example.

By this time the captain and Jones had left the tent, and Ned Sinton was
buckling on his belt.

"Now, then, get up, and don't be lazy," cried the latter, as he stepped
out, dragging all the blankets off the trio as he took his departure, an
act which disclosed the fact that trousers and flannel shirts were the
sleeping garments of Maxton and Tom, and that Larry had gone to bed in
his boots.

The three sprang up immediately, and, after performing their toilets,
sallied forth to the banks of the stream, where the whole population of
the place was already hard at work.

Having worked out their claims, which proved to be pretty good, they
commenced new diggings close beside the old ones, but these turned out
complete failures, excepting that selected by Captain Bunting, which was
as rich as the first. The gold deposits were in many places very
irregular in their distribution, and it frequently happened that one man
took out thirty or forty dollars a day from his claim, while another
man, working within a few yards of him, was, to use a mining phrase,
unable "to raise the colour;" that is, to find gold enough to repay his
labour.

This uncertainty disgusted many of the impatient gold-hunters, and not a
few returned home, saying that the finding of gold in California was a
mere lottery, who, if they had exercised a little patience and
observation, would soon have come to know the localities in which gold
was most likely to be found. There is no doubt whatever, that the whole
country is impregnated more or less with the precious material. The
quartz veins in the mountains are full of it; and although the largest
quantities are usually obtained in the beds of streams and on their
banks, gold is to be found, in smaller quantities, even on the tops of
the hills.

Hitherto the miners at Little Creek had found the diggings on the banks
of the stream sufficiently remunerative; but the discovery of several
lumps of gold in its bed, induced many of them to search for it in the
shallow water, and they were successful. One old sea-captain was met by
Bill Jones with a nugget the size of a goose-egg in each hand, and
another man found a single lump of almost pure gold that weighed
fourteen pounds. These discoveries induced Ned Sinton to think of
adopting a plan which had been in his thoughts for some time past; so
one day he took up his rifle, intending to wander up the valley, for the
double purpose of thinking ou