saw we were determined on starting, loaded us with provisions for several days.

Captain Sutter is a well-set, stout, and healthylooking man, of about forty-five years of age, with a large moustache-a remembrance of former times. He was the first of all in the mines, in fact, who had power and provisions-two extraordinary things at that time--and through his proximity to the first gold mine, only had to pick up the lumps as they fell. He owned, at the same time, immense tracts of land, and part of them, as Sacramento city, in the most advantageous positions; but being too good-hearted, he was misused by most of those he had been kind to, and he even commenced having his troubles with the land; the American squatters settling on it, whenever they thought fit, and caring little or nothing, whether they were in the right or not, so long as they kept the land. The state of things was far too unsettled as yet, and the transition from a wild to a civilized condition, far too rapid and unnatural.

During our stay on the farm, the younger Meyer was taken ill, or at least attacked by weakness; he fainted right down in the yard, looking for the rest of the day ghastly pale, but recovered sufficiently to enable us to continue our journey, though rather slowly, that same morning.

I really do not know how we should have got

on during the next day, for it proved all we could do as it was to proceed a few miles with our sick man-and he became worse during the night— had it not been for a horse and cart which overtook us that night at our camping place, and belonged to two of our countrymen, who offered to take the sick man in their cart as far as they went, nearly to the little town of Vernon, on the Sacramento River. Next morning we helped him on board, and were able then to travel as fast as we pleased along the high and dry beaten path of the river bank. That night the rayotas favoured us with a a perfect serenade; they howled round our camp in a most doleful manner, sometimes within a stone's throw of us somewhere in the bushes, and their screaming and yelling during a part of the night rendered it impossible to do more than shut our eyes. The noise lasted nearly the whole night, but the little things are not dangerous, and will never attack a man even when collected in large bodies.

The land down here was a perfect plain, with timber only on the edge of the river, forming a small wooded bottom crossed by many slews. A great part of this plain was now, after the heavy rains, under water, though I do not doubt that some well-dug ditches would easily have drained it off; but here and there the thickly-growing toolas, a kind

of thick, fleshy rush, showed real swamps, and as most of these had been burnt off during the summer, it gave the country a really doleful and black aspect. The slews we had to cross were fortunately not deep, for we had dry weather, at least the last two days, and these creeks fall just as fast as they rise.

About dinner time we reached Vernon, the older Meyer also growing ill, or at least so weak, that he could not walk any longer. Very probably the sight of a whale-boat, just about to start from here for Sacramento, did much to make him think so, but it being at the same time desirable to have somebody with our sick sailor, we took passage for the two-with nearly the last money we had--the paasage being five dollars for each of them, a distance they could run down with the current in about three or four hours.

That night we camped for the first time again on the Sacramento River, and next day, Monday, the 26th of November, reached Sacramento city, where we found our sick man taken to a boardinghouse, stretched out on his blanket at least under the dry roof of a tent.

And here we were, after a winter's excursion to the mines, not washers but washed, as that old American had prophesied only too truly, but we were not in a mood to be sorry about any

thing: we had got back in safety and if we had no money, here we were in a place where we could get plenty of work, as we thought. We could sleep at least dry, the clouds threatening another shower for to-night, and even this we considered a perfect luxury; and a luxury it really was, for our clothes had had in fact no time during the last four weeks to dry thoroughly on our bodies, and such a life would certainly be sufficient to shake the strongest constitution, besides being as unpleasant as any one could desire.

BUT what a difference there was between the Sacramento of four weeks before and now. When we came here before the rainy season, how busy, how lively the streets were--five or six schooners at one time discharging cargo on the banks; waggons pressing around it to get their loads and start for the mines. People in the streets even ran sometimes at full speed, not to lose their valuable time; merchants meeting at the corners exchanged a few hurried words, and on they went again to attend to their business. Where a man showed himself idling, he was sure of having twenty inquiries, one after the other, “If he did not want work, and what he could do?" There was even a premium paid to those who could get good workmen for the different schooners or other places of business. Each man you spoke with had his own plans, and generally wanted hands to help him in accomplishing them.