It was with a sensation of deep relief that they at last reached Sacramento. They had learnt on their way down that the place was crowded and that they would do well to encamp just outside its limits. The town itself was indeed but the centre of a city of wood and canvas. Everywhere shanties and stores had been run up, and innumerable waggons served as the abodes of those who had crossed the plains in them. The wharves were a bewildering scene. Craft of various sizes lay alongside, tier beyond tier, discharging their cargoes. The roadway was blocked with teams. Numbers of men were carrying parcels and bales to the neighbouring warehouses. Waggons piled up with goods for the different centres, from which they were distributed by pack animals to distant mining camps, strove in vain to make their way out of the crush. Stores and saloons were alike crowded, the one with anxious emigrants purchasing their outfit for the gold-fields, and the others with miners, rough sunburnt men in red shirts, breeches, and high boots, who had come down to spend their hard-earned gold in a week's spree. Captain Hampton went from one to another of the hotels, showing the photograph and endeavouring to obtain news, but it was seldom that he could obtain more than a moment's attention from the over-worked and harassed waiters, and in no case was the photograph recognised; he concluded therefore that the party had, like himself, remained in their waggon. After many inquiries, he found that the greater portion of the diggings were either upon the Yuba River, or on creeks among the hills through which it ran. He purchased diggers' outfits for himself and Jacob, together with the necessary picks, shovels, and cradle, laid in a fresh supply of flour, bacon, and groceries, and two days after his arrival at Sacramento he started for the gold diggings. For a month he journeyed from camp to camp, and then struck off from the Yuba to a spot sixteen miles away, where gold had been first found two months before, and a rush of diggers had taken place, owing to the reports of the richness of gold there. Already the trees on both sides of the slopes above the creek had been cleared, and a town principally composed of huts formed of the boughs of trees had sprung up. Here and there were tents, for the most part of blankets and rugs, three or four rough wooden stores, one or two large tents, and one of framework with sides of planks and a canvas roof. All these had their designations in bright-coloured paint on white canvas affixed to them. After choosing a place for his waggon on the outskirts of the encampment, Captain Hampton left Jacob to picket and feed the horses and light a fire, and then as usual proceeded in the first place to visit the saloons.