ver I went on
board, bound for Sacramento. Here it was also getting terrible wet and
muddy, and the rain kept pouring down. In the morning I worked my way up
J street and saw a six-mule team wading up the streets the driver on
foot, tramping through the sloppy mud, occasionally stepping in a hole
and falling his whole length in the mud. On the street where so much
trouble was met by the teamsters, a lot of idlers stood on the sidewalk,
and when a driver would fall and go nearly out of sight, they would,
like a set of loafers, laugh at him and blackguard him with much noise,
and as they were numerous they feared nothing.

Suddenly a miner, who had lately arrived from the mountains, raised his
room window in the second story of a house, put out one leg and then his
body, as far as he could, and having nothing on but his night clothes,
shouted to the noisy crowd below:--"Say can't you d----d farmers plow
now?" At this he dodged back quickly into his window as if he expected
something might be thrown at him. The rain continued, and the water rose
gradually till it began to run slowly through the streets, and all the
business stopped except gambling and drinking whisky, which were freely
carried on in the saloons day and night.

While here in Sacramento I was sufficiently prompted by curiosity to go
around to the place on J street where the Legislature was in session. I
stood sometime outside the enclosure listening to the members who were
in earnest debate over a question concerning the size of mining claims.
They wanted them uniform in size all over the state, but there was some
opposition, and the debate on this occasion was between the members from
the mining counties on one side and the "cow" counties on the other. The
miners took the ground that the claims were of different richness in the
different mining localities and that the miners themselves were the best
judges of the proper size of claims, and were abundantly able to make
their own laws as they had done under the present mining customs, and
their laws had always been respected, making any further legislative
action unnecessary.

While this wrangle was going on. Capt. Hunt, of San Bernardino (our
guide from Salt Lake in 1849), came along and stopped where I stood,
shaking me heartily by the hand, inquiring where I was from, and when I
told him I was from the mines he said he thought the cow county fellows
were trying to make the miners some trouble. I told him