it
came to my turn, I complacently touched the rusty tin cup, though I
never _did_ care much for water, in the abstract, _as_ water. Though I
think it very useful to make coffee, tea, chocolate, and other good
drinks, I could never detect any other flavor in it than that of
_cold_, and have often wondered whether there was any truth in the
remark of a character in some play, that, ever since the world was
drowned in it, it had tasted of sinners!

When we arrived at what may be called, in reference to the Bar, the
country-seat of Don Juan, we were ushered into the parlor, two sides of
which opened upon the garden and the grand old mountains which rise
behind it, while the other two sides and the roof were woven with fresh
willow boughs, crisply green, and looking as if the dew had scarcely
yet dried from the polished leaves.

After opening some cans of peaches, and cutting up some watermelons
gathered from the garden, our friends went in to, or rather _out_ to,
the kitchen fire (two or three stones are generally the extent of this
useful apartment in the mines) to assist in preparing the
breakfast--and _such_ a breakfast! If "Tadger could do it when it
chose," so can we miners. We had--but what did we _not_ have? There
were oysters which, I am sure, could not have been nicer had they just
slid from their shells on the shore at Amboy; salmon, in color like the
red, red gold; venison with a fragrant spicy gusto, as if it had been
fed on cedar-buds; beef cooked in the Spanish fashion,--that is, strung
onto a skewer and roasted on the coals,--than which I never tasted
better; preserved chicken; and almost every possible vegetable bringing
up the rear. Then, for drinkables, we had tea, coffee, and chocolate;
champagne, claret, and porter, with stronger spirits _for_ the stronger
spirits. We lacked but one thing. That was ice; which we forgot to
bring from the Bar. As, only four miles from our cabin, the snow never
melts, that is a luxury we are never without, and, indeed, so
excessively warm has been the season, that without it, and the milk
which has been brought us daily from a rancho five miles from here, we
should have suffered. I must say that even though we had no ice, our
mountain picnic, with its attendant dandies in their blue and red
flannel shirts, was the most charming affair of the kind that I ever
attended.

On our return we called to see Yank's cub, which is fast rising into
young grizzly-bearhood. It is a