ve commenced writing, one of the Doctor's
patients has brought me a bunch of wild roses. Oh, how vividly, at the
sight of them, started up before me those wooded valleys of the
Connecticut, with their wondrous depths of foliage, which, for a few
weeks in midsummer, are perhaps unsurpassed in beauty by any in the
world. I have arranged the dear _home_ blossoms with a handful of
flowers which were given to me this morning by an unknown Spaniard.
They are shaped like an anemone, of the opaque whiteness of the
magnolia, with a large spot of glittering blackness at the bottom of
each petal. But enough of our mountain earth-stars. It would take me
all day to describe their infinite variety.

Nothing of importance has happened since I last wrote, except that the
Kanaka wife of a man living at The Junction has made him the happy
father of a son and heir. They say that she is quite a pretty little
woman, only fifteen years old, and walked all the way from Sacramento
to this place.

A few evenings ago a Spaniard was stabbed by an American. It seems that
the presumptuous foreigner had the impertinence to ask very humbly and
meekly that most noble representative of the Stars and Stripes if the
latter would pay him a few dollars which he had owed him for some time.
His high mightiness the Yankee was not going to put up with any such
impertinence, and the poor Spaniard received for answer several inches
of cold steel in his breast, which inflicted a very dangerous wound.
Nothing was done and very little was said about this atrocious affair.

At Rich Bar they have passed a set of resolutions for the guidance of
the inhabitants during the summer, one of which is to the effect that
no foreigner shall work in the mines on that bar. This has caused
nearly all the Spaniards to immigrate upon Indian Bar, and several new
houses for the sale of liquor, etc., are building by these people. It
seems to me that the above law is selfish, cruel, and narrow-minded in
the extreme.

When I came here the Humboldt was the only public house on the Bar. Now
there are the Oriental, Golden Gate, Don Juan, and four or five others,
the names of which I do not know. On Sundays the swearing, drinking,
gambling, and fighting which are carried on in some of these houses are
truly horrible.

It is extremely healthy here. With the exception of two or three men
who were drowned when the river was so high, I have not heard of a
death for months.

Nothing wort