But were not Pompeii and Herculaneum, and in later days, our own San Francisco, joyful and unsuspecting to the last? And why should the people of Tuolumne dread a danger of which familiarity and fancied security had made them forgetful, or possibly even contemptuous. The average citizen of Jacksonville could calmly face death in a material form, and why should he concern himself with that which passed by upon the other side with each succeeding spring? By no means the least attractive feature of Jacksonville was the rugged self-confidence and honesty of the majority of its people. Even the Chinese, who composed a large part of the population, seemed to be a better variety of the almond-eyed heathen than I had supposed could possibly exist. The hair-triggered sensibility and powder-and-ball ethics of the dominant race seemed to be most effective civilizers. I am far from claiming that Jacksonville presented an ideal state of civilization, but this I do say, in justice to my old town; life and property were safer there than they are to-day in many more pretentious communities, that claim to rank as centers from which civilization radiates like the rays of a star. A sense of personal responsibility made the French the politest nation on the face of the earth; it was the foundation upon which the spirit of the “Old South” was builded firmer than a rock; it was the soul that beat back the furious waves of shot and shell that so often hailed upon the southern chivalry on many a hard fought field. A similar spirit of self-assertion and personal responsibility pervaded the Tuolumne valley, and raised its average moral standard to a height far beyond that of many a metropolis of a more vicious and effete civilization. Warm-hearted, impulsive, honest, courageous, fiery-tempered, quick-triggered Argonauts of the Tuolumne valley--a health to those of you who still live, and peace to those who have laid down the pick and pan forever and have inspected their sluice-boxes for the last time! When the final “clean-up” comes, may the “find” be full of nuggets--“sixteen dollars to the ounce.”