ENTRÉES. Fillet of Beef, Mushroom sauce 1 75 Veal Cutlets, breaded 1 00 Mutton Chop 1 00 Lobster Salad 2 00 Sirloin of Venison 1 50 Baked Maccaroni 0 75 Beef Tongue, Sauce piquante 1 00 So that, with but a moderate appetite, the dinner will cost us five dollars, if we are at all epicurean in our tastes. There are cries of ‘steward!’ from all parts of the room—the word ‘waiter’ is not considered sufficiently respectful, seeing that the waiter may have been a lawyer or a merchant’s clerk a few months before. The dishes look very small as they are placed on the table, but they are skilfully cooked and are very palatable to men that have ridden in from the diggings.” Lodging was equally extravagant. A bedroom in an hotel, 50_l._ per month, and a sleeping berth or “bunk”—one of fifty in the same apartment—1_l._ 4_s._ per week. Social intercourse is almost unknown. There are no females, and men have no better resource than gambling, which is carried on to an extent, and with a desperate energy, hardly conceivable. “Gambling,” says a private correspondent, whose letter, dated April 20, 1850, now lies before us, “is carried on here with a bold and open front, so as to alarm and astonish one. Thousands and thousands change hands nightly. Go in, for instance, to a place called ‘Parker House,’ which is a splendid mansion, fitted up as well as any hotel in England; step into the front room, and you see five or six Monte, Roulette, and other gaming-tables, each having a bank of nearly half a bushel of gold and silver, piled up in the centre. That the excitement shall not be wholly devoid of diversion, the Muses lend their aid, and a band plays constantly to crowded rooms! Step into the next building, called ‘El Dorado,’ and there a similar scene is presented, and which is repeated, on a smaller scale, all over the town. The gamblers seem to control the town, but of course their days must be numbered. Fortunes are made or lost daily. People gamble with a freedom and recklessness which you can never dream of. Young men who come here must at all times resist gaming, or it must eventually end in their ruin: the same with drinking, as there is much of it here.”