped down at a fallen tree to make a fire for the night. The mules were relieved of their packs and left to graze. They were too nearly dead to stray. A smoke was seen a few hundred yards away. I went to reconnoiter. A Mexican pack-train

was encamping. Meeting two muleteers gathering faggots for the fire, I inquired what they had to sell. "Ninguna cosa" ("Not a thing") was the answer. Going on to the camp-fire I inquired if they would sell me something to eat. The reply in Spanish was that they only sold by the cargo. Then I observed, sitting by the fire and smoking a cigarette, a Mexican whom I recognized. Stepping up to him I asked in Spanish if he did not know me. He said no. But, Don Fernando, do you not remember the man who bought an iron-gray mule of you on the Calaveras last year r?"

"Ah, si, señor," and he grasped my hand. I explained the situation in as few words as possible. Instantly, snapping his thumb and finger, he called out to two men :

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Mira, hombres! Ven aca! Dos quintales de harina, carne seca, panoche, y todas cosas por los Americanos; anda!” (“Attention, men! Come here! Two quintals of flour, dried beef, raw sugar, and everything for the Americans; travel!")

"How much for it all?" I inquired.

"Ninguno centavo; gracias a Dios, señor" ("Not a cent; thanks to God, sir "), he replied with emphasis, and the hombres carried an abundant supply of substantials to our camp. That tall and swarthy Don in brown sugarloaf hat, his head thrust through a hole in the middle of a blanket that served for a cloak, standing in his spurs, the rowels of which were four inches in diameter, is not a figure to be readily forgotten.

There was an incredible amount of cooking that night. Slapjacks and sugar, ropes of dried beef broiled on the coals, coffee made of an extract-everything was welcome. It was a merry night. I never knew before the intoxication of eating. We cooked, ate, lay back upon the blankets, told stories, returned to the cooking again, and so alternated until sleep overtook us in the warm glow of the fire.

When, in the afternoon, we made our entry into Weaverville, a scattered village of about four hundred miners' cabins, Don Fernando found himself in trouble. He could find but one trader with money in the whole town and he was a type of the monopolists who have since become the curse of California. He offered the Mexican about half-price for his cargo, and there was no other place to which to carry the goods. It was now our turn. It was suggested that we help Don Fernando out. He had been offered $1200. We told him that we did not want his goods, as we did not know what we were going to do, but we would make the trader pay more for them.

"Tell him we offer you $1500." In a short time we learned that $1600 had been bid. "Tell him we will give $1800."

Again came a bid of $1900. We offered $2000, and soon were confronted by an angry Missourian, who "was n't goin' to have any durned Yankee git in 'tween him and a greaser in a trade." So he jumped our bid $200. Don Fernando in a whisper said it was bastante (enough), and the Missourian was the buyer. We had paid off some of our obligations to Don Fernando and had made a little stir in the new diggings.

The autumn of 1850 was unlike that of 1849. The miners in the dry ravines had thrown up on the banks large quantities of pay-dirt from the beds, and were continuing their work hoping to be able to wash. But little rain fell till the following March. The miners scattered again along the Trinity to pay expenses, and I with others departed for Sacramento.

The early summer of 1851 found me in the mines at Nevada City, in the richest gold-producing section of California, or perhaps of the world. The two mining towns of Nevada and Grass Valley are but four miles apart, and that either of these is more populous than any other town in the Sierra Nevada is evidence of the great wealth of the region. The miners of Nevada County originated or adopted most of the improved methods for facilitating washing and saving gold. The long tom came into use early as the successor of the rocker. It was a trough of boards ten or twelve feet long, two feet wide on the bottom, with sides eight or ten inches high, and was furnished with a perforated sheet-iron plate three feet long, which had the end part curved upward to stop the stones and gravel, while the water, sand, and small gravel dropped through into a riffle-box below, set on an incline to allow the lighter matter to pass off with the water. The long tom was put on an easy grade and supplied with a constant stream of flowing water, enough to drive and wash all the earth thrown into it down upon the perforated screen. Two or more men shoveled the earth into the tom, and one threw out the stones from the screen with a fork or squarepointed shovel, when they were sufficiently washed. As the claim was worked back, the long tom was extended by means of sluice boxes until a dozen or more miners were shoveling dirt into them on both sides. Afterward it was found that by putting riffles into the sluice boxes the long tom could be dispensed with, and miles of sluices of all sizes were seen, some supplied with a few inches of running water, miners' measure, while others bore torrents of the muddy fluid. The sluice requiring a rapid flow of water was set on a grade of say four inches to twelve feet in length. It is plain that in a short distance the pay dirt would have to be lifted higher than the miner's head. A descending bed-rock added to the difficulty,

and sometimes the earth was thrown by one set of miners up on a platform to be shoveled by another set into the sluice. Numerous small boulders were kept in the sluice, around and over which the water boiled and leaped, dissolving the clay. When the gold was fine and difficult to save, quicksilver was poured into the sluices to catch it, the riffles arresting the amalgam as it moved down.

