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California - Four Months among the Gold-Finders, being the Diary of an Expedition from San Francisco to the Gold Districts by [pseud.] J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
page 41 of 143 (28%)
A supper with an appetite.


The morning broke brilliantly, and the first thing we discovered on
rising was, that two of the horses had broken their fastenings during
the night, and strayed. As we could not afford to lose the animals,
José and Horry were despatched lo look after them, and they grumbled
not a little at being thus sent off from the scene of golden operations;
but Bradley, producing a rifle, swore that he would shoot them both
unless they obeyed orders; so, after a little altercation, away they
went.

Breakfast was soon despatched, and the question as to the day's
operations asked. Don Luis was the only one who, on the score of its
being Sunday, would not go to the diggings. He had no objection to
amuse himself on Sunday, but he would not work. To get over the
difficulty, we agreed to go upon the principle of every man keeping his
own findings, our bonds of unity as a party to extend merely to mutual
protection and defence. Leaving Don Luis, then, smoking in the tent,
we proceeded to work, and found that the great majority of the
gold-finders appeared to entertain our opinions, or at all events to
imitate our practice, as to labouring on the Sunday. I had now leisure
more particularly to remark the nature of the soil in which the gold
was found. The dust is found amid the shingle actually below water, but
the most convenient way of proceeding is to take the soil from that
portion of the bed which has been overflowed but is now dry. It is
principally of a gravelly nature, full of small stones, composed, as
far as I could make out, of a species of jasper and milky quality,
mingled with fragments of slate and splinters of basalt. The general
opinion is, that the gold has been washed down from the hills.
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