nducive to my health.

A short but steep ascent from Smith's Bar leads you to another bench,
as miners call it, almost as large as itself, which is covered with
trees and grass, and is a most lovely place. From here one has a
charming view of a tiny bar called Frenchman's. It is a most sunny
little spot, covered with the freshest greensward, and nestling
lovingly, like a petted darling, in the embracing curve of a
crescent-shaped hill opposite. It looks more like some sheltered nook
amid the blue mountains of New England than anything I have ever yet
seen in California. Formerly there was a deer-lick upon it, and I am
told that on every dewy morning or starlit evening you might see a herd
of pretty creatures gathering in antlered beauty about its margin. Now,
however, they are seldom met with, the advent of gold-hunting humanity
having driven them far up into the hills.

The man who keeps the store at which we stopped (a log cabin without
any floor) goes by the sobriquet of "Yank," and is quite a character in
his way. He used to be a peddler in the States, and is remarkable for
an intense ambition to be thought what the Yankees call "cute and
smart,"--an ambition which his true and good heart will never permit
him to achieve. He is a great friend of mine (I am always interested in
that bizarre mixture of shrewdness and simplicity of which he is a
distinguished specimen), and takes me largely into his confidence as to
the various ways he has of _doing_ green miners,--all the merest
delusion on his part, you understand, for he is the most honest of
God's creatures, and would not, I verily believe, cheat a man out of a
grain of golden sand to save his own harmless and inoffensive life. He
is popularly supposed to be smitten with the charms of the "Indiana
girl," but I confess I doubt it, for Yank himself informed me,
confidentially, that, "though a very superior and splendid woman, she
had no _polish_"!

He is an indefatigable "snapper-up of unconsidered trifles," and his
store is the most comical olla podrida of heterogeneous merchandise
that I ever saw. There is nothing you can ask for but what he
has,--from crowbars down to cambric-needles; from velveteen trousers up
to broadcloth coats of the jauntiest description. The _quality_ of his
goods, it must be confessed, is sometimes rather equivocal. His
collection of novels is by far the largest, the greasiest, and the
"yellowest-kivered" of any to be found on the river.