More and more, as experience was gained, water was made to do the labor of men. Instead of carrying the dirt in buckets to the river to be washed, the river was carried to the dirt. Ditches were dug at great expense and water from them was sold at a dollar an inch for ten hours' use, and often it was resold in its muddy state one, two, and three times at decreasing rates. The water belonged to the ditch owner as long as it could be used. The fact may here be noted that one of the first ditches constructed was that from Rock Creek to the hill diggings about Nevada City. It was nine miles long, and cost about ten thousand dollars, and so rich were the diggings and so active the demand for water that the enterprise paid for itself in six weeks.

It was early discovered that the river gorges in which the first mining was done-those deep channels from the high Sierra-cut across ancient river-beds filled with auriferous gravel, the bottoms of which were hundreds of feet above the beds of the modern streams. From these deposits of far-back ages much of the gold found on the later river bars had come, and these ancient storehouses, exposed by the wear and tear of centuries, led to another kind of mining. Great canals from high up the rivers were carried with fine engineering skill and large outlays of labor and money, without the aid of foreign capital but by the pluck, purses, and brawny arms of miners along frightful precipices, across cañons in lofty flumes and through tunnels to the ancient filled river channels. Here the water was carried down the banks in strong iron tubes or hose, and large quantities were compressed through nozzles and thrown with terrific force against the banks of auriferous gravel. Ditches dug in the earth on a moderate grade, or sluices of lumber, caught the muddy debris and separated the gold, leaving it on the bottom. A steady throw of this water against a bank, directed with a miner's judgment, was kept up for days and even months without cessation night or day. This was called hydraulic mining, and it was introduced into California in 1852. To facilitate the work of the monitor or water-cannon that shot the compressed stream, tunnels were run into the banks where they were hard and tons of powder were exploded in them at a single blast, pulverizing the deposit to the ex

tent of acres and often to a depth of more than a hundred feet.

In the great mining region of California, which has given to the world more gold than any other area of like extent on the globe, all this is now over. The fiat of courts has gone forth that no debris of any kind can be allowed to be dumped into any stream or its affluent to the danger of property below or to the impeding of navigable waters. Thus has been destroyed the market value of hundreds of miles of canals, great artificial lakes to store the waters of winter, and vast deposits of auriferous gravel in a word, a hundred million dollars in mining property. Thousands of miners who have exhausted their energies and the best part of their lives in the mines have, with their families, been reduced to poverty and distress.

The old miner, full of cherished memories of that wonderful past, on revisiting the scenes of his early labors sees no winding line of miners by the river marge, with their rattling rockers or long toms; no smoke from camp-fire or chimney arises from the depths of gorges; cabins are gone; no laughter nor cheery voice comes up from the cañons; no ounce a day is dried by the supper fire. Gone are most of the oaks and pines from the mountain-sides; the beds of the rivers are covered deep with the accumulated debris of years, over which the water, once clear and cold from the melting snows of the Sierra, goes sluggishly, laden with mud, in serpentine windings from bank to bank. On the tableland above, in the chasms made by hydraulic power in the pleiocene drift, the hollow columns of iron that once compressed the water stand rusting away; the monitors lie dismantled like artillery in a captured fortress. All is silence and desolation where once was the roar of water and the noise of busy life.

The same red and brown soil is beneath your feet, the same alternation of ridges and gorges is here, the same skies unflecked by clouds from May to November are overhead; the same pure air is left to breathe in spite of courts and monopolies; a considerable portion of the soil is cultivated; scattered here and there over the mountain slopes are homes surrounded with flowers and fruits- but the early miner sees it all with the sad belief that the glory is gone.

