ned how to work it, and the proper machinery introduced, it
yielded large sums of bullion.

The miners had a queer way of calling every man by some nickname or
other instead of his true name, and no one seemed offended at it, but
answered to his new name as readily as to any.

It was nearly fall when we found we had worked our claims out, and there
were no new ones we could locate here, so we concluded to go prospecting
for a new locality. I bought a donkey in town of a Mr. Hawley, a
merchant, for which I paid sixty dollars, and gave the little fellow his
old master's name. We now had two animals, and we packed on them our
worldly goods, and started south up the mountain trail by way of the
city of six, where some half dozen men had located claims, but the
ground was dry and deep, so we went on.

We still went south, down toward the middle Yuba River and when about
half way down the mountain side came to a sort of level bench where some
miners were at work, but hardly any water could be had. They called this
Minnesota. We stayed here a day or two, but as there seemed to be no
possible further development of water, concluded to go on further.
Across the river we could see a little flat, very similar to the one we
were on, and a little prospecting seemed to have been done on the side
of the mountain. We had a terribly steep canon to cross, and a river
also, with no trail to follow, but our donkeys were as good climbers as
any of us, so we started down the mountain in the morning, and arrived
at the river about noon. Here we rested an hour or two and then began
climbing the brushy mountain side. The hill was very steep, and the sun
beat down on us with all his heat, so that with our hard labor and the
absence of any wind we found it a pretty hot place.

It was pretty risky traveling in some places, and we had to help the
donkeys to keep them from rolling down the hill, pack and all. It took
us four hours to make a mile and a half or two miles in that dense
brush, and we were nearly choked when we reached the little flat. Here
we found some water, but no one lived here. From here we could see a
large flat across a deep canon to the west, and made up our minds to try
to go to it. We went around the head of the canon, and worked through
the brush and fallen timber, reaching our objective point just as night
was coming on. This flat, like the one we had left, was quite level, and
contained, perhaps, nearly one hundred acres