w the middle of November, and the rainy season, which extends
over six months of the year, was in full play. Language is scarcely
capable of conveying, to those who have not seen it, an adequate idea of
how it rained at this period of the year. It did not pour--there were
no drops--it roared a cataract of never-ending ramrods, as thick as your
finger, straight down from the black sky right through to the very
vitals of the earth. It struck the tents like shot, and spirted through
the tightest canvas in the form of Scotch-mist. It swept down cabin
chimneys, and put out the fires; it roared through every crevice, and
rent and seam of the hills in mad cataracts, and swelled up the Little
Creek into a mighty surging river.

All work was arrested; men sat in their tents on mud-heaps that melted
from below them, or lay on logs that well-nigh floated away with them;
but there was not so much grumbling as one might have expected. It was
too tremendous to be merely annoying. It was sublimely ridiculous,--so
men grinned, and bore it.

But there were many poor miners there, alas! who could not regard that
season in a light manner. There were dozens of young and middle-aged
men whose constitutions, although good, perhaps, were not robust, and
who ought never to have ventured to seek their fortunes in the
gold-regions. Men who might have lived their full time, and have served
their day and generation usefully in the civilised regions of the world,
but who, despite the advice of friends, probably, and certainly despite
the warnings of experienced travellers and authors, rushed eagerly to
California to find, not a fortune, but a grave. Dysentery, scurvy in
its worst and most loathsome type, ague, rheumatism, sciatica,
consumption, and other diseases, were now rife at the diggings, cutting
down many a youthful plant, and blasting many a golden dream.

Doctors, too, became surprisingly numerous, but these disciples of
Esculapius failed to effect cures, and as their diplomas, when sought
for, were not forthcoming, they were ultimately banished _en masse_ by
the indignant miners. One or two old hunters and trappers turned out in
the end to be the most useful doctors, and effected a good many cures
with the simple remedies they had become acquainted with among the
red-men.

What rendered things worse was that provisions became scarce, and,
therefore, enormously dear. No fresh vegetables of any kind were to be
had. Salt, gre