While at the copper mines, three prospectors—Tayor, Snively and another—came to my camp and reported that they had discovered placer gold at Pinos Altos, near there, and, as they were out of provisions and money, I gave them what was called a “grub stake”—that is, provisions to continue their explorations. That was in 1859, and I am told that gold is still being washed out at Pinos Altos, in 1900. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EL PASO IN 1858. El Paso is situated on the Rio Grande River, in the extreme west corner of Texas, within a mile of that river, which forms the boundary line between Texas and Mexico, and very near to New Mexico on the north and on the west. The altitude is 3,700 feet and the climate is mild, pleasant and healthful. El Paso was then a small adobe hamlet of about three hundred inhabitants, more than three-fourths of whom were Mexicans. Nearly all that portion of the village or “ranch” south of San Antonio and San Francisco streets was then cultivated in vineyards, fruit trees, fields of wheat and corn and gardens, for at that time and for years later there was an abundance of water in the Rio Grande all the year round, and El Paso was checkered with acequis (irrigation ditches). At the head of El Paso street, near the little plaza, where the main acequia ran, there were several large ash and cottonwood trees, in the shade of which was a little market where fruit, and vegetables, and fowls, and mutton, and venison, and other articles were sold. We had no regular meat market. To one of these trees some enterprising citizen had nailed a plank, which for years served as a bulletin board where people were wont to tack signed manuscripts giving their opinions of each other. Here Mrs. Gillock, who kept the hotel where the Mills building now stands, notified the “Publick” when her boarders refused to pay their bills, and here, in 1859, I saw my brother Anson nail the information that three certain citizens were liars, etc., and here, just ten years later, I gave the same information regarding B. F. Williams. Foolish? Perhaps. The flouring mill of Simeon Hart, about a mile above the village, was the chief individual industrial enterprise in the valley, and ground the entire wheat crop from both sides of the river, and supplied flour to all the people and the military posts. The proprietor, a man of wealth and influence, staked all and lost all in the Confederate cause. The dam which supplied water to this mill had been constructed two hundred years ago by the people of the Mexican side of the river, who kept it in repair for all these years without asking any assistance from the people of the Texas side, although they generously divided the water with us. The patience and industry displayed by this people in repairing and rebuilding this dam, when washed away by annual floods, can only be compared to that of beavers.