information and courteous manners. The litigation which chiefly
occupied them and gave the largest remuneration related to mines and
mining claims. The enforcement of mortgages and collection of debts
was generally--by me, at least--entrusted to clerks, unless a contest
was made upon them.

There was one case which I recall with pleasure, because of the result
obtained in face of unconcealed bribery on the other side. The subject
of the suit was the right to a "placer" mine in Yuba River, at Park's
Bar. Its value may be estimated from the fact that within two or three
weeks after the decision of the case, the owners took from the mine
over ninety thousand dollars in gold dust. The suit was brought before
a justice of the peace, and was for an alleged forcible entry and
detainer, a form of action generally adopted at the time for the
recovery of mining claims, because the title to the lands in which
the mines were found was in the United States. It was prosecuted as
a purely possessory action. The constable whose duty it was to summon
the jurors had received the sum of two hundred dollars to summon
certain parties, named by the other side. This fact was established
beyond controversy by evidence placed in my hands. And whilst I was in
bed in one of the tents or canvas sheds at the Bar, which the people
occupied in the absence of more substantial buildings, I heard a
conversation in the adjoining room--I could not help hearing it, as
it was carried on without any attempt at concealment, and the room was
only separated from me by the canvas--between one of the jurors and
one of the opposite party, in which the juror assured the party that
it was "all right," and he need not worry as to the result of the
suit; his side would have the verdict; the jury were all that way.
On the next day, when the case was summed up, the saloon in which the
trial was had was crowded with spectators, most of whom were partisans