“Right y’u air, Doc! I kin see yer goin ter be a valooable addition to our diggin’s. We need a doctor ez kin tell whut’s the matter with a feller ’thout cuttin’ him wide open. Ye see, we likes ter keep our own han’s in, an’ don’t calkerlate ter leave much of the cuttin’ ter the doctor--ennyhow, ’till we’ve had our little innin’s, eh, boys?” Once again the boys agreed, with, I thought, just a slight suspicion of gratified vanity in their expressions. It was a long weary way to Jacksonville, but my time was well spent. Thanks to the kindness and garrulity of my new-found yet none the less sincere, friends, and the confidence engendered by my rapidly diminishing supply of stimulants, I found myself, by the time I arrived at my destination, fairly well acquainted with the town, its ways and its citizens. Jacksonville, at the time I landed in the then thriving place, was one of the most noted mining centers in the placer country. Its location was most picturesque. Nestled among the foot-hills of the glorious Sierras on the banks of the Tuolumne river, and peopled by as cosmopolitan and heterogeneous a population as was ever gathered within the confines of one small town, my new home was attractive because of its novelty, if nothing more. Ages and ages of alternately falling and receding waters, centuries of snow and enormous rainfalls, had washed down from the mountains into the valley of the Tuolumne, those auriferous particles, the great abundance of which had made Jacksonville spring into busy life and thriving prosperity, almost in a single day. But the very elements which had laid the alluring foundation of the valley’s wealth, were even then conspiring to avenge the rifling of the rich deposits of the valley by the irreverent hands of the modern Argonauts. The Tuolumne river was a variable stream. During the dry season, it was but a thin, disjointed, silvery ribbon, across which one could walk dry-shod, in places. But in the early spring, the little stream at which the wayfarer was wont to laugh, and in whose bed the eager miner delved with impunity and profit, took revenge upon the disturbers of its ancient course. It became a raging torrent, resistlessly carrying all before it and sometimes severely punishing for his temerity the unwary miner who had pitched his tent or built his rude cabin too near the river bank. But all the revenge which the Tuolumne had taken in all the years since the settlement of the valley, was as nothing to that which was yet to come. That vale of thrift, industry and smiling prosperity was destined to become a valley of death, destruction, desolation and ruin.