ous pisco is made;
and the blacksmiths' and wheelwrights' shops, with more work before
them than the few mechanics left will be able to get through in a
month. Yet all these men talked of starting off to the diggings in a
day or two. The Captain told me he had only been able to keep them by
greatly increased pay, and by an almost unlimited allowance of pisco
and whisky.

It was not easy to pick our way through the crowds of strange people
who were moving backwards and forwards in every direction. Carts were
passing to and fro; groups of Indians squatting on their haunches were
chattering together, and displaying to one another the flaring red and
yellow handkerchiefs, the scarlet blankets, and muskets of the most
worthless Brummagem make, for which they had been exchanging their bits
of gold, while their squaws looked on with the most perfect
indifference. I saw one chief, who had gone for thirty years with no
other covering than a rag to hide his nakedness, endeavouring to thrust
his legs into a pair of sailor's canvas trousers with very indifferent
success.

Inside the stores the bustle and noise were oven greater. Some
half-a-dozen sharp-visaged Yankees, in straw hats and loose frocks,
were driving hard bargains for dollars with the crowds of customers who
were continually pouring in to barter a portion of their stock of gold
for coffee and tobacco, breadstuff, brandy, and bowie-knives: of spades
and mattocks there were none to be had. In one corner, at a railed-off
desk, a quick-eyed old man was busily engaged, with weights and scales,
setting his own value on the lumps of golden ore or the bags of dust
which were being handed over to him, and in exchange for which he told
out the estimated quantity of dollars. Those dollars quickly returned
to the original deposit, in payment for goods bought at the other end
of the store.

Among the clouds of smoke puffed forth by some score of pipes and as
many cigarettos, there were to be seen, mingled together, Indians of
various degrees of civilisation, and corresponding styles of dress,
varying from the solitary cloth kilt to the cotton shirts and jackets
and trousers of Russia duck; with groups of trappers from as far up as
Oregon, clad in coats of buffalo hide, and with faces and hands so
brown and wrinkled that one would take their skins to be as tough as
the buffalo's, and almost as indifferent to a lump of lead. "Captain,"
said one of these gentry, shaking a bag of g