little, untraveled Yankee woman! but to prove to you that, having
fathomed the depths of shafts, and threaded the mazes of coyote-holes,
I intend to astonish the weak nerves of stay-at-homes, if I ever return
to New England, by talking learnedly upon such subjects, as one having
authority.

These particular "claims" consist of three galleries lying about eighty
feet beneath the summit of the hill, and have already been drifted from
one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet into its side. They are about
five feet in height, slightly arched, the sides and roof, formed of
rugged rocks, dripping with moisture, as if sweating beneath the great
weight above. Lights are placed at regular distances along these
galleries to assist the miners in their work, and boards laid on the
wet ground to make a convenient path for the wheelbarrows which convey
the dirt and sand to the river for the purpose of washing it. Wooden
beams are placed here and there to lessen the danger of caving in, but
I must confess that in spite of this precaution I was at first haunted
with a horrible feeling of insecurity. As I became reassured I repeated
loudly those glorious lines of Mrs. Hemans commencing with--

For the strength of the hills we bless thee,
O God, our fathers' God!

And a strange echo the gray rocks sent back, as if the mine-demons,
those ugly gnomes which German legends tell us work forever in the
bowels of the earth, were shouting my words in mockery from the dim
depths beyond.

These claims have paid remarkably well, and if they hold out as they
have commenced, the owners will gather a small fortune from their
summer's work.

There is nothing which impresses me more strangely than the fluming
operations. The idea of a mighty river being taken up in a wooden
trough, turned from the old channel along which it has foamed for
centuries perhaps, its bed excavated many feet in depth, and itself
restored to its old home in the fall,--these things strike me as almost
a blasphemy against nature, And then the idea of men succeeding in such
a work here in the mountains, with machinery and tools of the poorest
description, to say nothing of the unskilled workmen,--doctors,
lawyers, ministers, scholars, gentlemen, farmers, etc.

When we arrived at the little oak-opening described in a former letter,
we were, of course, in duty bound to take a draft from the spring,
which its admirers declare is the best water in all California. When