It was the twentieth day of July when we got there and they were just getting started to wash gold. The gold was mixed with dirt and quartz rock. These rocks were round and smooth and about the size of a man's fist. When they were washed in the sluice boxes and thrown in piles, they looked as white as snow. I have often thought what a beautiful walk or drive they would make if we had them in Illinois. We stopped at Morisson's Diggings two or three days. We found Uncle Isaac and his son, Jesse, at this place. We left there and went across another mountain to a place called Poker Flat, which was fourteen miles over the mountain. We heard there, that across on the other side of another mountain, on a stream called Nelson Creek, were new diggings. Uncle Isaac and his son made us promise, that if we heard of new diggings being struck, to give them word. I went back the next day and told them and they returned with me over to Poker Flat, where brother Crawford and the four others were waiting for us. We went over the mountain to Nelson Creek. An old Scotchman by the name of Wright, had struck a rich claim on the side of the creek on a little bottom. The gold here was coarser than it was in the southern diggings. The gold that Mr. Wright was getting, looked like small potatoes. Some were a little less and some a little over one ounce in weight. We prospected all around there, but could not strike any pay dirt. We concluded that if there was gold on this bottom, there must be gold in the creek. We put six men to dig a ditch to turn the creek out of the channel and then dam the creek and turn the water out, so we could get to the bottom of the creek. Old Mr. Wright had packed a whip saw over to make lumber for sluice boxes. Uncle Isaac and I borrowed the saw and went to work and whipsawed lumber for sluice boxes. We cut down two trees, up as high as we could reach, then cut small trees for skids, laid one end of the skid on the side of the mountain and the other end of the skids on the stumps of the trees we cut off, then rolled the log up on these skids. Then with pick and shovel, a level place was dug underneath, the length of the sawlog, barked and lined it on two sides, then sawed to the lines. One stood on top of the log, the other under it, or in the pit, as it was called. The whipsaw is shaped like one of the common key saws, wide at one end and narrow at the other, only the whipsaw had handles on both ends. It took nice work to whipsaw lumber and keep it true to the line. We got our lumber sawed, our sluice boxes made, our ditch dug, our creek damed and the creek turned out of the channel, prepared to work in the bed of the creek.