“I then started again for Downieville, so hungry{258} and faint, I thought I should never reach there. I had no money; but a trader in Downieville, who was acquainted with my circumstances, kindly offered to furnish me with provisions, upon credit. As I was passing a hotel, I smelled the dinner, and stepped upon the stoop, wishing—oh, how earnestly!—that I had the wherewithal to procure a dinner. But I was ‘flat broke,’ as the saying is there, when one is out of funds. Presently I was accosted by a fellow who once mined with me in the country. Said he, ‘What is the matter, Bryant? What makes you look so down-hearted? Are you flat broke?’—‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and starving, besides.’—Not while I have the color,’ said he, and put five dollars into my hand. With this I bought myself a good dinner; and it was a wonder I survived it, for I assure you I did eat some. “Thus we lived on for four long, weary months. The fever settled in the sick man’s toes, and they all decayed. Finally, he began to convalesce; but it was six months from the time he was taken with the fever before he was able to walk. How grateful he felt to us, who had almost sacrificed our lives to stay by and nurse him! He would cry, and say, ‘If I am ever worth a fortune, you shall share it with me.’ Before I left the country, he had been{259} able to earn a little money. He came to see me, and proffered the whole, as he said, to compensate, in a measure, for my kindness to him. Of course, I refused to accept of one dollar; for he then looked too feeble to work. “During all these winter months, we never shot but one deer; and then we feasted! The snow lay to such a depth, we could not go hunting; and game was very scarce, too. “The provisions which we consumed during three months amounted to five hundred dollars, and then never had as much as would satisfy our appetites at any one meal.” My brother described the snow-slides in the mountains as grand and frightful. A body of snow would commence rolling at the summit of a mountain, collecting and increasing in size as it rolled, until it came with such velocity, and in such a mass, that it would snap off large trees in its descent as easily as if they had been whip-sticks. One could hear the rushing, roaring sound it made, for miles. It is necessary to build their cabins in such a position that they will not be in danger of annihilation from these slides. Cabins have been swept away, and the inmates killed, by snow-slides. As soon as the rocks around the cabin began to{260} get bare, they began to crevice for gold. One night, while his partner was preparing supper, my brother took out seventeen dollars (in little lumps) with a crevicing-spoon.