le friend of other days, will
always be a vivid memory with me.

At the end of two months we had never "struck" a pocket. We had panned
up and down the hillsides till they looked plowed like a field; we could
have put in a crop of grain, then, but there would have been no way to
get it to market. We got many good "prospects," but when the gold gave
out in the pan and we dug down, hoping and longing, we found only
emptiness--the pocket that should have been there was as barren as our
own.--At last we shouldered our pans and shovels and struck out over the
hills to try new localities. We prospected around Angel's Camp, in
Calaveras county, during three weeks, but had no success. Then we
wandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night,
for the weather was mild, but still we remained as centless as the last
rose of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in pathetic harmony with
the circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves. In accordance with
the custom of the country, our door had always stood open and our board
welcome to tramping miners--they drifted along nearly every day, dumped
their paust shovels by the threshold and took "pot luck" with us--and now
on our own tramp we never found cold hospitality.

Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give the
reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo
Semite--but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him?
I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and take
his blessing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues else.

Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities, purely,
and may be a little obscure to the general reader. In "placer diggings"
the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggings
it is concentrated in one little spot; in "quartz" the gold is in a
solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of some
other kind of stone--and this is the most laborious and expensive of all
the different kinds of mining. "Prospecting" is hunting for a "placer";
"indications" are signs of its presence; "panning out" refers to the
washing process by which the grains of gold are separated from the dirt;
a "prospect" is what one finds in the first panful of dirt--and its value
determines whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and whether it is
worth while to tarry there or seek further.