The early miner has never been truly painted. I protest against the flippant style and eccentric rhetoric of those writers who have made him a terror, or who, seizing upon a sporadic case of extreme oddity, some drunken, brawling wretch, have given a caricature to the world as the typical miner. The so-called literature that treats of the golden era is too extravagant in this direction. In all my personal experience in mining-camps from 1849 to 1854 there was not a case of bloodshed, robbery, theft, or actual violence. I doubt if a more orderly society was ever known. How could it be otherwise? The pioneers were young, ardent, uncorrupted, most of them well educated and from the best families in the East. The early miner was ambitious, energetic, and enterprising. No undertaking was too great to daunt him. The pluck and resources exhibited by him in attempting mighty projects with nothing but his courage and his brawny arms to carry them out was phenomenal. His generosity was profuse and his sympathy active, knowing no distinction of race. His sentiment that justice is sacred was never dulled. His services were at command to settle differences peaceably, or with pistol in hand to right a grievous wrong to a stranger. His capacity for self-government never has been surpassed. Of a glorious epoch, he was of a glorious race.

HEY were having a dance over in Beaver Cove, at the Woods'. All the young people of the settlement were there, and many from adjoining settlements. The main room of the cabin had been almost cleared of its meager furniture, and the pine-plank floor creaked under the tread of shuffling feet, while dust and lamp-smoke made the atmosphere thick and close. But little did the dancers care for that. Bill Eldridge sat by the hearth playing his fiddle with tireless energy, while a boy added the thumping of two straws to the much-tried fiddle-strings. A party of shy girls huddled in a corner of the room, and the bashful boys hung about the door, and talked loudly. "Hey, there; git yer partners," Bill cried to them tauntingly from time to time.

Armindy Hudgins and Elisha Cole were preeminently the leaders in the party. They danced together again and again; they sat on the bench in the dooryard; they walked to the spring for a fresh draught of water. Armindy was the coquette of the settlement. In beauty, in spirit, and in daring, no other girl in Beaver Cove could compare with her. She could plow all day and dance half the night without losing her peachy bloom, and it was generally admitted that she could take her choice of the marriageable young men of the settlement. But she laughed at all of them by turns, until her lovers dwindled down to two, Elisha Cole and Ephraim Hurd. They were both desperately in earnest, and their rivalry had almost broken their lifelong friendship. She favored first one and then the other, but to-night she showed such decided preference for Cole that Hurd felt hatred filling his heart. He did not dance at all, but hung about the door, or walked moodily up and down the yard, savage with jealousy. Armindy cast many mocking glances at him, but seemed to feel no pity for his suffering.

In the middle of the evening, while they were yet fresh, she and Elisha danced the "hoe-down." All the. others crowded back against the walls, leaving the middle of the room clear, and she and her partner took their places. They were the best dancers in the settlement, and Beaver Cove could boast of some as good as any in all north Georgia. The music

struck up, and the two young people began slowly to shuffle their feet, advancing towards each other, then retreating. They moved at first without enthusiasm, gravely and coolly. The music quickened, and their steps with it. Now together, now separate, up and down the room, face to face, advancing, receding, always in that sliding, shuffling step. The girl's face flushed; her lithe figure, clothed in the most primitively fashioned blue print gown, swayed and curved in a thousand graceful movements; her feet, shod in clumsy brogans, moved so swiftly one could scarcely follow them; her yellow hair slipped from its fastenings and fell about her neck and shoulders; her bosom heaved and palpitated. Panting and breathless, Elisha dropped into a seat, his defeat greeted with jeering laughter by the crowd, while Armindy kept the floor. It was a wild, half-savage dance, and my pen refuses to describe it. Nowhere except in the mountains of north Georgia have I ever witnessed such a strange performance.

Armindy would not stop until half-blind and reeling with exhaustion she darted towards the door amid the applause of the crowd. Elisha Cole started up to follow her, but Ephraim Hurd reached her side first, and went out into the yard with her.

"You 've nearly killed yourself," he said, half-roughly, half-tenderly.

"No such a thing," she retorted.
"You 're out o' breath now."
"I want some water."

"Better sit down on this bench and rest a minute first," he said, attempting to lead her to a seat placed under an apple tree; but she broke away from him, running swiftly towards the spring bubbling up from a thicket of laurel just beyond the dooryard fence.

"I ain't no baby, Eph'um Hurd," she cried, gathering up her hair and winding it about her head again, the breeze fanning her flushed cheeks.

The moon was clear and full over Brandreth's Peak, and Ephraim looked up at it, then down on the girl, softened, etherealized by its magic beams.

"What makes you act so, Armindy?" She broke a spray of laurel bloom and thrust it through the coil of her hair.

"I don't know what you 're talkin' about, Eph'um; but I do know I 'm waitin' for you to give me that gourd o' water."