come in for "a particular, general, and universal burst;" and they carried out their intentions most completely. They were tender in their liquor, and, in the excess of their drunken philanthropy, they purchased a barrel of ale at three dollars a bottle, and a parcel of sardinas at eight dollars a box, and patrolled the district, forcing every one to drink. In paying for something, Bill dropped a lump of gold, worth two or three dollars, which Mr Johnson picked up, and handed to him. "Without taking it, he looked at us with a comical mixture of amazement and ill-humour, and at length broke out with--'Well, stranger, you _are_ a curiosity; I guess you hain't been in the diggins long, and better keep that for a sample.'" Even in all sobriety, miners would not be troubled with anything less than dollars, and often scattered small coins by handfuls in the streets, rather than count or carry them. And as neither exorbitant prices nor drunken bursts sufficed to exhaust the resources of the gold-laden diggers, gambling went on upon all sides. "Talk of _placers_," cried an American, who had just cleared his thousand dollars in ten minutes, at a _monte_-table in San Francisco; "what better _placer_ need a man want than this?" At Sutter's Fort, a halting-place of the miners, gambling prevailed without limit or stint, men often losing in a single night the result of many months' severe toil. Drunkenness and fighting diversified the scene. "Hundreds of dollars were often spent in a night, and thousands on Sunday, _when Pandemonium was in full blast_." Such iniquities were no more than might be expected amongst the ragamuffin crew assembled in California, and which included discharged convicts from New South Wales, Mexicans, Kanakas, Peruvians, Chilians, representatives of every European nation, and thousands of the more dissolute and reckless class of United States men.