nimation and bustle. Long teams of waggons, laden with stores,
rolled in almost hourly across the plains from San Francisco, while the
wharves at the river-side were surrounded by laden barges. Bands of
newly-arrived emigrants wandered through the streets, asking eager
questions of any one who had time enough to talk as to the best way of
getting to the diggings, and as to the camp which they had better select
for their first attempt. Dark-looking men, half Spaniard and half
Indian, went along on their little ponies, or rode at the head of a
string of laden animals, with an air of perfect indifference to the
bustle around them.

Sounds of shouting and singing came through the doors of some saloons,
in which many of the fortunate diggers were busily engaged in
dissipating their hard-earned gains. Men sunburnt almost to blackness,
in red shirts and canvas trousers, walked along the streets as if the
town and all in it belonged to them in virtue of the store of gold-dust
tied up in their waist-belts. In these, revolvers and bowie-knives were
stuck conspicuously, and the newly-arrived emigrants looked with awe and
envy at these men who had already reaped a harvest at the mines.

Shooting affrays were of frequent occurrence in the drinking saloons,
where at night gambling was invariably carried on, the diggers being as
reckless of their lives as of their money.

"About ten days of that place would be enough to ruin any man," Abe
said, as they walked at the head of their cavalcade from the town. "I
reckon as Sacramento is a sort of hell on arth, and guess there's more
wickedness goes on in that ere little town than in any other place its
own size on the face of creation. They tells me as San Francisco is
worse, but at any rate Sacramento is bad enough for me."

On the evening of the third day after leaving Sacramento they arrived at
the mining camp, and having delivered the stores they had brought up to
the trader, and received the amount agreed upon, they took their way to
the spot where they had pitched their camp.

"Well, lads, what luck?" Abe asked, as at the sound of their feet their
comrades came out to greet them.

"We have got about four ounces of dust," Dick said, "and our backs are
pretty nigh broken, and our hands that blistered we can hardly hold the
shovel. However, we have been better the last two days. I expect there
have been two or three hundred people arrived here since you left, and
they are all at wo