ere to work. It was quite a large mining place. The excitement
there every day was when the "dummy" went into the river. It was a
diving armor that had been used in the gulf of Lower California to go
down in the deep waters to hunt for pearls, and had been bought by a
party of five, each putting in $800, making $4,000, expecting to make
their fortunes by getting into the deep water of the gold rivers. (As I
have shown before, the torrents and force of the currents had prevented
any gold from ever lodging there.) Every day at such an hour, it was
announced that the "dummy" was a going in the river. The other miners
quit their work to see it, and the proprietors of the "dummy" always
treated the crowd in the most lavish manner. Its credit was good for any
store bills. Its always treating the crowd had made it popular, and
nobody would trade with the storekeeper who would not trust it, so it
was death to the prosperity of the storekeeper, whether he trusted it or
not. They never got any gold while there through "dummy," and when he
left to go further down the river to try another place, the main
storekeeper there lost $800 by trusting it, which broke him. These
stores were tents, to supply immediate wants of the miners. I never
heard of "dummy" afterward. I have no doubt he operated on all the store
tents until he came to grief like all evil-doers.

The productiveness of the gold rivers had not diminished any that I
could perceive. I talked to a man who had been off a little ways to
prospect in another place. I asked him what luck? He said, there was
nothing there. I said, was there no gold? He said; yes, there was some,
but of no value. He said a man could make $10 a day, and who was a going
to waste their time on that. My visit over, I returned to San Francisco.
My friend R.'s brewery was not completed. I was informed he had been
borrowing money from a Jew at twenty per cent a month. It was no use for
me to back him any more, however valuable it might be, if completed, and
I had no doubt there was a fortune in it, but neither he nor I had the
capital to do it.

I had some other financial entangling matters, and I was afraid if I
kept on with them I might get broke, and the only way I saw of getting
out with them was to announce that I was going to leave, and going down
to Relago, Central America.

There was an English steamer advertised to sail for that port and
Panama. I thought I would go for sixty days and then retu