and a gum tickler, drinks of Yankee concoction, and having paid for our beds, received talleys, denoting their numbers.

A little before midnight I set out on a voyage of discovery towards my apportioned bed. After ascending a ladder-like flight of stairs, I found myself emerging, head first, into a sort of hayloft, faintly lighted by a sickly-looking candle, that sputtered in an apology for a stick, fastened against the wall, and which light, so painfully contrasting with the glitter and the glare below, revealed to the eye about forty stretchers, that lay in unpicturesque lines right, left, and crosswise, leaving a tangled passage about a foot wide for the purpose of navigating from the trap-door to the respective beds. Snoring, loud and furious, proclaimed it a dormitory. I was perplexed to find number 23, but after considerable groping, shin-striking, and miscellaneous stumbling, I achieved that success. Then, however, to my great discomfiture, I found my appointed stretcher minus both blankets and pillow; in other words, bare of everything but a scanty mattrass; sheets, apparently, not being there in vogue. The

reason of this I soon perceived; the weather being cold, those who had preceded me had helped themselves to additional blankets at the expense of those who were to follow, so in selfdefence I was compelled to do likewise, and, moreover, thought myself very lucky in being able to do so. Thus it was with but little compunction that I stripped a stretcher a few yards higher up in the room than my own, and in addition helped myself to an extra blanket from another. After that, I followed the example of my snoring chamber-mates, and with my revolver under my pillow, sank to slumber as happily and contentedly as I had ever done in regions of elegance and luxury. At about three in the morning, however, I awoke, feeling very chilly, a natural consequence, indeed, of sleeping uncovered. It was dark, and I could hear nothing, save the snoring of those around me. I felt that my only alternative was to dress myself; accordingly I adopted it without delay, and after that dozed till morning. course I comprehended that the cause of this midnight interference was the scarcity of blankets amongst those who came last, and who

Of

determined not to be done, pulled them off others, and so established themselves, as their saying went. It was prompt retribution; but Americans are the people, and California is the place for it.

On the Monday morning following, I accompanied my "chawing," twanging, but nevertheless good-hearted companion to his "hole" and tent at the neighbouring mines, for he had two mates, and they had been working while he was away, banking the "dust," and doing "a little on his own hook," at San Francisco.

The

He was now ready to rejoin them. history of this man was, that he had been a performer in a circus, a workman in a pegged boot manufactory, a clerk in a store, a barman. at an oyster saloon, and several other things. respectively in the United States, before setting out for California. This he had done together with six others across the Rocky Mountains, an arduous and perilous undertaking, four years antecedent to this period of my meeting with him. Four only of their number reached San Francisco, three having died through the hardships of the road. These four set to work

digging at "Hell Gate," and their labours were attended with such success, that in eight months they amassed sixty thousand dollars. With

this they returned together to San Francisco, where one of their number was shot in a gambling saloon, and the rest were, to use popular phraseology, left without a cent, having gambled and extravagantly wasted away their wealth. After this, the three separated; one went down to Sacramento, a city in which during half the year one-half of the population good humouredly supports the other half, by reason of the latter being out of luck,—and was never heard of afterwards; another, who remained in San Francisco, was lynched, which means that he was hanged for an attempt at highway robbery; while the third, my companion, joined a party for the Sonora Mines, and commenced digging again.

After ten months' hard work his share came to four thousand dollars, and with this sum he revisited San Francisco and "started" a store. Unfortunately he was burnt out "flat"—flat as a d-d pancake, to use his own expression, alike with all San Francisco three months afterwards.

On this he resolved to return to gold

digging, and with this view again joined a party for the same mines, and to this party he still belonged.

We arrived at the tent; two lanky, blackhaired, long-bearded men welcomed my companion, and guessed he was serene, and guessed the "stranger," meaning myself, was a Britisher, and hoped I'd "liquor," which I assented to, and so on-all warmth and inquiry. These men had been digging with but indifferent success for sixteen months, that is, they had only paid expenses and put by a thousand dollars a-piece.

They had often stood and worked for days together, as a matter of course, up to the knees in water at the bottom of a hole, and endured wet beds, a windy tent, and rheumatism half the winter round. But the excitement of their free and independent occupation sustained them through all this, and they dug on from day to day with all the undiminished ardour and speculative perseverance of their hopeful nature, for nil desperandum is, and ever ought to be, the motto of the unsuccessful and unsatisfied gold-digger—if he but work long enough, he is