men, ready to yield up their last breath at any moment, who left home
prematurely, and now humbly acknowledge their error." His own happy
constitution and buoyant health led him to look on the best side of
things, and to take the sunniest possible view of the condition of the
new country he was exploring, but occasionally he reveals incidentally
the reverse of the picture. Here is a sketch of a sick miner at
Sacramento City, which is enough to make even California "gold become
dim, and the fine gold changed."

"He was sitting alone on a stone beside the water, with his
bare feet purple with cold on the cold, wet sand. He was
wrapped from head to foot in a coarse blanket, which shook
with the violence of his chill, as if his limbs were about to
drop in pieces. He seemed unconscious of all that was passing;
his long, matted hair hung over his wasted face; his eyes
glared steadily forward with an expression so utterly hopeless
and wild, that I shuddered at seeing it. This was but one of a
number of cases, equally sad and distressing."

The hardy and healthy portion of the emigrants, under the stimulating
excitements of the novel circumstances of their situation, seemed to
revel in the exuberance of animal spirits. Each seemed to have adopted
the rule of the wise man: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, that do
with all thy might." They speculated, dug, or gambled, with an almost
reckless energy. All old forms of courtesy had given place to hearty,
blunt good fellowship in their social intercourse. They reminded our
traveler of the Jarls and Norse sea-kings, and in the noisy and almost
fierce revelry of these bearded gold-hunters around their mountain
tires, he seemed to see the brave and jovial Berseckers of the middle
ages.