o my wondering and
unaccustomed eyes. Remember, I had never seen a mining district before,
and had just left San Francisco, amid whose flashy-looking shops and
showy houses the most of my time had been spent since my arrival in the
Golden State. Of course, to me, the _coup d'oeil_ of Rich Bar was
charmingly fresh and original. Imagine a tiny valley about eight
hundred yards in length, and perhaps thirty in width, (it was measured
for my especial information,) apparently hemmed in by lofty hills,
almost perpendicular, draperied to their very summits with beautiful
fir-trees, the blue-bosomed Plumas (or Feather River, I suppose I must
call it) undulating along their base,--and you have as good an idea as
I can give you of the _local_ of Barra Rica, as the Spaniards so
prettily term it.

In almost any of the numerous books written upon California, no doubt
you will be able to find a most scientific description of the origin of
these bars. I must acknowledge with shame that my ideas on the subject
are distressingly vague. I could never appreciate the poetry or the
humor of making one's wrists ache by knocking to pieces gloomy-looking
stones, or in dirtying one's fingers by analyzing soils, in a vain
attempt to fathom the osteology or anatomy of our beloved earth, though
my heart is thrillingly alive to the faintest shade of color and the
infinite variety of styles in which she delights to robe her
ever-changeful and ever-beautiful _surface_. In my unscientific mind,
the _formations_ are without form, and void; and you might as well talk
Chinese to me, as to embroider your conversation with the terms
"hornblende," "mica," "limestone," "slate," "granite," and "quartz" in
a hopeless attempt to enlighten me as to their merits. The dutiful
diligence with which I attended course after course of lectures on
geology, by America's greatest illustrator of that subject, arose
rather from my affectionate reverence for our beloved Dr. H., and the
fascinating charm which his glorious mind throws round every subject
which it condescends to illuminate, than to any interest in the dry
science itself. It is therefore with a most humiliating consciousness
of my geological deficiencies that I offer you the only explanation
which I have been able to obtain from those most learned in such
matters here. I gather from their remarks, that these bars are formed
by deposits of earth rolling down from the mountains, crowding the
river aside and occup