with him to town and saw him start off with a fair
load on his back, and watched him as he toiled up the steep mountain
trail for about two miles, when he went out of sight.

The rest of us kept on mining. Our luck was not very good, but we
persevered, for there was nothing to be gained by fainting by the way. I
went into an old abandoned shaft about ten feet deep and found the
bottom filled with a big quartz boulder, and as I had been a lead miner
in Wisconsin, I began drifting, and soon found bed rock, when I picked
up a piece of pure gold that weighed four ounces. This was what I called
a pretty big find, and not exactly what I called gold dust. It was quite
a surprise to me, for the gravel on the bed rock was only about three or
four inches thick.

We kept on drifting for some time, sometimes making good wages, and on
the whole so satisfactory that we concluded to stay. We now located some
claims back in the flat where the ground would be thirty feet deep, and
would have to be drifted. These we managed to hold until winter, and in
the meantime we worked along the river and could make something all the
time.

We put in a flume between two falls on the Middle Fork, but made only
wages, and I got my arm nearly broken, and had to work with one hand for
nearly a month.

One afternoon I went crevicing up the river, and found a crevice at the
water's edge about half an inch wide, and the next day we worked it out
getting forty ounces, and many of the pieces were about an inch long and
as large around as a pipe-stem.

Winter was now near by, and we set to work to build a cabin and lay in a
stock of grub, which cost quite a good deal, for the self-raising flour
which we bought was worth twenty cents a pound, and all kinds of hog
meat fifty cents, with other supplies in proportion. Our new claims now
paid very well. Snow came down to the depth of about four feet around
our cabin, but as our work was under ground, we had a comfortable place
all winter.

In the spring McCloud and I went to Sacramento and sold our chunks of
gold (it was all very coarse) to Page, Bacon & Co. who were themselves
surprised at the coarseness of the whole lot. When our savings were
weighed up we found we had made half an ounce a day, clear of all
expenses, for the entire year.

We now took a little run down to San Francisco, also to Santa Clara
where we staid a night or two with Mr. McCloud's friend, Mr. Otterson,
and then went back to our c