nger languidly in the washed-out gulches or sleepy village
like harried bees around the ruins of their hive. "We have no industry
left _now_," they told me, "and no men; everybody and everything
hereabouts has gone to decay. We are only bummers--out of the game, a
thin scatterin' of poor, dilapidated cusses, compared with what we used
to be in the grand old gold-days. We were giants then, and you can look
around here and see our tracks." But although these lingering pioneers
are perhaps more exhausted than the mines, and about as dead as the dead
rivers, they are yet a rare and interesting set of men, with much gold
mixed with the rough, rocky gravel of their characters; and they
manifest a breeding and intelligence little looked for in such
surroundings as theirs. As the heavy, long-continued grinding of the
glaciers brought out the features of the Sierra, so the intense
experiences of the gold period have brought out the features of these
old miners, forming a richness and variety of character little known as
yet. The sketches of Bret Harte, Hayes, and Miller have not exhausted
this field by any means. It is interesting to note the extremes possible
in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and
childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago,
would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now play in the
streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting after the
exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form of dotage.
I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly discussing the
quantity of tail required for a boy's kite; and one graybeard undertook
the sport of flying it, volunteering the information that he was a boy,
"always was a boy, and d--n a man who was not a boy inside, however
ancient outside!" Mines, morals, politics, the immortality of the soul,
etc., were discussed beneath shade-trees and in saloons, the time for
each being governed apparently by the temperature. Contact with Nature,
and the habits of observation acquired in gold-seeking, had made them
all, to some extent, collectors, and, like wood-rats, they had gathered
all kinds of odd specimens into their cabins, and now required me to
examine them. They were themselves the oddest and most interesting
specimens. One of them offered to show me around the old diggings,
giving me fair warning before setting out that I might not like him,
"because," said he, "people say I'm