departs on horseback
from Indian Bar. Her regrets upon leaving the mountains. "Feeble,
half-dying invalid not recognizable in your now perfectly healthy
sister."

_The_ Illustrations

1. GOLD-WASHING IN WICKER BASKETS--AMERICANS AND HISPANO-CALIFORNIANS
WITH INDIANS _Frontispiece_

This is a composite engraving, a very interesting feature of which is
the Indians and their wicker baskets, the latter going out of use when
metal pans were obtainable, which also displaced wooden bowls and
homely makeshifts. This feature is resketched from a rare old print in
the possession of the Van Ness family of San Francisco. The huts are
specimens of ramadas, popular with the Spanish-speaking miners, and
frequently mentioned by Shirley.

2. SUTTER'S MILL, COLOMA, WHERE GOLD WAS ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVERED
IN JANUARY, 1848 FACES PAGE 42

This fine engraving follows closely, in all essential details, that in
the Voyages en Californie et dans l'Oregon, par M. de Saint-Amant,
Envoye du Gouvernement Francais, en 1851-1852 (Paris, 1854). The
engravings in that volume, although poorly printed on a cheap grade of
book-paper, are noted for their accuracy, and are interesting as
showing the methods etc. of the miners while Shirley was writing her
Letters. The tail-race, in the foreground, is where James Wilson
Marshall and Peter L. Wimmer first saw the nuggets, but Marshall was
the first to pick up a specimen. Much has been written of Marshall; the
Wimmers were of the Western pioneer type.

3. GROUND-SLUICING FACES PAGE 86

This spirited engraving is resketched, in essentials, from a woodcut in
Henry De Groot's Recollections of California Mining Life (1884), also
in his Gold Mines and Mining in California (1885). Ground-sluicing is
done in winter, when water is abundant and the ground soft, the
pay-dirt being thrown into a channel made for the purpose, and down
which the water rushes. The gold settles on the bed-rock, and is
collected later, when the water-run has subsided.

4. PAN, CRADLE OR ROCKER, LONG-TOM, SLUICE-WASHING--DRIFTING, WINDLASS
AND SHAFT FACES PAGE 132

The varied and animated scene depicted in this plate is resketched from
De Groot's Gold Mines and Mining in California. (See note to plate 3.)
In the foreground, on the left, a miner washes dirt in a pan.