y ravine and hillside was thickly covered with pines. It may be that
a tree of exceptional size caught the eye of the first explorer, that he
camped under it, and named the place in its honour; or, may be, some
fallen giant lay in the bottom and hindered the work of the first
prospectors. At any rate, Pine-tree Gulch it was, and the name was as
good as any other. The pine-trees were gone now. Cut up for firing, or
for the erection of huts, or the construction of sluices, but the
hillside was ragged with their stumps.

The principal camp was at the mouth of the Gulch, where the little
stream, which scarce afforded water sufficient for the cradles in the
dry season, but which was a rushing torrent in winter, joined the Yuba.
The best ground was at the junction of the streams, and lay, indeed, in
the Yuba valley rather than in the Gulch. At first most gold had been
found higher up, but there was here comparatively little depth down to
the bed-rock, and as the ground became exhausted the miners moved down
towards the mouth of the Gulch. They were doing well as a whole, how
well no one knew, for miners are chary of giving information as to what
they are making; still, it was certain they were doing well, for the
bars were doing a roaring trade, and the store-keepers never refused
credit--a proof in itself that the prospects were good.

The flat at the mouth of the Gulch was a busy scene, every foot was good
paying stuff, for in the eddy, where the torrents in winter rushed down
into the Yuba, the gold had settled down and lay thick among the gravel.
But most of the parties were sinking, and it was a long way down to the
bed-rock; for the hills on both sides sloped steeply, and the Yuba must
here at one time have rushed through a narrow gorge, until, in some
wild freak, it brought down millions of tons of gravel, and resumed its
course seventy feet above its former level.

A quarter of a mile higher up a ledge of rock ran across the valley, and
over it in the old time the Yuba had poured in a cascade seventy feet
deep into the ravine. But the rock now was level with the gravel, only
showing its jagged points here and there above it. This ledge had been
invaluable to the diggers: without it they could only have sunk their
shafts with the greatest difficulty, for the gravel would have been full
of water, and even with the greatest pains in puddling and timber-work
the pumps would scarcely have sufficed to keep it down as it ro