rican
Valley, that nearly all the fluming companies had failed. Contrary to
every expectation, on arriving at the bed-rock no gold made its
appearance. But a short history of the rise, progress, and final fate
of one of these associations, given me in writing by its own secretary,
conveys a pretty correct idea of the result of the majority of the
remainder.

"The thirteen men, of which the American Fluming Company consisted,
commenced getting out timber in February. On the 5th of July they
began to lay the flume. A thousand dollars were paid for lumber
which they were compelled to buy. They built a dam six feet high
and three hundred feet in length, upon which thirty men labored
nine days and a half. The cost of said dam was estimated at two
thousand dollars. This company left off working on the
twenty-fourth day of September, having taken out, in _all_,
gold-dust to the amount of forty-one dollars and seventy cents!
Their lumber and tools, sold at auction, brought about two hundred
dollars."

A very small amount of arithmetical knowledge will enable one to figure
up what the American Fluming Company made by _their_ summer's work.
This result was by no means a singular one. Nearly every person on the
river received the same stepmother's treatment from Dame Nature in this
her mountain workshop.

Of course the whole world (_our_ world) was, to use a phrase much in
vogue here, "dead broke." The shopkeepers, restaurants, and
gambling-houses, with an amiable confidingness peculiar to such people,
had trusted the miners to that degree that they themselves were in the
same moneyless condition. Such a batch of woeful faces was never seen
before, not the least elongated of which was F.'s, to whom nearly all
the companies owed large sums.

Of course with the failure of the golden harvest Othello's occupation
was gone. The mass of the unfortunates laid down the shovel and the
hoe, and left the river in crowds. It is said that there are not twenty
men remaining on Indian Bar, although two months ago you could count
them up by hundreds.

We were to have departed on the 5th of November, and my toilet-table
and wash-hand-stand, duly packed for that occasion, their occupation
_also_ gone, have remained ever since in the humble position of mere
trunks. To be sure, the expressman called for us at the appointed time,
but, unfortunately, F. had not returned from the American Valley, where