Sunday, August twenty-ninth. We went to work the second day from our arrival and sunk a shaft from ten to twelve feet deep at which depth we struck a lead paying us about eight to ten cents to the ton. Water which we happened to strike got to be very troublesome, keeping us back considerably in our proceeding to get out the pay dirt for washing. All we earned up to the present is about four dollars. We calculate however to make more next week if we keep on at work steady and keep our health.[1] FOOTNOTE: [1] Evidently a journal was kept during eighteen hundred and fifty-three which has been lost. III LAST YEARS IN CALIFORNIA—RETURN TO THE EAST April twenty-ninth, eighteen hundred and fifty-four. Several weeks have elapsed since closing my last journal to the present date of this entry, and longer still this interval might have been but for sickness, which keeps me from my daily task and compels me to pass the hours of ennui and solitude by such means as circumstances afford. Among these means, reading is my favorite occupation if the subject of it is attractive and pleasing and one main reason that my diary is not more regularly kept is because it is easier to read the productions of others' minds than to make efforts for a similar purpose ourselves. The efforts I am going to make are not to be compared to the writing of fictitious works, nor still less scientific essays but are simply to note down the most important occurrences of my career—a few abrupt ideas of my own and other men and some remarks upon the political and moral affairs of the world. Well then, to begin. I am at present as already stated, compelled by sickness to stop in the house for an uncertain period of time which, however, I ardently hope may not fetter me like the criminal to his cell longer than nature may possibly require to heal the diseased part of my body. This is a sore ankle, caused by the rubbing of the seams of a boot, which, as undoubtedly a muscle or nerve was hurt, affects the whole system and gives me a good deal of pain. These things will, however, always happen and always by our own fault or carelessness—at least this is my case. Having this conviction one must try to take it as patiently as possible.