prospected around Angel’s Camp, in Calaveras
county, during three weeks, but had no success.
Then we wandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping
under the trees at night, for the weather was mild,
but still we remained as centless as the last rose
of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in
pathetic harmony with the circumstances, since we
were so poor ourselves. In accordance with the
custom of the country, our door had always stood open
and our board welcome to tramping miners—they
drifted along nearly every day, dumped their paust
shovels by the threshold and took “pot luck”
with us—and now on our own tramp we never
found cold hospitality.
Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and
now I could give the reader a vivid description of
the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo Semite—but
what has this reader done to me that I should persecute
him? I will deliver him into the hands of less
conscientious tourists and take his blessing.
Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues
else.
Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining
technicalities, purely, and may be a little obscure
to the general reader. In “placer diggings”
the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt;
in “pocket” diggings it is concentrated
in one little spot; in “quartz” the gold
is in a solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between
distinct walls of some other kind of stone—and
this is the most laborious and expensive of all the
different kinds of mining. “Prospecting”
is hunting for a “placer”; “indications”
are signs of its presence; “panning out”
refers to the washing process by which the grains
of gold are separated from the dirt; a “prospect”
is what one finds in the first panful of dirt—and
its value determines whether it is a good or a bad
prospect, and whether it is worth while to tarry there
or seek further.
CHAPTER LXII.
After a three months’ absence, I found myself
in San Francisco again, without a cent. When
my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become too
mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and
there were no vacancies on the evening journals,)
I was created San Francisco correspondent of the Enterprise,
and at the end of five months I was out of debt, but
my interest in my work was gone; for my correspondence
being a daily one, without rest or respite, I got
unspeakably tired of it. I wanted another change.
The vagabond instinct was strong upon me. Fortune
favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one.
It was to go down to the Sandwich Islands and write
some letters for the Sacramento Union, an excellent
journal and liberal with employees.
Copyrights
Roughing It from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
